Stores Work to Keep Black Friday Safe













With earlier-than-ever deals and 147 million people expected to hit the stores this holiday weekend, retailers such as Best Buy are taking extra steps to avoid the Black Friday shopper chaos -- and inevitable news stories -- of the past.


Best Buy officials said they've been prepping for the madness for days.


The retailer has created color-coded maps, moved merchandise around to ease congestion and held a dry run so that its employees can get practice.


"[We want to] get people in safely and out safely," said Jay Buchanan, a Best Buy employee. The goal is to get them "through the lines quick, fast and in a hurry so they can get what they need."


In Bloomington, Minn., the Mall of America extended its ban on young people younger than 16 shopping without an adult during the weekend evenings to Black Friday.






Daniel Acker/Bloomberg/Getty Images













At the Arden Fair Mall in Sacramento, Calif., security planned to place barricades at the mall entrance to control the crowds and officials planned to double the number of security officers.


In Los Angeles, the police were putting hundreds of extra officers on foot, on horseback and in the air to monitor shopping crowds.


"It seems like Black Friday's become bigger and bigger as the years have gone by," said Los Angeles Police Cmdr. Andrew Smith. "What we've seen across the country are huge problems with crowds. They just forget about everyday courtesy and sometimes go nuts."


According to today's news reports, though, things were already getting out of hand.


When a south Sacramento, Calif., K-Mart opened its doors at 6 a.m. today, a shopper in a line of people that had formed nearly two hours earlier reportedly threatened to stab the people around him.


And at two K-Marts in Indianapolis, police officers were called in after fights broke out among shoppers trying to score vouchers for a 32-inch plasma TV going for less than $200.


"When you have large crowds of people, control is the most important thing," Steve Reed, a security officer at the Arden Fair Mall, told ABC News affiliate News 10. "You want them [customers] to be able to get in the mall without getting trampled and having issues of any kind happening to them. That's really important for us."



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Survey: Federal workers’ morale dropping



Federal employees still think that their jobs are important, and many are passionate and dedicated to their agency’s mission. But increasing threats to their pay and benefits and criticism of their work that has percolated in the national debate over government spending have taken a toll on morale, results of the Employee Viewpoint Survey show.

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S Korea's bus drivers call off national strike






SEOUL: Bus drivers in South Korea called off a threatened national strike on Thursday, staging only a brief walkout so as to avoid stranding millions of commuters, union officials said.

Bus services in Seoul and other cities returned to normal for the morning rush hour after the two-hour walkout that began at 4:30am (1930 GMT Wednesday).

"Drivers do not want to cause such great inconvenience to commuters. Children had to go to school and company employees were fretful about arriving late for work," national bus union spokesman Oh Ji-Seop told AFP.

The union had threatened an indefinite strike to protest against a parliamentary bill that would recognise taxis as public transport.

The bill would accord taxi drivers new tax benefits and allow them to drive in bus-only lanes.

Parliament had been expected to adopt the proposed legislation on Thursday afternoon, but members of parliament agreed to a last-minute postponement after the strike was called off.

Ruling New Frontier Party spokesman Lee Cheol-Woo told Yonhap news agency that more time was needed "to persuade the bus industry and quell concerns."

City buses carry an average of 15 million passengers each day. The transport ministry had offered to expand subway operations and provide free shuttle services if the strike had gone ahead on Thursday.

The union said the proposed bill was a populist measure aimed at winning the votes of South Korea's nearly 300,000 registered taxi drivers, ahead of the December presidential election.

- AFP/xq



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Kasab hanged day after UN vote on penalty

NEW DELHI: As chance would have it, India hanged Ajmal Kasab a day after opposing a UN resolution on abolition of the death penalty.

On Tuesday, India joined 38 other countries to vote against a non-binding UN General Assembly resolution, calling for the removal of the death penalty, saying every nation had the "sovereign right" to determine its own legal system. The resolution called for a moratorium on executions before the abolition of the penalty. The resolution was carried through after 110 nations voted for it.

In its explanation of vote, New Delhi said it could not support the resolution in its present form. Other nations voting against were Bangladesh, China , Korea, Iran, Iraq, Japan, Kuwait, Libya, Pakistan and US.

India said the death penalty was imposed only in "rarest of rare" cases and Indian law provides for the suspension of the sentence for pregnant women.

