Partial patch from SF #452266, by Jason Petrone.

This changes Pythread_start_thread() to return the thread ID, or -1
for an error.  (It's technically an incompatible API change, but I
doubt anyone calls it.)
diff --git a/Misc/NEWS b/Misc/NEWS
index 690759b..1d86a43 100644
--- a/Misc/NEWS
+++ b/Misc/NEWS
@@ -39,6 +39,8 @@
 
 Library
 
+- thread.start_new_thread() now returns the thread ID (previously None).
+
 - doctest now excludes functions and classes not defined by the module
   being tested, thanks to Tim Hochberg.
 
@@ -91,6 +93,13 @@
   Consequently, PyArg_ParseTuple's 'L' code also accepts int (as well
   as long) arguments.
 
+- PyThread_start_new_thread() now returns a long int giving the thread
+  ID, if one can be calculated; it returns -1 for error, 0 if no
+  thread ID is calculated (this is an incompatible change, but only
+  the thread module used this API).  This code has only really been
+  tested on Linux and Windows; other platforms please beware (and
+  report any bugs or strange behavior).
+
 New platforms
 
 Tests