The origins and info about Father’s Day is fascinating!
In honor of this exquisite holiday honoring all dads, here are the cool, fun and fascinating facts about why we celebrate the fathers in our life:
– The label “dad,” first appeared in English in the 1500s. Some researchers claim it’s a shortened form of a baby’s “dada” and was primarily only used by children. In other languages, the word is tad (Welsh), daid (Irish), tata (Greek), tete (Lithuanian), and tatah (Sanskrit).
– Father’s Day was first founded in Spokane, Washington at the YMCA in 1910 by Sonora Smart Dodd, who was born in Arkansas. Its first celebration was in the Spokane YMCA on June 19, 1910. Her father, the Civil War veteran William Jackson Smart, was a single parent who raised his six children there.
– The white or red rose is the official flower for Father’s Day. Dodd suggested that people wear a white rose to honor a father who was deceased and a red rose for a father who was living.
– In 1924 President Calvin Coolidge acknowledged the holiday and asked the states to do the same.
– In 1966 President Lyndon Johnson declared that Father’s Day would occur every third Sunday in June.
– In 1972 US president, Richard Nixon signed Father’s Day into law as a permanent national holiday.
– There are 1.5 billion fathers worldwide. 66.3 million of those father’s are in the United States.
– Father’s Day is the fifth-largest card-sending occasion in America with almost 100 million Father’s Day cards sent each year.
– Only 50% of all Father’s Day cards are purchased for dads. The other 50% are brothers, uncles and other male relatives.
– The world’s oldest “Father’s Day card” is a 4,000-year-old Babylonian tablet that a young boy named Elmesu carved to wish his father a long life and good health.
– Today, in the United States, Canada and several countries in Asia, Father’s Day is the third Sunday in June. In Spain and Belgium, Father’s Day falls on March 19th while Sweden celebrates the holiday in November, and in New Zealand, on the first Sunday of September.
– More than $22 Billion will be spent on Father’s Day in the US, with the average person spending $196 on a special dad.
– Over 87 million cards are sent each year on Father’s Day, making it the 4th most popular day for sending cards and video messages.
Other Fun Facts:
– The father with the most children is most likely Ismail Ibn Sharif, an Alaouite sultan who fathered 888 children with hundreds of wives and concubines in the late 17th century.
– Father seahorses are the only male animals to become pregnant. They accept around 50–1500 eggs from the female, fertilize them, and then carry the eggs for several weeks until they mature.
– Chromosomes from the father determine the sex of their offspring. Mothers always pass on an X chromosome to their children; in contrast, a father passes on either an X or Y chromosome.
– Wrestling and roughhousing with a father helps shape a child’s brain to help them manage emotion and develop a balance between thinking and physical action.
Here’s to all fathers. You are so loved.
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