Sunday is Father's Day in the United States, an occasion to mark and celebrate the contributions of fathers.
The non-federal holiday is observed each year on the third Sunday in June, which this year, falls on the first day of summer (in the Northern Hemisphere).
Families usually celebrate the day with taking Dad out to dinner and plying him with gifts, including (-as the joke goes-) far too many ties. Economists say Americans spend more than $1 billion each year on Father's Day gifts.
The humble origins of Father's Day began on July 5, 1908 when a (state of) West Virginia church held a Sunday service in memory of 362 men who had died the previous year in explosions in coal mines.
The next year, a Spokane, Washington woman who was raised by her widowed father set out to establish a male equivalent of Mother's Day. She was successful and in 1910 Washington state celebrated the nation's first statewide Father's Day.
By the end of the war, Father's Day was a national institution.