Keyboard Shortcuts on Mac OS X

One of my complaints in my Thunderbird Notes was the inability to access certain commands from the keyboard. While downloading Thunderbird 1.0 from VersionTracker, I noticed this in the comments:

In OS X 10.3, go to your Keyboard/Mouse Preference Pane and define any key you want. If you don’t have 10.3, grab iKey and define any key you want. It seems redundant for any individual app to implement this feature now that it is built into the system and available to any app system wide

Huh? Really? (checking…) Wow, how about that! Sure enough, works like a charm.

Was I the only one that was completely unaware of this feature?