November 16, 1902: The 1st Teddy Bear

November 16, 1902: The Washington Post publishes a political cartoon, drawn by Clifford Berryman, showing a black bear lassoed and set up to be shot by a hunter. A very particular hunter, famous for shooting wild animals.

Except this time, the hunter in question is shown refusing to shoot. He is Theodore Roosevelt, the current President of the United States.

The cartoon was the by-product of a bear-hunting trip that Roosevelt had taken to Mississippi earlier in the month, along with that State's Governor, Andrew H. Longino (Yes, an Italian-American served as Governor of the most racist State in the Union at the dawn of the 20th Century), and an ally of Longino's, noted lawyer LeRoy Percy, later to be elected to the U.S. Senate. (His son, Walker Percy, became a best-selling novelist.)

After most of the other hunters involved had already killed at least one bear, a party of Roosevelt's attendants, led by Holt Collier, a 54-year-old former slave noted for his hunting skill, cornered, clubbed, and tied an American black bear to a willow tree after a long and exhausting chase with hounds. They called Roosevelt to the site, and suggested that he should shoot the bear dead, although Collier told Roosevelt not to shoot the bear while it was tied. Roosevelt refused to shoot the bear himself, deeming this unsportsmanlike, but instructed that the bear be killed to be put out of its misery.

Morris Michtom, who ran a toy store in Brooklyn, saw the cartoon, and created a stuffed bear, putting it in the window of his store, calling it "Teddy's bear." Roosevelt didn't mind being referred to by his initials, "TR," but hated being called "Teddy." Nevertheless, the term "teddy bear" caught on, and similar bears became the thing that every kid wanted that Christmas.

Clifford Berryman had drawn for the Post since 1891. In 1898, he coined the slogan, "Remember the Maine!" asking Americans to think of the destruction of the battleship USS Maine in Havana Harbor in Cuba (which was almost certainly the result of an accidental boiler explosion, not sabotage) as a reason to fight the Spanish-American War.

He moved to The Washington Star in 1907, and continued to draw for them until his death in 1949, at the age of 80.

By 1907, teddy bears were so popular that the song "Teddy Bears Picnic" was written, and became a hit. That same year, Michael G. Esper, a Catholic priest in Michigan, declared them to be "horrible monstrosities," which, by supplanting the "good old dolls," would cause girls to lose the urge to nurture babies, leading to declining birth rates among the white population, and thus "race suicide." The suggestion attracted widespread but short-lived attention, and Father Esper drifted back into well-deserved obscurity.

In 1908, as Roosevelt was leaving office, and William Howard Taft was running as his handpicked successor, word got out that he liked opossums, and so "Billy Possum" stuffed toys were produced. Taft won, but the opossum dolls named for him did not catch on.

A teddy bear owned by his son Christopher Robin Milne inspired British writer A.A. Milne to create Winnie-the-Pooh in 1926. In 1958, another British writer, Michael Bond, created Paddington Bear. The cartoon Care Bears debuted in 1983, and Seth MacFarlane's foul-mouthed Ted debuted in 2012.

In 1957, a rumor got around that Elvis Presley loved teddy bears, and that he even had a collection of them. It wasn't true, but he soon got a collection, because girls began throwing them onstage at his concerts. Kal Mann and Bernie Lowe wrote a song for him, "(Let Me Be Your) Teddy Bear," and it was Number 1 on Billboard magazine's pop music charts for 7 weeks.

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November 16, 1902 was a Sunday. Baseball was out of season. Professional football existed on only a minor-league level. Basketball was barely even on that level. And hockey was still all-amateur, unless guys were getting paid under the table. So there were no scores on this day.