In the United States, Fatherís Day haltingly followed Motherís Day as a widely recognized federal holiday. According to History.com, on July 5, 1908, a West Virginia church sponsored the nationís first event explicitly in honor of fathers, a Sunday sermon in memory of the 362 men who had died at the Fairmont Coal Co. mines in Monongah, but it was a one-time commemoration and not an annual holiday.The next year, a Spokane, Washington, woman named Sonora Smart Dodd, one of six children raised by a widower, tried to establish an official equivalent to Motherís Day for male parents. She was successful: Washington State celebrated the nationís first statewide Fatherís Day on June 19, 1910.Slowly, the holiday spread. In 1916, President Wilson honored the day by using telegraph signals to unfurl a flag in Spokane when he pressed a button in Washington, D.C. In 1924, President Calvin Coolidge urged state governments to observe Fatherís Day.During the 1920s and 1930s, a movement arose to scrap Motherís Day and Fatherís Day altogether in favor of a single holiday, Parentsí Day. Paradoxically, however, the Great Depression derailed this effort to combine and de-commercialize the holidays. Struggling retailers and advertisers redoubled their efforts to make Fatherís Day a ìsecond Christmasî for men, promoting goods such as neckties, hats, socks, pipes and tobacco, golf clubs and other sporting goods, and greeting cards.When World War II began, advertisers began to argue that celebrating Fatherís Day was a way to honor American troops and support the war effort. By the end of the war, Fatherís Day may not have been a federal holiday, but it was a national institution. In 1972, Richard Nixon signed a proclamation making Fatherís Day a federal holiday.The day to honor fathers is celebrated in the United States on the third Sunday of June. In other countries, especially in Europe and Latin America, fathers are honored on St. Josephís Day, a traditional Catholic holiday that falls on March 19.Additionally, from Almanac.com, the Taiwanese celebrate Fatherís Day on Aug. 8 ó the eighth day of the eighth month ó because the Mandarin Chinese word for eight sounds like the word for ìPapa.î In Thailand, Fatherís Day is celebrated on former King Bhumibol Adulyadejís birthday, Dec. 5.
