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National American Teddy Bear Day

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National American Teddy Bear Day celebrates the cuddly stuffed animal with a remarkable history that includes a US president and a preacher spouting conspiracy theories.

Today’s date coincides with a hunting trip taken in November 1902. The governor of Mississippi invited Theodore “Teddy” Roosevelt, the 26th president of the United States, to a bear hunt, but after three days, Roosevelt hadn’t spotted one. To keep the president’s trip from ending in failure, the guides set the dogs loose; they tracked down an old black bear and attacked it.

They brought the wounded bear back to camp and tied it to a tree for the president. When Roosevelt saw the old bear, he refused to shoot it because to do so would be unsportsmanlike. However, since it was injured, Roosevelt directed the men to put the bear down to end its suffering.

Word traveled quickly across the country. The Washington Post ran this headline on November 15, 1902:

PRESIDENT CALLED AFTER THE BEAST HAD BEEN LASSOED,
BUT HE REFUSED TO MAKE AN UNSPORTSMANLIKE SHOT

Political cartoonist Clifford Berryman drew a single panel that appeared in the Post the next day. In it, the president stands in the foreground, a guide and bear behind him. Berryman depicted the bear as a cub trembling in fear. He began to include the cub in other drawings of Roosevelt, forever linking him to bears.

national american teddy bear day

Morris Michtom, a Brooklyn candy shop owner,  saw Berryman’s cartoons and was inspired to make a stuffed bear. Michtom wrote to Roosevelt and asked his permission to call the toy “Teddy’s Bear.” Although the president agreed to lend his name to the new invention, he is said to have doubted it would ever amount to much in the toy business.

The runaway popularity of the cuddly bears led Michtom to mass-produce them, forming the Ideal Novelty and Toy Company in 1903. It soon became a multimillion-dollar business.  By 1907, the toy had become so popular that a preacher in Michigan warned that replacing dolls with toy bears would destroy little girls’ maternal instincts. Reverend Michael G. Esper raised the alarm:

Race suicide, the gravest danger which confronts this nation today, is being fostered and encouraged by the fad for supplanting the good old dolls of our childhood with the horrible monstrosity known as the ‘Teddy Bear.’

Newspapers in 27 states picked up his sermon, including the Boston Daily Globe and The Washington Post, which ran it on its front page. More than a hundred stories promoted Esper’s dire warning, an early example of a crackpot theory going viral. Of course, if the fearmongering prediction had been true, there would be no one left to read (or write) this.

A Teddy’s Bear made in 1903 is owned by the National Museum of American History. It’s in perfect condition. And the human race carries on.

national american teddy bear day

Happy National American Teddy Bear Day!

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Sadie Hawkins Day

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Sadie Hawkins DayToday is Sadie Hawkins Day, an American rite of passage for generations of teenagers. Misogynistic, antiquated, and awkward for all involved, it supposedly empowers girls to switch gender roles and ask out the boys. Did we mention it’s misogynistic and antiquated? Its true origin is much, much worse.

Sadie Hawkins was a character created in 1937 by Al Capp in his Li’l Abner cartoon, set in the fictional hillbilly town of Dogpatch, Kentucky. Sadie was the “homeliest gal in all them hills.” She waited in vain for a suitor to show up at her door, but not a single prospective husband came a-courting. After fifteen years, Sadie was in full panic mode, and her father didn’t want to support a spinster daughter for the rest of her life.

Sadie’s dad decided to get creative. He called all the unmarried men of Dogpatch together and declared it Sadie Hawkins Day. The town’s bachelors would run for their lives with Sadie in hot pursuit. The “lucky” man she caught would have to marry her. As her Pappy explained, “Th’ one she ketches’ll be her husband.”

Sadie_Hawkins_Day origin lil abner comic strip

The rest of the spinsters in Dogpatch (how many were there?) thought the race was an excellent idea and made Sadie Hawkins Day a mandatory yearly event, much to the chagrin of the bachelors in town, who had no say in the matter.

The Sadie Hawkins Dance appeared in the strip sometime later, taking place the night before the race. The spinsters wore hobnail boots to stomp on the feet of the single men, potentially making them easier to catch in the next day’s race.

The Li’l Abner comic strip debuted in 1934. From the start, it was bawdy and filled with sexual innuendo, not to mention scantily-clad, bucket-breasted women. But it was apparently considered wholesome family fare. In 1939, Life magazine ran a story stating that 201 colleges were celebrating Sadie Hawkins Day.

By 1952, it was reportedly celebrated at over 40,000 different locations. Eventually, it evolved into an all-day event. Capp wrote of the phenomenon:

It’s become my responsibility (to include Sadie Hawkins Day every year in the strip). It doesn’t happen on any set day in November; it happens on the day I say it happens. I get tens of thousands of letters from colleges, communities, and church groups, starting around July, asking me what day, so they can make plans.

Li’l Abner was an enormous success for its creator, who grew rich through merchandising, movie deals, product tie-ins, and a short-lived TV puppet show. In the 1960s, he underwent an ideological transformation from a New Deal Democrat to a hippie-hater and a close friend of Richard Nixon. He became a highly paid speaker on the college campus lecture circuit. His routine was to insult and provoke his audience into a shouting match.

sadie hawkins day al cappCapp attempted to use his fame to “seduce” young women. The biography Al Capp: A Life to the Contrary characterized him as something of a failed serial rapist since the few women who reported him to the authorities always got away. (Capp had lost one of his legs as a boy and routinely removed his prosthetic leg along with his pants.) One would-be victim described tipping him over like a floor lamp, as he crashed into the hotel furniture.

