Father's Day Trivia

HAPPY 100TH FATHER'S DAY!

(Yes, Father's Day was first celebrated on June 19, 1910!)

Dazzle your dad or someone else's dad or, well, anyone with the following Father's Day Trivia!

1. Which came first? Father's Day or Mother's Day?
2. Where did Father's Day originate? (Name the city and state. Or even just the state.)
3. Who thought up the idea of Father's Day?
4. Why is Father's Day celebrated in June?
5. What flower is associated with Father's Day?
6. About how many dads are there currently in the U.S.?
7. About how much will be spent on Father's Day cards in the U.S. this year?
8. What is the most common Father's Day gift?




Answers
1. Mother's Day, by far. Way back when, the Egyptians were celebrating Mother's Day.
2. Spokane, Washington
3. In 1909, a woman named Sonora Smart Dodd wanted her church to celebrate Father's Day. Her father had raised her and her five siblings following the death of her mother.
4. Because June was Sonora Smart Dodd's dad's birthday month.
5. The rose. Wear red if your father is still alive and white if he has died.
6. 67.8 million
7. About $100 million. Father's Day is the fourth most popular card giving day in the U.S.
8. The necktie

And here's what Mark Twain had to say about his father (particularly poignant in my household of teens!):
"When I was a boy of fourteen, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be twenty-one, I was astonished at how much he had learned in seven years."
~Mark Twain, "Old Times on the Mississippi" Atlantic Monthly, 1874



sources:
CBC Radio One (I am loving satellite radio in my new car!)
http://www.theholidayspot.com/fathersday/history.htm
http://www.mothersdaycentral.com/about-mothersday/history/
http://www.pressconnects.com/article/20100620/VIEWPOINTS/6200318/1120/Dads--day-by-the-numbers
http://www.loveyoufather.com/fathers-day-history/fathers-day-facts.html
http://www.quotegarden.com/dad-day.html