Ten things you never knew about... fathers
The third Sunday in June occurs this weekend, which is the traditional date for Father’s Day in the UK.
1. The first Father’s Day is thought to have been held at a church in Fairmont, West Virginia, USA in July 1908…
2. …but the idea of a national Father’s Day celebration was first suggested by Sonora Smart Dodd of Spokane, Washington in 1910.
3. Her proposal was for a “Fathers’ Day”, with the apostrophe after the ‘s’, to honour all fathers, but this was soon changed to “Father’s Day” when each person or family may honour a singular father.
4. Osama bin Laden was his father’s 47th child.
5. George W Bush is the only US president to be the father of twins
6. In 1990, Peter Hillary, son of Sir Edmund, became the first son of an Everest climber to repeat his father’s feat.
7. According to research published in 2002, female moths with large fathers are the most likely to seek the largest mates for themselves.
8. Alfred Nobel invented dynamite and founded the Nobel prizes, but his father invented plywood.
9. Joseph Wells, father of the writer H G Wells, was the first bowler to take four wickets in four balls in a county cricket match.
10. The Egyptians and ancient Greeks believed that only the father provided the seed from which a baby grows.
