Former Massachusetts governor Michael Dukakis believes you are not through with Thanksgiving cooking when the meat is stripped from the turkey. Don’t throw away the carcass! He saves not only his Thanksgiving leftovers, but those of friends, too. He gets one out of the freezer occasionally over the year to make soup. Dukakis has always been famously thrifty, and he eventually became a cook, too.

“It all started when my dear wife after 23 years of marriage — and she was a good cook, I must say — one day said, ‘That’s it, I’m not cooking any longer,’ ” he said. “Just like that. At the time the only thing I knew how to make was French toast. So I was confronted with a choice: Starve or start cooking. So I’ve been doing all the cooking the last 29 years.

“I should also add one of our favorite purchases at Costco is rotisserie chicken,” he continues. “They sell them for $4.95. Kitty and I must get 10 meals out of them.”

First, he says, they eat the chicken itself. Then, just as he does with the turkey carcass, he uses the chicken carcass to make soup. The soups, particularly hearty ones, have become a bit of a specialty of his.

You can see Dukakasis’ recipe for turkey soup in case you want to try it yourself. But if you don’t want to use your turkey carcass, he’ll take it off your hands, as he explains in an article at the Boston Globe. -via Digg

(Image credit: Flickr user leigh wolf)

It’s become a holiday tradition for Jimmy Fallon to perform a medley of holiday songs set to the tunes of pop hits from the previous year. Or, you can put it another way: pop music hits of the past year with new holiday lyrics.

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The Tonight Show did just that last night, with Fallon joined by Rashida Jones, Queen Latifah, and Eric Nally. The songs from 2015 cover Thanksgiving, Hanukkah, and Christmas. -via Viral Viral Videos  

Poor kitty! This big red nose isn’t to guide Santa’s sleigh (although that might work). Redditor marklyon’s cat was stung by a bee. He was taken to a vet, and he’s fine now. But he sported a resemblance to W.C. Fields for a while. The cat was also compared to a clown, Karl Malden, Gerard Depardieu, Squidward, and Jimmy Durante.  

Superheroes have a lot to be thankful for on this holiday of gratitude. Especially Superman. He has been so blessed with superpowers! Still, listing all those things he is thankful for could be misconstrued as bragging. Well, maybe not misconstrued, because he is obviously bragging. But he does that a lot in the comic BatsVSupes. Thanksgiving is just another excuse. As for Batman, he’s thankful for whatever little appreciation he can get. -via Geeks Are Sexy

The first half of season six of The Walking Dead will end after this Sunday’s episode, and the show won’t be back until Valentine’s Day. Those who follow the show are speculating on whether and which main character will get killed, so as we have done before, we’ll take your predictions as a poll. There may or may not be spoilers in the list of currently surviving characters, so skip past this post if you don't want to know. Continue reading for spoilers.

For the third year in a row, Buzzfeed asked the UK for a Thanksgiving gift: British people trying to label the states on U.S. maps. Honestly, Brits know a lot about the U.S., but when they are confronted with a map asking for fifty labels, it’s suddenly difficult and confusing. I’m surprised they did as well as they did. Most of the folks who tried it labeled all the states whether they knew them or not, which is priceless. In the map above, I live in the state of “not here.” See all 21 maps.

Hi friends! Soon I´m back om my feet, and we shall se each other again! #sharegavle #gavlegoat

— Gävlebocken (@Gavlebocken) November 26, 2015

Sweden is celebrating the beginning of the Christmas season in the traditional way -with the Gävle Goat! Every year since 1966 the people of Gävle, Sweden, erect a huge straw goat for Christmas. We’ve covered the ups and downs of the goat over the years, when it sometimes comes to a bad end. 

The goat for 2015 is up, and the goat’s Twitter account (in both Swedish and English) has been activated. How long will it last? You can keep tabs on the goat with a live camera feed. -via Metafilter

A few facts about turkey, from Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader Attack of the Factoids. 

Ben Franklin despised eagles and lobbied hard to name the turkey our national bird. (He lost.)

There are about 4.5 million wild turkeys living free in the United States. They can fly 55 mph and run 25 mph. Domesticated turkeys, however, have been bred to be so overweight and front-heavy that they can’t build up any significant speed, loft, or distance.

For more than 100 years Massachusetts had no wild turkeys. But thanks to a reintroduction program in nearby New York in the 1970s, more than 20,000 now roam the state.

Most American ice-cream trucks play a song called “Turkey in the Straw.” (British trucks play “Greensleeves.”)

Big Bird’s costume includes about 6,000 turkey feathers dyed yellow.

The first in-flight meal: turkey and vegetables, served aboard the luxury 16-passenger Russian Ilia Mouriametz biplanes in 1914. The meals stopped later that year when the large airplanes were converted into heavy bombers for World War I. 

Steve, Jake, and Chris went on a fishing trip near Phillip Island off the coast of Australia. They didn’t catch many fish, but they had a great time. First they saw dolphins, then a seal, and then a whale- All within 90 seconds! Well, I guess we know why didn’t catch many fish. Either the fish were already eaten or they know when to make themselves scarce.

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Of course, while the guys on the boat are gushing about the wildlife, the dolphins, seal, and whale are all excited about the boat they got to see close up. Another explanation that one might consider is that they are all running away from something very large and scary. -via reddit

You may have some older relatives that get all nostalgic about salt-rising bread. You don’t see it much anymore, because it’s hard to make and not all that popular among anyone who wasn’t raised with it. The smell is described like either cheese or dirty socks. But those who love it really love it. Salt-rising bread doesn’t even have salt in it, and no one is sure how the name came about. It was made by pioneering American women who didn’t have access to yeast, and who didn’t always have sourdough starter ready. They made salt-rising bread rise with environmental bacteria. Yes, they did.

