| No Images? Click here   Valentine’s Day is coming up, which means it’s time for us to examine all the strange or time-honored traditions we celebrate on the day of love. To wit, Taylor Pittman examined the story of why we call stuffed bears “teddy bears.” Hint: President Theodore Roosevelt is involved.As the story goes...“In 1902, Roosevelt went bear hunting in Mississippi at the invitation of Gov. Andrew H. Longino. Roosevelt’s guide was Holt Collier, who was born into slavery and served as a Confederate cavalryman during the Civil War. During the hunt, he found a black bear and planned to have Roosevelt kill it, as detailed in Minor Ferris Buchanan’s biography of Collier. Before the president could get there, though, the animal grabbed one of Collier’s hunting dogs. To protect his dogs and himself but also to ensure the president could take the fatal shot, Collier rounded up the bear (in part by hitting it on the skull with his gun) and tied it to a tree.When Roosevelt finally arrived, the president refused to kill the captured animal, and according to Washington Post reporters who were also there, he told his hunting crew to “put it out of its misery.” Some sources suggest that Roosevelt knew he would receive more backlash for his love for hunting if he killed the bear in such circumstances. Others note that he was simply being sportsmanlike.In the days after, the Post ran a cartoon about Roosevelt’s hunt, titled “Drawing The Line In Mississippi.” It depicts the president firmly refusing to kill the tied-up bear. The cartoon creature looks barely larger than either of the hunters.Roosevelt’s hunting expedition also caught the eye of Morris and Rose Michtom, Russian Jewish immigrants who ran a penny goods store in Brooklyn, New York. Rose sewed a bear out of plush velvet and displayed it in their shop as “Teddy’s bear,” according to Smithsonian Magazine. The couple soon realized there was immense customer interest in the soft toy. (There is evidence that similar stuffed bears were created in Europe around the same time.)Seeing the popularity of the little bear and erring on the side of caution, the Michtoms sent one of their stuffed animals to Roosevelt and asked for permission to associate his name with it. The president gave the OK. The couple had such success with the teddy bear that they founded the Ideal Novelty and Toy Company. In the ’60s, the family gave one of the original bears to the Smithsonian Institution.”There’s more interesting backstory, too. Read on!
So THAT explains it! The British royals are endlessly fascinating to many Americans. But when is your obsession more than that? And why do we care so much anyway? Caroline Bologna found out.The more you know:
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