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Distant Dwarf Planet Secrets Revealed


Orbiting at the frozen edges of our solar system, the mysterious dwarf planet Makemake is finally coming out of the shadows as astronomers get their best view yet of Pluto's little sibling.

Discovered in 2005, Makemake—pronounced MAH-keh MAH-keh after a Polynesian creation god—is one of five Pluto-like objects that prompted a redefining of the term "planet" and the creation of a new group of dwarf planets in 2006. (Related: "Pluto Not a Planet, Astronomers Rule.")

Just like the slightly larger Pluto, this icy world circles our sun beyond Neptune. Researchers expected Makemake to also have a global atmosphere—but new evidence reveals that isn't the case.

Staring at a Star

An international team of astronomers was able for the first time to probe Makemake's physical characteristics using the European Southern Observatory's three most powerful telescopes in Chile. The researchers observed the change in light given off by a distant star as the dwarf planet passed in front of it. (Learn how scientists found Makemake.)

"These events are extremely difficult to predict and observe, but they are the only means of obtaining accurate knowledge of important properties of dwarf planets," said Jose Luis Ortiz, lead author of this new study and an astronomer at the Instituto de Astrofisica de Andalucia, in Spain.

It's like trying to study a coin from a distance of 30 miles (48 kilometers) or more, Ortiz added.

Ortiz and his team knew Makemake didn't have an atmosphere when light from the background star abruptly dimmed and brightened as the chilly world drifted across its face.

"The light went off very abruptly from all the sites we observed the event so this means this world cannot have a substantial and global atmosphere like that of its sibling Pluto," Ortiz said.

If Makemake had an atmosphere, light from the star would gradually decrease and increase as the dwarf planet passed in front.

Coming Into Focus

The team's new observations add much more detail to our view of Makemake—not only limiting the possibility of an atmosphere but also determining the planet's size and surface more accurately.

"We think Makemake is a sphere flattened slightly at both poles and mostly covered with very white ices—mainly of methane," said Ortiz.

"But there are also indications for some organic material at least at some places; this material is usually very red and we think in a small percentage of the surface, the terrain is quite dark," he added.

Why Makemake lacks a global atmosphere remains a big mystery, but Ortiz does have a theory. Pluto is covered in nitrogen ice. When the sun heats this volatile material, it turns straight into a gas, creating Pluto's atmosphere.

Makemake lacks nitrogen ice on its surface, so there is nothing for the sun to heat into a gas to provide an atmosphere.

The dwarf planet has less mass, and a weaker gravitational field, than Pluto, said Ortiz. This means that over eons of time, Makemake may not have been able to hang on to its nitrogen.

Methane ice will also transform into a gas when heated. But since the dwarf planet is nearly at its furthest distance from the sun, Ortiz believes that Makemake's surface methane is still frozen. (Learn about orbital planes.)

And even if the methane were to transform into a gas, any resulting atmosphere would cover, at most, only ten percent of the planet, said Ortiz.

The new results are detailed today in the journal Nature.


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Cops: Murder Gun Found in 'John Doe's' Duffel Bag













The man known as "John Doe Duffel Bag" was arrested today in connection with the slayings of three shopkeepers of Middle Eastern descent in Brooklyn, N.Y. -- and police believe he likely would have struck again if he hadn't been caught.


Salvatore Perrone, 63, was arrested following a long night of questioning by detectives.


Officials told ABC News that Perrone is being charged with three counts of murder. He has made admissions to police in connection with committing two of the murders but stopped talking before any discussion of the third, law enforcement sources said.


The murders took place in July, August and last Friday, Nov. 16. All three slain men were killed by .22 caliber slugs and one was stabbed as well as shot.


Police Commissioner Ray Kelly told reporters Wednesday evening that ballistics, a fingerprint and statements by the suspect linked Perrone to the crimes.


"NYPD homicide detectives today arrested Salvatore E. Perrone of Staten Island in the shooting deaths of three Brooklyn merchants after he made statements implicating himself, and after the .22-caliber rifle he used in the slayings was recovered from his duffel bag and subjected to ballistic tests," Kelly said.


"Those tests indicated that shell casings found at all three crime scenes were fired from Perrone's rifle. Perrone's fingerprint also was lifted from the murder weapon," he added.








Brooklyn Shopkeeper Murders: Person of Interest Questioned Watch Video











NYPD Links Brooklyn Shopkeeper Murders to Same Gun Watch Video





Kelly added later that Perrone likely would have struck again.


