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Father’s Day Trivia

This Sunday is Father’s Day in the US. I know it is celebrated on different days in other countries. In honor of dads, I present some Father’s Day trivia for this week’s newsletter.

  1. In 1966, President Lyndon Johnson signed a proclamation declaring Father’s Day as the third Sunday in June.
  2. A rose is the official flower of Father’s Day. A red rose should be worn on the lapel to honor a living father and a white for if he is deceased.
  3. In 2019, Americans purchased 90 million Father’s Day cards. By comparison, they purchased 133 million Mother’s Day cards.
  4. George Washington is known as the father of our country (the United States), but it is believed he was personally sterile. He was the stepfather of children from Martha Washington’s first marriage.
  5. Brigham Young, former president of the LDS church, fathered 56 children, through 16 of his 55 wives.
  6. Warren Jeffs, current president of the Fundamentalist LDS church, has 60 children through as many as 70 wives.
  7. John Tyler holds the record for the president with the most children – 15 confirmed and one alleged.
  8. The only president to have zero, including adopted and alleged, is James K. Polk.
  9. Thomas Jefferson fathered six children through his wife Martha and at least six through his slave Sally Hemings.
  10. About 1 in 200 men, today, are direct descendants of “super father” Genghis Khan, who is said to have fathered hundreds of children.
  11. According to a 2014 survey in TV Week, the most popular television dad was Cliff Huxtable, played by Bill Cosby, on the Cosby Show.
  12. The term of endearment used for mothers and fathers, in almost every language, is some variation of ma for mother and pa or ba for father. It is believed this is because these are among the first words babies learn to say and are easy for them to enunciate.

I’d like to conclude with a picture of my own father. Here he is after his oral exam towards his PhD in physics from Cal Tech.

My father

For more on my father, please see my 2014 blog entry honoring him after his death.

Sources:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_people_with_the_most_children

https://biography.yourdictionary.com/articles/which-president-had-the-most-children.html

https://www.statista.com/statistics/1124853/us-presidents-children/

https://bumpreveal.com/blogs/statistics/genghis-khan-dna-descendants

https://www.tvweek.com/in-depth/2014/01/tv-guides-50-greatest-tv-dads/

Written by: Michael Shackleford