teddybears.. how it come From??

i love bears.. teddybears.. and today i suddenly think of wanting to know how teddy bears start and its history. I got them from wikepedia and i find them interesting to share wif .. :)

The teddy bear is a stuffed toy bear. It is an enduring, traditional form of stuffed animal, often serving the purpose of comforting children. In recent times, some teddy bears have become expensive collector's items. Teddy bear collectors are known as arctophiles from the Greek words 'arcto' (bear) and 'philos' (lover).

History
The name Teddy Bear comes from one of American President Theodore Roosevelt's hunting trips to Mississippi. There were several other hunters competing, and most of them had already shot something. A suite of Roosevelt's attendants, lead by Holt Collier,cornered, clubbed, and tied to a willow tree an American Black Bear after a long exhausting chase with hounds. They called Roosevelt to the site and suggested he shoot it. He refused to shoot the bear himself, deeming this un-sportsmanlike, but instructed that the bear be killed to put it out of its misery, and it became the topic of a political cartoon by Clifford Berryman in The Washington Post on November 16, 1902. While the initial cartoon of an adult black bear lassoed by a white handler and a disgusted Roosevelt had symbolic overtones, later issues of that and other Berryman cartoons made the bear smaller and cuter. A Brooklyn store owner, Morris Michtom, saw the drawing of Roosevelt and the bear cub and was inspired to create a new toy. He created a little stuffed bear cub and put it in his shop window with a sign that read "Teddy's bear." The toys were an immediate success and Michtom founded the Ideal Novelty and Toy Co., which still exists today.

At the same time, in Germany the Steiff firm, unaware of Michtom's bear, produced a stuffed bear from Richard Steiff's designs. They exhibited the toy at the Leipzig Toy Fair in March 1903 and exported 3000 to the United States.

By 1906 manufacturers other than Michtom and Steiff had joined in and the craze for Teddy Bears was such that ladies carried them everywhere, children were photographed with them, and Roosevelt used one as a mascot in his bid for re-election.

American educator Seymour Eaton wrote the children's book series The Roosevelt Bears, while composer John Bratton wrote "The Teddy Bear Two Step" music which with Jimmy Kennedy's lyrics became the song "The Teddy Bears' Picnic".[7]


Legend
While the Mississippi history is fact, another legend of how the teddy bear got its name comes from the American state of Colorado.

In 1905, the Hotel Colorado in Glenwood Springs, Colorado, became the temporary home for the President of the United States and his assistants during a three-week bear hunting expedition. Already a fan of the state of Colorado, Roosevelt stayed at the Hotel Colorado on multiple occasions. On a three-week trip in January 1901, then Vice-President Roosevelt hunted mountain lion on the Keystone Ranch near Meeker. Roosevelt’s first trip to Glenwood Springs delighted him so much that he returned year after year.

According to legend, to cheer Theodore Roosevelt after an unsuccessful day of hunting, Hotel Colorado maids presented him with a stuffed bear pieced together with scraps of fine material. Later, when he did bag a bear, his teenage daughter Alice admired it saying, "I will call it Teddy."