Sources told ABC News that detectives canvassing the Brooklyn neighborhoods where the slayings took place discovered Perrone had approached at least one other shopkeeper.


In that instance, sources said, Perrone offered to sell the merchant a line of goods, complimented the man on his refurbishment of the store and asked if he worked alone. The man told Perrone he wasn't interested in his goods because he didn't carry the line Perrone was selling.


Perrone returned near closing time, according to sources, but customers appeared to have dissuaded him from carrying out any attack he might have intended.


Police later pegged Perrone as "John Doe Duffel Bag." That's the name they gave a then-unknown man carrying a duffel bag on video taken near some of the murder scenes. Now, police are pointing to the contents of that very bag as evidence Perrone committed the killings.


"When crime scene detectives searched the bag early this morning, they found the carbine with a sawed-off stock, and a combination laser-flashlight attached to its barrel with duct tape and two thick, pink rubber bands," Kelly said. "It had a single, live round in the chamber. They also recovered a box of 22-caliber long-rifle ammunition, an empty magazine and a 12-inch kitchen knife with dried blood on it. Detectives also found two Buck folding knives, each with seven-inch blades.


"Perrone was recognized yesterday [Tuesday] at a pharmacy in Bay Ridge, [Brooklyn], and voluntarily agreed to accompany responding officers to the station house," he said. "Detectives obtained a warrant to search Perrone's duffel bag, which was found at his girlfriend's apartment. It was the same bag that Perrone was seen carrying in videotaped images of him in the vicinity of the most recent homicide."


Perrone, a Staten Island resident and native of Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, has a rap sheet that includes stalking a former girlfriend and kicking in her door, burglary and driving while intoxicated on Staten Island.






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Blazing a legal trail to help improve health care



She has worked alongside health-care experts designing model programs intended to better health care and lower costs, and with attorneys in the Office of the Inspector General (OIG), who are trying to prevent waste, fraud and abuse in the health-care system.

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Australia returns 100 Sri Lankan asylum-seekers






SYDNEY: Australia on Wednesday sent 100 Sri Lankan men deemed not to be refugees back to their homeland, bringing to 426 the number involuntarily returned to Colombo in the past three months.

The latest planeload is the ninth and largest this month as Canberra deals with an influx of more than 15,500 asylum-seekers who have arrived on boats since the beginning of this year.

"Our humanitarian programme is for people who are at risk of persecution, not for people seeking to undertake economic migration," Immigration Minister Chris Bowen told reporters.

"We will continue these returns for as as long as it takes."

A further 99 Sri Lankans have returned home voluntarily rather than face the prospect of spending years on a remote Pacific island waiting for their refugee claims to be processed.

Australia has pledged to crack down on asylum-seekers arriving by boat after a spate of drownings en route and is sending boat people to the island of Nauru and Manus Island in Papua New Guinea as a deterrent.

"We will continue to return people to Sri Lanka, we will continue to transfer people to Nauru, and now to Manus Island as well," Bowen said.

More than 7,800 boat people have arrived in Australia since the policy was announced in August, and officials have noted a rise in Sri Lankans making the treacherous journey.

"The message here is very clear: people who pay smugglers are risking their lives and throwing their money away," Bowen said.

"They are being told lies. There is no visa on arrival, there is no speedy outcome, and there is no special treatment."

Sri Lankan authorities have arrested more than 1,200 people trying to leave the island illegally this year.

Many who depart Sri Lanka for Australia pay up to US$3,000 for a place on fishing boats run by people-smugglers.

Australia also completed the first involuntary return of a man to Afghanistan on Tuesday under Canberra's return agreement with Kabul.

- AFP/xq



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Kasab hanged: Timeline of events

PUNE: Nearly four years after the 26/11 Mumbai carnage, Pakistani terrorist Mohammed Ajmal Amir Kasab was today hanged in Yerawada Jail here. Following is the chronology of events leading to his hanging.

Nov 26, 2008: Kasab and 9 terrorists launch commando raid in Mumbai.

Nov 27, 2008: At 1.30am, Kasab caught and placed under arrest, admitted to Nair Hospital.

Nov 29, 2008: All places under siege secured, 9 terrorists killed.

Nov 30, 2008: Kasab confesses before police.

Dec 27/28, 2008: Identification parade held.

Jan 13, 2009: M L Tahaliyani appointed 26/11 judge.

Jan 16, 2009: Arthur Road Jail selected for Kasab's trial.

