Fun Facts about Mothers Day
Every year when Mother's Day rolls around, mothers around the world are shown appreciation and thanked. Even though there are millions upon millions of mothers in the world, chances are they are not familiar with several following facts about Mother's Day and mothers.
1. Even though Mother's Day is observed worldwide, the actual day of observation is not the same in various countries. Although some countries celebrate Mother's Day in the spring like the United States does, some countries observe the holiday in the fall or winter.
2. In most languages, the word mother begins with the letter M. A few examples are madre (Spanish and Italian), mere (French), mae (Portuguese), matb (Russian), mor (Swedish and Danish), and mutter (German).
3. There are more than85.4 millionmothers in the United States.
4. According to a census by the government in 2011, there are10.0 millionunmarried mothers. This includes widowed, divorced and never married.
5. Finland is ranked as the best place in the world to be a mother according toSave the Children's 14th Mothers' Index. The United States ranked 30th.
6. In 1939 the youngest mother on record to date wasLina Medinaof Lima, Peru who was 5 years and 7 months old and had a 6-1/2 pound boy who was raised as her brother. Hard as it is to believe, it happened and there is even a picture of her pregnant. Her parents thought she had an abdominal tumor.
7. The oldest mother was a retired schoolteacher in India who became pregnant by artificial insemination with eggs donated by her niece. Her name wasSatyabhama Mahapatraand she was 65 years old.
8. The mother with the most children by birth wasFeodor Vassilyev. She had 69 children resulting from 27 pregnancies. They were all twins, triplets and quadruplets. There were 16 pairs of twins, 7 sets of triplets and 4 sets of quadruplets. Sixty-seven of the children survived infancy.
9. The woman credited for the idea of having a Mother's Day wasAnne Marie Jarvis. She tried unsuccessfully for years to establish Mother's Day as a day for children to reflect, pray and write notes of thanks to their mothers. She finally succeeded in 1914, but then became very unhappy with the commercialization of it. Greeting card companies began selling Mother's Day cards and florists began marketing carnations for the holiday. Ms. Jarvis was even arrested for protesting a Mother's Day carnation sale and ended up spending the rest of her life trying to do away with Mother's Day.
10. Red and pink carnations are given for living mothers and white carnations are used to honor mothers who have passed away.
