A TRUE NEWS RERUN

So it's Thanksgiving, and we celebrate that first meal when the pilgrims from the Mayflower sat down in Plymouth with the Indians to give thanks.

Wait, not so fast.Virginia claims that Jamestown, the new world's first permanent English settlement, was the scene of that first Thanksgiving dinner, thirteen years before the Mayflower landed.

Wait, not so fast. Florida has staked a claim for the first Thanksgiving. The Spanish explorer Pedro Menendez de Aviles and his crew sat down with the Timucua Indians for the feast of St. Augustine, in what is now the town of St. Augustine, 56 years before the Mayflower. The Nombre de Dios Mission founded by Menendez still stands there, the site of the first permanent settlement in America. That means the first Thanksgiving, that uniquely American holiday, was in Spanish.

Take that, Lou Dobbs.

And about that Plymouth rock thing. That's not true either.

Like George Washington's cherry tree and Betsy Ross's flag, the Plymouth Rock story is another bit of invented history.

In none of the writings of the pilgrims is there any mention of Plymouth Rock. The story of how the pilgrims landed there on the Mayflower didn't pop up until 120 years after the event, told by an old man who said he heard it from his father. There was no other supporting evidence.

And the stone known as Plymouth Rock is only a shadow of its former self -- one third of its former self, actually, after centuries of souvenir hunters chipping pieces off it.

Coming up later -- the truth about Santa Claus.