Feb 5, 2009: Kasab's DNA samples match with articles found in Kuber.

Feb 20/21, 2009: Kasab makes confession before magistrate.

Feb 22, 2009: Ujjwal Nikam appointed Special Public Prosecutor.

Feb 25, 2009: Charge sheet against Kasab, two others filed in court.

Apr 1, 2009: Anjali Waghmare appointed Kasab's lawyer.

Apr 15, 2009: Anjali Waghmare removed as Kasab's lawyer.

Apr 16, 2009: Abbas Kazmi appointed as Kasab's lawyer.

Apr 17, 2009: Kasab's confession opened in court, he retracts.

Apr 20, 2009: Prosecution charges Kasab on 312 counts.

Apr 29, 2009: Kasab is major: experts' opinion.

May 6, 2009: Charges framed, Kasab charged on 86 counts, but denies charges.

May 8, 2009: First eyewitness deposes, identifies Kasab.

June 23, 2009: Non-bailable warrants issued against 22 including Hafeez Saeed, Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi.

Nov 30, 2009: Abbas Kazmi removed as Kasab's lawyer.

Dec 1, 2009: K P Pawar takes place of Kazmi.

Dec 16, 2009: Prosecution completes its case in 26/11.

Dec 18, 2009: Kasab denies all charges.

March 31, 2010: Arguments in the case end. Special Judge M L Tahaliyani reserves judgement for May 3, 2010.

May 3, 2010: Kasab convicted, Sabauddin Ahmed and Faheem Ansari acquitted of all charges.

May 6, 2010: Kasab was sentenced to death by the trial court.

Feb 21, 2011: Bombay high court upholds death sentence to Kasab.

March 2011: Kasab writes letter to SC challenging HC order.

Oct 10, 2011: SC stays execution of the death sentence awarded to Pakistani terrorist Kasab.

Oct 10, 2011: Kasab tells SC that he was brainwashed like a "robot" into committing the heinous crime in the name of "God" and that he does not deserve capital punishment owing to his young age.

Oct 18, 2011: The Supreme Court admits Maharashtra government's appeal challenging the acquittal of Faheem Ansari and Sabauddin Ahmed, co-accused of Ajmal Kasab, in the 26/11 Mumbai terror attack.

Jan 31, 2012: Kasab tells SC that he was not given a free and fair trial in the case.

Feb 23, 2012: SC hears intercepted conversations between the perpetrators of 26/11 Mumbai terror attack and their Pakistani handlers and watched the CCTV footage of the carnage.

Apr 25, 2012: SC reserves its verdict after a marathon hearing, spanning over two and a half month.

Aug 29, 2012: SC upholds death sentence of Kasab and acquittal of two alleged Indian co-conspirators in the case.

Oct 16,2012: Union Home Ministry recommends to President for rejection of Kasab's mercy plea.

Nov 5,2012: President rejects Kasab's mercy petition.

Nov 8,2012: Maharashtra government informed about President's decision.

Nov 21,2012: Kasab hanged in Yerwada Jail in Pune.

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Thanksgiving 2012 Myths and Facts


Before the big dinner, debunk the myths—for starters, the first "real" U.S. Thanksgiving wasn't until the 1800s—and get to the roots of Thanksgiving 2012.

Thanksgiving Dinner: Recipe for Food Coma?

Key to any Thanksgiving Day menu are a fat turkey and cranberry sauce.

An estimated 254 million turkeys will be raised for slaughter in the U.S. during 2012, up 2 percent from 2011's total, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture's National Agricultural Statistics Service. Last year's birds were worth about five billion dollars.

About 46 million turkeys ended up on U.S. dinner tables last Thanksgiving—or about 736 million pounds (334 million kilograms) of turkey meat, according to estimates from the National Turkey Federation.

Minnesota is the United States' top turkey-producing state, followed by North Carolina, Arkansas, Missouri, Virginia, and Indiana.

These "big six" states produce two of every three U.S.-raised birds, according to U.S. Census Bureau data.

U.S. farmers will also produce 768 million pounds (348 million kilograms) of cranberries in 2012, which, like turkeys, are native to the Americas. The top producers are Wisconsin and Massachusetts.

The U.S. will also grow 2.7 billion pounds (1.22 billion kilograms) of sweet potatoes—many in North Carolina, Mississippi, California, and Louisiana—and will produce more than 1.1 billion pounds (499 million kilograms) of pumpkins.

