Sunday is Father’s Day in the United States. The holiday is observed every year on the third Sunday of June.

The day is an occasion for families to celebrate fathers. Many families shower them with gifts, while restaurants are full of families taking fathers out for a meal.

According to History.com, the first Father’s Day was observed on July 5, 1908, when a West Virginia church held a service in memory of 362 men who had died in December in explosions at the Fairmont Coal Company mines in Monongah. However, this was a one-time event and not an annual affair.

The following year, History reports, Sonora Smart Dodd, a woman who lived in Spokane, Washington, and who was one of six children raised by her father, a widower, began canvassing her community for support for the annual observance of Father’s Day. She was successful and in 1910, Washington state celebrated the first statewide observance of Father’s Day in the country.

The observance of Father’s Day spread slowly across the nation. but now, History says, Americans spend more than $1 billion each year on Father’s Day gifts.
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