Gelatin desserts have graced — or cursed, depending on how you feel about jiggly food — holiday tables and cafeteria lines for more than a century.

Want to set your Thanksgiving guests aquiver with your grasp of all things Jell-O? Check out our brief history of the jiggly stuff, written with tongue firmly in (somewhat slimy) cheek.

Liz Hickok (ENLARGE)

Liz Hickok's "Ferry Building, 2006" captures one of the San Francisco buildings re-created in Jell-O.

RELATED LINKS: • Gelatin salads break out of the mold • Recipe

• 1897: A carpenter and cough medicine maker in LeRoy, N.Y., comes up with the first fruit-flavored gelatins, in lemon, raspberry, strawberry and orange. Pearle B. Wait's wife, May, names it Jell-O.

• Early 20th century: Immigrants passing through Ellis Island get a taste of Jell-O as a welcome to America. Surprisingly, they still want to enter the country.

• 1930s: Congealed salads are all the rage. That means something made with gelatin, not something left too long at the back of the icebox. Lime Jell-O leads the charge.

• 1974: Bill Cosby gets all warm and cuddly to promote something cold and slimy.

• 1997: Jell-O Museum opens in LeRoy, N.Y., with artwork by Norman Rockwell.

• 21st century: A Florida entrepreneur offers the Eat Yer Face Gelatin Mold Kit, letting you cast your own mug — or any other body part — in the jiggly stuff.

• 2005: Artist Liz Hickok's photographs of a scale-model San Francisco cityscape made of Jell-O are part of a fine-arts exhibition at Mills College in Oakland.

• October 2006: As America welcomes its 300 millionth resident, Jell-O prepares for another 300-million-box year.

Sources: Jell-O Web site, Jell-O Museum, staff research