Today Is August 21

On this day in 1921, AA Milne bought his son a teddy bear, which gave rise to his Winnie-the-Pooh stories.

Christopher Robin and Winnie-The-Pooh

Theodore Roosevelt started the fashion for Teddy bears when during a hunting trip in Mississippi in 1902, he refused to shoot a defenseless black bear that had been tied to a willow tree. Political cartoonist Clifford Berryman picked up on the story, drawing a cartoon showing President Roosevelt with a bear, which ran in the Washington Post two days later.

An alert Brooklyn shop owner Morris Michtom saw the cartoon and created a tiny plush toy bear cub with his wife Rose's help.  After receiving permission to use Roosevelt's name, Michtom put a plush bear in the shop window with a sign "Teddy's bear". The sale of the bears was so brisk that Michtom created the Ideal Novelty and Toy Company, which began making dolls in 1907 to complement its line of teddy bears. 

One of the most famous teddy bears was an 18-inch-high one the writer A. A. Milne and his wife brought from Harrods in London. It was a present for their son, Christopher Robin Milne, in honor of his first birthday on August 21, 1921.

Milne called the toy bear "Winnie" after a Canadian black bear he often saw at London Zoo. The animal had been born in Canada but brought to London in 1914 as the mascot of a Canadian regiment. A Canadian soldier, Harry Colebourn, named him Winnie after his hometown Winnipeg.

The other part of the name, "Pooh," was based on a swan Milne and his family met on holiday.

The children's book Winnie-the-Pooh, by A. A. Milne, was first in October 1926. Other stuffed animal toys owned by Milne's son were also incorporated into the story, including Tigger, Kanga, Eeyore, and Piglet.