Father’s Day Trivia

This Sunday marks Father’s Day in the United States, although I know that it is celebrated at various times in other nations. To pay tribute to fathers everywhere, I've gathered some interesting trivia about Father’s Day for this week’s edition.

1. In 1966, President Lyndon Johnson officially recognized Father’s Day as being celebrated on the third Sunday of June.
2. The red rose is designated as the official flower for Father’s Day, symbolizing honor for living fathers, while a white rose is meant for those who have passed away.
3. In 2019, Americans sent out 90 million Father’s Day cards. In contrast, the number of Mother’s Day cards sent was about 133 million.
4. While George Washington is often referred to as the founding father of the United States, it’s believed that he was unable to father children biologically. However, he played a paternal role to Martha Washington’s children from her previous marriage.
5. Brigham Young, who once led the LDS church, had an extraordinary number of offspring—56 children from 16 of his 55 wives.
6. Warren Jeffs, who leads the Fundamentalist LDS church today, has an impressive family of 60 children through approximately 70 wives.
7. John Tyler holds the record for being the U.S. president with the highest number of children, boasting 15 confirmed and one possible child.
8. Interestingly, James K. Polk is the only president who had no children, whether biological, adopted, or otherwise claimed.
9. Thomas Jefferson is known to have had six children with his wife Martha and at least six more with his enslaved mistress, Sally Hemings.
10. About 1 in every 200 men today can trace their ancestry back to the legendary Genghis Khan, who reputedly fathered hundreds of descendants.
11. A 2014 survey conducted by TV Week revealed that Cliff Huxtable, portrayed by Bill Cosby on The Cosby Show, was viewed as the most beloved television father.
12. Terms of affection for parents often feature variations of 'ma' for mothers and 'pa' or 'ba' for fathers across many languages, likely because these sounds are among the first that infants manage to articulate.

To wrap things up, I want to share a photo of my father. Here he is celebrating after passing his oral examination for a PhD in physics at Cal Tech.

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