Writer of Pop Culture

Estimated reading time: 8 minutes

In 1954, Warner Bros. gave a gift we didn’t know we wanted in the form of an animated Tasmanian Devil. This cartoon character became Bugs Bunny’s latest foil and somehow, worked his way into our hearts. Today is also the day that Garfield first appeared on the funny pages in local newspapers. And June 19 is also known as the release date of Disney/Pixar’s animated Inside Out.

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1910 – The First Father’s Day is Celebrated

^(Pixabay)

After the success of the Mother’s Day holiday created in the early 20th century (attributed to Anna Jarvis), clamoring began to be heard from those who wanted a similar holiday for fathers. The credit for this usually goes to Sonora Dodd of Spokane, Washington. It was first celebrated on this day in 1910 at the Spokane YMCA.

Dodd’s father was a single parent raising six children. After hearing a sermon about Jarvis’ Mother’s Day a year earlier, Dodd suggested her idea to her pastor of the Central Methodist Episcopal Church. Several other clergymen agreed, and it was decided that the third Sunday of each June would be the designated day.

Incidentally, International Men’s Day is celebrated in many countries on November 19 for men who are not fathers.

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1865 – The First Juneteenth

President Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863, establishing that all enslaved people in the Confederate states, be set free, but it took until this day in 1865 for that to become so.

Federal troops arrived in Galveston, Texas, the last state to end slavery. Texas didn’t have a significant presence of Union troops so many slave owners from other states moved to Texas with their slaves so they would be spared from losing their “property.” About 250,000 slaves were freed that “Jubilee Day”, a day of celebration.

Jubilee Day became Juneteenth (short for “June Nineteenth”). As black families moved away from Texas, they took their tradition with them.

In 1979, Texas became the first state to make Juneteenth an official holiday. In 2021, Juneteenth became a federal holiday for all states.

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1978 – The Lasagna-Eating Cat

It took a number of years for cartoonist Jim Davis to find his footing in the world of newspaper comics. In 1973, he worked as an assistant on T.K. Ryan’s comic, Tumbleweeds. He also worked on his own strip, Gnorm Gnat which appeared on the pages of the Pendleton Times, the local newspaper of Pendleton, Indiana. Davis tried to syndicate the comic, but he couldn’t get any takers and in 1975, Gnorm was squashed.

After the failure of his bug strip, Davis did research on what type of animals were popular in the funny pages. He noted that dogs were pretty popular, but cats almost didn’t exist. In 1976, Davis created a whole new strip for the paper called Jon which featured the first appearance of Garfield. He looked nothing like the orange-striped kitty that we know today. In 1978, the strip was re-titled as Garfield and soon, success would follow.

In 1980, an animated Garfield went on TV appearing in the CBS special, The Fantastic Funnies where he shared screentime with Peanuts, Dennis the Menace, B.C. and others. Since he was a newbie, Garfield was only briefly mentioned. But just two years later, he starred in his first TV special. In Here Comes Garfield, the cat got his iconic voice thanks to actor Gerald Music. (If you’re old enough to remember the sitcom Rhoda, you would recognize his voice as the unseen Carlton the doorman for her building.)

In 1988, the cat starred in Garfield and Friends, his first Saturday morning cartoon series. In 2004, a computerized version of the kitty appeared in Garfield: The Movie. Garfield’s heyday may be in the rear window, but he was a pretty popular kitty. Even Charles Schulz reluctantly admitted that he got a little jealous of Garfield’s popularity.

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