In the early 20th century, this lengthy, yeast-less process also became an interest of microbiologists. In 1914, Richard N. Hart noted in his book Leavening Agents that salt-rising bread “seems to fail in a well-sterilized room," and alludes to the experiments of Henry A. Kohman, who discovered that salt-rising dough lacked yeast completely “but literally swarmed with bacteria.”

In 1910 Kohman was funded by the aforementioned bread-obsessed Kansas Governor, Walter R. Stubbs, to learn how bakers may reliably make it, and concluded that a variety of anaerobic bacteria allowed the bread to rise. In 1923, microbiologist Stuart A. Koser began to suspect the mix might include bacteria found in human intestines and wounds.

The experiments Kohman did after that might make you a little queasy, but the fact is that not a single case of food poisoning has been attributed to salt-rising bread. Read what we know about this classic bread, including instructions for making your own starter, at Atlas Obscura.   

(Image credit: Flickr user Wonderland Kitchen)

How Charles Dickens fueled a world of spontaneous combustion truthers.

The first thing they noticed was the smell—like someone frying rancid meat. The two men sat in their flat in central London, awaiting their midnight appointment with the old, alcoholic Mr. Krook, who lived downstairs. As they chatted uneasily, ominous sights and smells kept distracting them. Black soot swirled through the room. A pungent yellow grease stained the windowsill. And that smell!

At last, after midnight, they descended the stairs. Mr. Krook’s shop—crammed with dirty rags, bottles, bones, and other hoarded trash—was unpleasant even in daytime. But tonight they sensed something positively evil. Outside Krook’s bedroom near the back of the shop, a cat leaped out and snarled. When they entered Krook’s room, the odor choked them. Grease stained the walls and ceiling as if it were painted on. Krook’s coat and cap lay on a chair; a bottle of gin sat on the table. But the only sign of life was the cat, still hissing. The men swung their lantern around, looking for Krook, who was nowhere to be seen.

Then they saw the pile of ash on the floor. They stared for a moment, before turning and running. They burst onto the street, shouting for help. But it was too late: Old Krook was gone, a victim of spontaneous combustion.

When Charles Dickens published this scene in December 1852—an installment from his serialized novel Bleak House—most readers swallowed it as fact. After all, Dickens wrote realistic stories, and he took great pains to render scientific matters like smallpox infections and neurological disorders accurately. So even though Krook was fictional, the public trusted that Dickens had portrayed spontaneous combustion with his customary precision.

Most of the public, anyway. A few readers were outraged by the scene. After all, scientists had been laboring to debunk old nonsense like clairvoyance, mesmerism, and the idea that people sometimes burst into flames. And key discoveries about heat, electricity, and other phenomena provided strong support for their view, showing that the human body, far from being otherworldly, was subject to all physical laws of nature. But the science was still behind. And there were enough mysteries for old wives’ tales to retain a foothold. This only made both sides more desperate to prove their case, and within two weeks skeptics began challenging Dickens in print, inciting one of the strangest controversies in literary history.

You’re off work for Thanksgiving, and you’ve watched the parade, maybe the Westminster Dog Show, and you’re not really into football. What to do for the rest of the weekend? In between family activities and all that eating, there’s plenty of special programming on TV you might enjoy. You might be surprised to find your favorite show running for hours straight -maybe all day and night!

Variety has a list of TV marathons this weekend, from oldies like The Facts of Life (TV Land) to the latest season of The Walking Dead (AMC), plus movie marathons like the first five Rocky movies (Spike). 

Entertainment Weekly has a list of family-friendly movies airing Thanksgiving day.

The A.V. Club has a list of series available from various streaming services you can binge watch in their entirety.

And if you’re up for going out, USA Today has a guide to new movies releases and what’s in theaters. 

It's a brutal world out there when you're shopping for Black Friday specials! You'll need someone skilled in the art of combat, like Mad Max to help you make it through the stampeding crowds, as retailers parcel out a limited supply of TVs and the hottest toys. Continue reading to see how he'll handle the madness.

Peru banned circuses from using wild animals, but not all of them complied. Animal Defenders International made it a priority to find confined and abused animals still kept by circuses. One they found was Mufasa, a mountain lion that had been in the circus for at least 20 years. He was kept chained in the back of a pickup truck.

Mufasa’s journey to freedom began in April, when ADI received a tip-off that Circo Koreander was illegally operating with wild animals in an isolated village in northern Peru. ADI, police and wildlife officers moved in for a surprise raid but were met by hostile resistance. An eight hour stand-off saw riot police and a Public Prosecutor called in before Mufasa – Peru’s last wild animal in a circus – was handed over, along with a condor.

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The cat was taken to the Spirit of Freedom rescue centre near Lima to recover. He got veterinary care and a pen to stretch out in. When he recovered his health, Mufasa was taken on a three-day journey to the Taricaya Ecological Reserve at the edge of the Tambopata rainforest reserve. Now he has both support and the freedom to run through the forest.  -via Viral Viral Videos

Otis Johnson was recently released from prison after serving 44 years. Think about how much the world has changed in 44 years. If you weren’t there to see it changing gradually, how surprising would it be? Honestly, I’m surprised by how much has changed, and I saw it happen.   

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The scenes of Johnson taking in the sights of city streets will remind you of Back to the Future Part 2, if only Marty McFly had aged into an elderly man on his way to 2015. Johnson is 69 years old, and unlikely to find a job. He didn’t pay into the Social Security system. He has no children, and no contact with other family members.

Upon release from prison, Johnson was handed an ID, documents outlining his criminal case history, $40 and two bus tickets. Having lost all family connections while serving his sentence, Johnson now relies on Fortune Society, a nonprofit that provides housing and services to ex-prisoners in Harlem.

Read more about Johnson at Aljazeera. -via reddit