Keeping with Morning Edition's longstanding Thanksgiving Day tradition, classical music commentator Miles Hoffman stops by to give listeners a sample of music that speak to the themes of the holiday. This year's music selection serves as a lesson on famous references to musical fowl throughout history.

Russian President Vladimir Putin was fielding questions from a hall of sedate academics last month when suddenly, Oleg Sirota's riotous head of curly brown hair popped out of the crowd of dark suits.

"I'm a farmer and cheesemaker from the Moscow region," Sirota declared on national TV. "I wanted to thank you for the sanctions."

In 2011, police in central Moldova responded to a call reporting a dead body.

They found a passport, hotel cards and contact phone numbers belonging to a Minnesota man named Igor Vorotinov.

Vorotinov's ex-wife, Irina, was notified and traveled to the small Eastern European nation to identify the body. She returned to the U.S. with a death certificate and an urn of ashes.

Investigators who are trying to track down the source of E. coli contamination in romaine lettuce are feeling that they've seen this movie before.

Over the past six weeks, at least 50 people in the U.S. and Canada have gone to the doctor suffering from the symptoms of food poisoning. They were infected with an identical strain of E. coli bacteria. Most of them remembered eating romaine lettuce.

Editor's note: This story was originally published on November 14 and has been updated to reflect a new commentary on Yemen published in The New England Journal of Medicine.

Three weeks ago, 10-year-old Sara was sitting up in her bed at a hospital in Hodeidah, Yemen. A small hole sliced into her throat was helping her breathe.

She was recovering from a rare bacterial infection, called diphtheria. The bacteria had paralyzed part of her body. And there was only one reason why Sara was so sick: Yemen's civil war.