1Father's Day
Father’s Day was a Catholic celebration dating back to at least 1508 in Europe. Today, it is celebrated worldwide and falls on many different days, mostly in March or June. Regional traditions are attached to the celebration, like Germany, which celebrates men hiking with wagons of alcohol.
2. Soviet Union’s “Order of Maternal Glory” was a civilian award that was created to commemorate mothers who had 7 or more children. There were three classes of the order. (Third Class - 7 Children) | (Second Class - 8 Children) | (First Class - 9 Children).
3. Pete Best’s mother, Mona Best, was the reason why John Lennon wore his round 'granny' glasses and was also the source of George Harrison's fascination with India. She also gave the Beatles their first gigs in her basement nightclub called The Casbah Club, long before they went to Germany.
4. The 19th Amendment (Women's Suffrage) almost wasn't ratified until a Tennessee senator who was against it (Harry Burns) received a letter from his mother telling him to “be a good boy” and vote for ratification. He broke the deadlock the next day and the 19th Amendment was ratified.
5. Deland McCullough, former NFL player, and RB coach for the Chiefs was given up for adoption at birth in 1973. When he found his birth mother in 2017, she told him the name of his father, who turned out to be his college coach and mentor throughout his adult life.
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6Mothers in Mythology
In Aztec mythology, giving birth was seen as a woman’s battle with the Gods to win her child's life. Mothers who succeeded were celebrated, while women who died in childbirth were thought to become vampiric monsters called Cihuateteo, which stole other women's children.
7. Robert Campbell was a World War 1 soldier who became a German prisoner of war in Russia. When he learned that his mother was dying, he wrote to the Kaiser, asking to be released. His request was granted, with the condition that he had to return. Campbell spent a week with his mother and then returned.
8. If a pregnant mother suffers organ damage during the pregnancy, the fetus can send stem cells to help repair the damage.
9. In 2019, a 98-year-old mother named Ada Keating moved into the same nursing home as her 80-year-old son in Liverpool to take care of him as he was in need of additional care and support.
10. In 2008, a woman who had been missing for 24 years was discovered to be locked up against her will in her father's basement for all those years. In a prison interview, her father, Josef Fritzl, said: “Just look into the cellars of other people, you might find other families and other girls down there.”
11Charlize Theron
Charlize Theron’s abusive father was shot dead by her mother, in self-defense. This happened on a night when he sprayed bullets into Charlize's room door, which Charlize and her mother had held shut for protection. Upon their miraculous survival, her mother immediately shot him down.
12. Despite being advised to join the NBA after one year in college, Tim Duncan decided to stay in school for 3 more years because he had promised his mother, on her deathbed, that he would get his college degree. The move paid off, as he got drafted by the Spurs and won 5 championships with them.
13. Millennial dads are spending 3 times as much times with their kids than their fathers spent with them. Back in 1982, 43% of fathers admitted they’d never changed a diaper. Today, that number is down to about 3%.
14. In 1995, France found a man guilty of killing a teen girl, but he was able to avoid sentencing by hiding out in Germany. In 2009, the victim’s father (Andre Bamberski) hired a team to kidnap the killer out of Germany and dump him in front of a French courthouse. It worked, and he is now serving 15 years.
15. Gene Wilder got into comedy and acting because of his mother’s heart condition. His mother’s doctor told him to ‘Try to make her laugh,’ to make her feel better, leading to his conscious efforts to make other people laugh.
16L. Ron. Hubbard
L. Ron. Hubbard’s own son, L. Ron Hubbard Jr. was highly critical of Scientology and claimed black magic was the inner core of Scientology once stating, “my father did not worship Satan. He thought he was Satan.”
17. Taylor Swift was born in a wealthly family. Her father is “a descendant of three generations of bank presidents” and worked for Merrill Lynch. At the age of 14, her family moved to Nashville where her father purchased a stake in Big Machine, the label to which Swift first signed.
18. A 60-years-old Japanese truck driver found out that he was accidentally switched at birth in 1953 at San Ikukai Hospital in Tokyo. His biological parents are a rich family and the infant who took his place grew up to be the Head of a Real Estate company. Meanwhile, he was raised by a poor single mother.
19. When J.R.R. Tolkien's son Michael signed up for the British army, he listed his father’s occupation as “Wizard.”
20. A Chinese father hired a ‘hitman’ to kill his son’s character in online games so that he would stop playing games and get himself a job.
21Australian Lottery
In 1960, an Australian father won nearly $3 million in the lottery, with his picture getting plastered all over the news. Shortly after, his 8-year-old son was kidnapped for ransom and eventually murdered. This changed anonymity laws for lottery winners in Australia forever.
22. Steve Jobs often went to his biological father's Mediterranean restaurant in San Jose and even shook his hand. At the time, his dad didn't know that Jobs was the baby he gave away for adoption, and Jobs didn’t know that he was his father.
23. A woman in Mexico named Ines Ramirez performed a C-section on herself after hours of painful contractions. Fearing that her baby would be stillborn, she drank 2 cups of high-proof alcohol and used a kitchen knife to make the incision. Both the mother and the baby survived.
24. During the filming of Matilda, Danny Devito and Rhea Perlman; who played Matilda's parents; would take Mara Wilson on outings with their family to help the actress cope with her mother's battle, and eventual death, from cancer.
25. In 1913, a Nebraska man took a butcher knife and threatened to kill his wife and newborn son. The mother left him, remarried, and had the boy’s name changed to that of his step-father. The boy, now known as Gerald Ford (born Leslie Lynch King Jr.), later went on to become the 38th President of the United States.
