To put it simply, Sweetest Day every October 19, is a day to be sweet by sharing a kind thought, a small gift or a gesture of kindness. It’s a day to give a card with a sweet message to someone you appreciate. Little gifts of candy and other sweets are shared, as well.
- 1913 – Hallmark starts offering Valentine’s Cards, leading to an average expenditure of $140 by most Americans.
- 1916 – National Sweetest Day found its beginnings in a holiday founded by the National Confectioners’ Association in 1916 called Candy Day.
- 1921 – A committee of 12 confectioners in Cleveland stage the world’s first Sweetest Day by distributing 20,000 boxes of candy
- On the first celebration of this sweetest day 20,000 boxes of candy were distributed throughout the city, everyone from newsboys, old folks, the poor, and orphans were gifted with delicious treats to help make it the “National Sweetest Day” of the year for them.
- 1922 – Efforts to spread the Sweetest Day phenomenon beyond the Midwest met a lukewarm reception
- 1927 – the New York Times decreed that there would be a Sweetest Week. A decade later, the same newspaper announced that representatives from the industry were trying to get National Sweetest Day to rank alongside other significant events in the calendar, such as Valentine’s Day and Mother’s Day.
- 1930s – Movie stars, such as Ann Pennington and Theda Bara, celebrate the day by giving out sweets and boxes of candy to hospital patients, newspaper boys, theatergoers and more.
- 1937 – Efforts by the candy industry to kickstart “sweetest week” also fall flat by the candy industry, but it’s sort of sweet that they tried
- 1960s – Before this, the celebration was a grassroots movement in the Midwestern United States, but as Hallmark begins making cards, the day expands
- 1987 – U2’s song “Sweetest Thing” is distributed. Originally released on the B side of “Where the Streets Have No Name”, the song “Sweetest Thing” is a number-one hit in Ireland and Canada
- 2002 – The Sweetest Thing film is released. Starring Cameron Diaz, Christina Applegate and Thomas Jane, this rom-com ranks highly Ebert & Roper’s Big Stars in Big Bombs, but Cameron Diaz’s career doesn’t seem to suffer for it.
- 2019 – the Candy Club reported a three-way tie for the sweetest candies in the world based on the amount of sugar by weight. The winners? Nerds, Pixie Sticks and Fun-Dip.
- 80% – The percentage of Sweetest Day cards that are romantically inclined.
- 11 – The number of states that celebrate the holiday, which is mainly observed in the Midwest.
- 1 – Ohio is the number one celebrator of Sweetest Day
- The sweetest compound in the world is a protein known as Thaumatin, which was first found in the katemfe fruits in West Africa and can be 2000 times sweeter than sucrose
- According to Guinness World Records, thaumatin is 3,250 times sweeter than sugar.
- Traditionally Sweetest Day is for women to show the men in their lives how much they appreciate them.
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