Of course, grotesque slapstick aside, there was nothing funny about his sexual assaults. And the winking acceptance by those who knew the truth underscored the culture’s lack of regard for young women. In 1971, Capp succeeded in physically forcing a 20-year-old Wisconsin college student to perform oral sex on him. To her credit, and against overwhelming pressure, the student pressed charges.

Capp was not charged with rape, but with three lesser counts: indecent exposure, sodomy, and “attempted adultery.” He was only found guilty of the latter. Although his career and reputation never fully recovered, he continued to publish the Li’l Abner comic strip until 1977. He died two years later.

Sadie Hawkins Day is not what it seems. She wasn’t a real person. It has nothing to do with women’s emancipation. What do you think? Does the true story of Sadie Hawkins Day and its twisted creator matter if no one knows it, or cares?  Should it continue to be celebrated as harmless fun or be consigned to the dustbin of history?

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Air Day

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Take a deep breath. Air keeps us alive. With the notable exception of anaerobic bacteria, living things need oxygen to survive. Not pure oxygen, mind you. That would be too much of a good thing. Air (usually) has just the right mix of gases and, for that, we owe it a debt of gratitude. If Air were sitting on the barstool next to you, you’d slap it on the back and buy it a drink.

But Air Day doesn’t celebrate Earth’s unique blend of gases.

Air DayNovember 11, 1929, was named Air Day by Governor Lawrence Judd to commemorate the first commercial air service flights between the Hawaiian Islands. Two Sikorsky S-38 planes flew from John Rodgers Airport, later renamed Honolulu International Airport, to the Big Island with a stop on Maui. Forty-nine military planes escorted them as far as Diamond Head; six accompanied them all the way to Hilo. 

Four planes were put into service on the route. More than 10,000 passengers flew on Inter-Island Airways in 1930, its first full year of service, an astonishing number considering there were only eight seats on each plane. Cruising at about 110 miles per hour, the flight, including the stop, took about three hours. 

Impressive. We suggest a couple of other air-related festivities worth celebrating.

Air Guitar Day –  Air guitar is a form of dance and movement in which a person pretends to play a non-existent guitar, including riffs and solos. It requires exaggerated strumming and picking motions, often including lip-synching, to simulate a raucous performance.

Air guitar simulates the raucous sound of electric or acoustic guitar. The 30th Annual Air Guitar World Championship was held on August 22, 2025, in Oulu, Finland. Finnish air guitarist Aapo “The Angus” Rautio won by a hair, beating out Yuta Sudo “Sudo-chan” of Japan.

Air Hockey Day– Two players compete to score goals on a special low-friction table. Traditional tables blow a cushion of air through tiny holes onto the surface to increase play speed. Others eschew machinery and use a slick, often plastic, surface to reduce manufacturing costs.

Touchscreen tables are available but are not yet recognized by the United States Air Hockey Association (USAA), which celebrated its 50th anniversary in August with the 2025 World Air Hockey Championships held at the Margaritaville Lake Resort in Conroe, Texas.

Would you like to help make Air Guitar Day and Air Hockey Day official? Find your Congresspeople’s phone numbers in this directory and call now.

Have a happy Air Day!

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International Accounting Day

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international accounting day pacioliWhat’s so exciting about International Accounting Day? On November 10, 1494, Italian mathematician and Franciscan friar Luca Bartolomeo de Pacioli published “Summa de Arithmetica, Geometria, Proportioni et Proportionalita” (Everything About Arithmetic, Geometry and Proportion).

It included a detailed description of double-entry bookkeeping, called the Method of Venice. Although this technique had been practiced for centuries, Pacioli’s treatise was the first of its kind in print and earned him the title of “Father of Modern Accounting.”

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Many in modern times have followed in Pacioli’s footsteps, with varying degrees of success.

Chuck Liddell is a former UFC Light-Heavyweight Champion whose fighting skills have helped make mixed martial arts a mainstream sport. He is also a trained accountant, with a BA in Business and Accounting from California Polytechnic University. No one will be making any “boring bean counter” jokes to him.

Kenny G. is a world-famous saxophonist whose smooth jazz sounds have sold more than 75 million records worldwide. He also graduated magna cum laude from the University of Washington with a degree in accounting, which he credits with helping him manage his finances early on in his career and paving the way for future success.

John Grisham earned a degree in accounting, intending to become a tax attorney. Instead, he decided to pursue a career in criminal law. His first novel, A Time to Kill, was based on evidence he observed at trial. He has written 47 books, 10 of which have been made into movies, and has sold over 300 million copies in print. (Fun fact: Grisham wrote a comedic novel, Skipping Christmas, which was made into the movie Christmas with the Kranks!)

In 1962, Mick Jagger was studying accounting and finance — on scholarship — at the London School of Economics when he formed the Rolling Stones with Keith Richards and Brian Jones. We think you’ll agree that it worked out for the best.

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Need more proof that accounting is cool? Click here to apply for a job at the FBI! According to FBI.gov:

The Forensic Accountant (FoA) role is one of the most vital and sought-after careers
in the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). Forensic accountants use their accounting
skills, auditing, and investigative techniques to research and follow the systems through
which money may be funneled or laundered by terrorists, spies, and criminals involved in
financial wrongdoing.

How many are there, exactly? We could tell you, but then we’d have to kill you. (Not really; we just don’t know.)

Happy International Accounting Day!

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