Seth MacFarlane will announce the list of nominations for the 85th Academy Awards in the wee hours Thursday morning, becoming the first Oscar host to do the honors since Charlton Heston performed the same trick in 1972.

At this point, you're probably thinking, "wait, Charlton Heston hosted the Oscars?" He did, appearing as one of four co-hosts that year -- but the actor got a flat tire on the way to the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, and Clint Eastwood had to be pulled out of the audience to read the opening monologue until Heston arrived. At various points in the organization's history, other unlikely emcees [5] included Laurence Olivier and Robert Shaw ... but we digress.

The point is it's rare for Oscar hosts to rouse themselves from bed to unveil the Academy Award contenders. Helping MacFarlane read off this year's crop of hopefuls will be "The Amazing Spider-Man" star Emma Stone.

Typically, the nomination-announcement chores are handled by the Academy president and by an actor who in the past has either won or been nominated for an Oscar winner. But one-term AMPAS president Hawk Koch has apparently opted out of the duties, while neither Stone nor MacFarlane have ever been nominated. 

(That could change this year; the song that MacFarlane co-wrote from "Ted," "Everybody Needs a Best Friend," is in the running in the Best Original Song category.)

The pair will do the honors at a 5:38 a.m. PT news conference at the Academy's Samuel Goldwyn Theater in Beverly Hills.

Steve Pond contributed to this report