Father's Day Trivia

• Father's Day was founded in Spokane, Washington at the YMCA in 1910 by Sonora Smart Dodd, who was born in Arkansas. Sonora Smart's Dad, the Civil War veteran William Jackson Smart, was a single parent who raised his six children there.  The  first celebration was in the Spokane YMCA on June 19, 1910.

• In 1916, President Woodrow Wilson went to Spokane to speak in a Father's Day celebration and wanted to make it official, but Congress resisted, fearing that it would become commercialized.

• In 1966, President Lyndon B. Johnson issued the first presidential proclamation honoring fathers, designating the third Sunday in June as Father's Day. Six years later, the day was made a permanent national holiday when President Richard Nixon signed it into law in 1972.

• In Australia, Father's Day is celebrated on the first Sunday of September, which is the first Sunday of Spring in Australia, and is not a public holiday.

• In Brazil Father's Day (Dia dos Pais, in Portuguese) celebrated 3 months after Mother's Day, on the second Sunday of August. A publicist Sylvio Bhering in the mid-1950s selected the date in honor of Saint Joachim, patriarch of family (as well as the Catholic day of godfathers).

• In Croatia, according to the Roman Catholic tradition, fathers are celebrated on Saint Joseph's Day ("Dan svetog Josipa"), March 19. It is not a public holiday.

• In Germany, Father's Day (Vatertag) is celebrated differently from other parts of the world.  It is always celebrated on Ascension Day (the Thursday forty days after Easter), which is a federal holiday. Regionally, it is also called men's day, Männertag, or gentlemen's day, Herrentag. It is tradition for groups of males (young and old but usually excluding pre-teenage boys) to do a hiking tour with one or more smaller wagons, Bollerwagen, pulled by manpower. In the wagons are wine or beer (according to region) and traditional regional food, Hausmannskost.