Illinois, California, Pennsylvania, and Ohio grow the most U.S. pumpkins.

But if you overeat at Thanksgiving dinner, there's a price to be paid for all this plenty: the Thanksgiving "food coma." The post-meal fatigue may be real, but the condition is giving turkeys a bad rap.

Contrary to myth, the amount of the organic amino acid tryptophan in most turkeys isn't responsible for drowsiness.

Instead, scientists blame booze, the sheer caloric size of an average feast, or just plain-old relaxing after stressful work schedules. (Take a Thanksgiving quiz.)

What Was on the First Thanksgiving Menu?

Little is known about the first Thanksgiving dinner in Plimoth (also spelled Plymouth) Colony in October 1621, attended by some 50 English colonists and about 90 Wampanoag American Indian men in what is now Massachusetts.

We do know that the Wampanoag killed five deer for the feast, and that the colonists shot wild fowl—which may have been geese, ducks, or turkey. Some form, or forms, of Indian corn were also served.

But Jennifer Monac, spokesperson for the living-history museum Plimoth Plantation, said the feasters likely supplemented their venison and birds with fish, lobster, clams, nuts, and wheat flour, as well as vegetables, such as pumpkins, squashes, carrots, and peas.

"They ate seasonally," Monac said in 2009, "and this was the time of the year when they were really feasting. There were lots of vegetables around, because the harvest had been brought in."

Much of what we consider traditional Thanksgiving fare was unknown at the first Thanksgiving. Potatoes and sweet potatoes hadn't yet become staples of the English diet, for example. And cranberry sauce requires sugar—an expensive delicacy in the 1600s. Likewise, pumpkin pie went missing due to a lack of crust ingredients.

If you want to eat like a Pilgrim yourself, try some of the Plimoth Plantation's recipes, including stewed pompion (pumpkin) or traditional Wampanoag succotash. (See "Sixteen Indian Innovations: From Popcorn to Parkas.")

First Thanksgiving Not a True Thanksgiving?

Long before the first Thanksgiving, American Indian peoples, Europeans, and other cultures around the world had often celebrated the harvest season with feasts to offer thanks to higher powers for their sustenance and survival.

In 1541 Spaniard Francisco Vásquez de Coronado and his troops celebrated a "Thanksgiving" while searching for New World gold in what is now the Texas Panhandle.

Later such feasts were held by French Huguenot colonists in present-day Jacksonville, Florida (1564), by English colonists and Abnaki Indians at Maine's Kennebec River (1607), and in Jamestown, Virginia (1610), when the arrival of a food-laden ship ended a brutal famine. (Related: "Four Hundred-Year-Old Seeds, Spear Change Perceptions of Jamestown Colony.")

But it's the 1621 Plimoth Thanksgiving that's linked to the birth of our modern holiday. To tell the truth, though, the first "real" Thanksgiving happened two centuries later.

Everything we know about the three-day Plimoth gathering comes from a description in a letter wrote by Edward Winslow, leader of the Plimoth Colony, in 1621, Monac said. The letter had been lost for 200 years and was rediscovered in the 1800s, she added.

In 1841 Boston publisher Alexander Young printed Winslow's brief account of the feast and added his own twist, dubbing the 1621 feast the "First Thanksgiving."

In Winslow's "short letter, it was clear that [the 1621 feast] was not something that was supposed to be repeated again and again. It wasn't even a Thanksgiving, which in the 17th century was a day of fasting. It was a harvest celebration," Monac said.

But after its mid-1800s appearance, Young's designation caught on—to say the least.

U.S. President Abraham Lincoln declared Thanksgiving Day a national holiday in 1863. He was probably swayed in part by magazine editor Sarah Josepha Hale—the author of the nursery rhyme "Mary Had a Little Lamb"—who had suggested Thanksgiving become a holiday, historians say.

In 1941 President Franklin Roosevelt established the current date for observance, the fourth Thursday of November.

Thanksgiving Turkey-in-Waiting

Each year at least two lucky turkeys avoid the dinner table, thanks to a presidential pardon—a longstanding Washington tradition of uncertain origin.

Since 1947, during the Truman Administration, the National Turkey Federation has presented two live turkeys—and a ready-to-eat turkey—to the President, federation spokesperson Sherrie Rosenblatt said in 2009.

"There are two birds," Rosenblatt explained, "the presidential turkey and the vice presidential turkey, which is an alternate, in case the presidential turkey is unable to perform its duties."

