Notes • June 15, 2025by johnataylor on TwosFun Fact: Today is Father’s Day in the United States and always takes place on the third Sunday of June. Officially, the first statewide Father’s Day celebration in the United States took place in Washington state on June 19, 1910. Sonora Smart Dodd, the daughter of a widower and Civil War veteran named William Jackson Smart, who raised six children on his own after his wife died during childbirth, initiated the movement to establish a Father’s Day to honor the commitment and sacrifices of hard-working fathers. However, the first modern recorded Father’s Day celebration in the U.S. , occurred a year earlier on July 5, 1908, at a small church in West Virginia to honor the fathers of their community. The day was held in remembrance of the 362 men who were killed the previous December in a mining explosion at the Fairmont Coal Company. Father’s Day was not a federally recognized holiday in the U.S. until 1972 when President Richard Nixon signed Public Law 92-278 that ensured Father’s Day was permanently recognized on the federal calendar. Bonus Fun Fact: The world’s oldest “Father’s Day card” is a 4,000-year-old Babylonian tablet that a young boy named Elmesu carved to wish his father a long life and good health.