Those duties pretty much boil down to not biting the President during the photo opportunity with the press. In 2008 the vice presidential bird, "Pumpkin," stepped in for the appearance with President Bush after the presidential bird, "Pecan," had fallen ill the night before.

The lucky birds once shared a similar happy fate as Super Bowl-winning quarterbacks—a trip to Disneyland's Big Thunder Ranch in California, where they lived out their natural lives.

Since 2010, however, the birds have followed in the footsteps of the first President and taken up residence at George Washington's Mount Vernon Estate and Gardens.

After the holiday season, however, the two 40-pound (18-kilogram) toms won't be on public display. These fat, farm-fed birds aren't historically accurate, unlike the wild birds that still roam the Virginia estate.

Talking Turkey

Pilgrims had been familiar with turkeys before they landed in the Americas. That's because early European explorers of the New World had returned to Europe with turkeys in tow after encountering them at Native American settlements. Native Americans had domesticated the birds centuries before European contact.

A century later Ben Franklin famously made known his preference that the turkey, rather than the bald eagle, should be the official U.S. bird.

But Franklin might have been shocked when, by the 1930s, hunting had so decimated North American wild turkey populations that their numbers had dwindled to the tens of thousands, from a peak of at least tens of millions.

Today, thanks to reintroduction efforts and hunting regulations, wild turkeys are back. (Related: "Birder's Journal: Giving Thanks for Wild Turkey Sightings.")

Some seven million wild turkeys are thriving across the U.S., and many of them have adapted easily to the suburbs—their speed presumably an asset on ever encroaching roads.

Wild turkeys can run some 10 to 20 miles (16 to 32 kilometers) an hour and fly in bursts at 55 miles (89 kilometers) an hour. Domesticated turkeys can't fly at all.

On Thanksgiving, Pass the Pigskin

For many U.S. citizens, Thanksgiving without football is as unthinkable as the Fourth of July without fireworks.

NBC Radio broadcast the first national Thanksgiving Day game in 1934, when the Detroit Lions hosted the Chicago Bears.

Except for a respite during World War II, the Lions have played—usually badly—every Thanksgiving Day since. For the 2012 game, the 73rd, they take on the Houston Texans.

Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade

For a festive few, even turkey takes a backseat to the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade in New York City, originally called the Macy's Christmas parade, because it kicked off the shopping season.

The tradition began in 1924, when employees recruited animals from the Central Park Zoo to march on Thanksgiving Day.

Helium-filled balloons made their debut in the parade in 1927 and, in the early years, were released above the city skyline with the promise of rewards for their finders.

The Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, first televised nationally in 1947, now draws some 44 million viewers—not counting the 3 million people who actually line the 2.5-mile (4-kilometer) Manhattan route.

Thanksgiving weekend also boasts the retail version of the Super Bowl—Black Friday, when massive sales and early opening times attract frugal shoppers.

A National Retail Federation survey projects that up to 147 million Americans will either brave the crowds to shop on 2012's Black Friday weekend or take advantage of online shopping sales, a slight dip from last year's 152 million shoppers.

Planes, Trains, and (Lots of) Automobiles

It may seem like everyone in the U.S. is on the road on Thanksgiving Day, keeping you from your turkey and stuffing.

That's not exactly true, but 43.6 million of about 314 million U.S. citizens will drive more than 50 miles (80 kilometers) from home for the 2012 holiday, according to the American Automobile Association. That's a small 300,000-person increase from last year.

An additional 3.14 million travelers will fly to their holiday destination and 1.3 million others will use buses, trains, or other modes of travel. These modestly rising Thanksgiving travel numbers continue to rebound slowly from a steep 25 percent drop precipitated by the onset of the 2008 recession.

Thanksgiving North of the Border

Cross-border travelers can celebrate Thanksgiving twice, because Canada celebrates its own Thanksgiving Day the second Monday in October.

As in the U.S., the event is sometimes linked to a historic feast with which it has no real ties—in this case explorer Martin Frobisher's 1578 ceremony, which gave thanks for his safe arrival in what is now New Brunswick.

Canada's Thanksgiving, established in 1879, was inspired by the U.S. holiday. Dates of observance have fluctuated—sometimes coinciding with the U.S. Thanksgiving or the Canadian veteran-appreciation holiday, Remembrance Day—and at least once Canada's Thanksgiving occurred as late as December.

But Canada's colder climate eventually led to the 1957 decision that formalized the October date.


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