99 Fun Facts About Grandparents Day

In the United States, National Grandparents Day is observed on which day?

First Sunday after Labor Day. Founder Marian McQuade pictured homemade cards and family reunions, and was adamant that the day should never be commercialised.

Which US president signed the first National Grandparents Day proclamation in 1978?

Jimmy Carter signed it in August 1978, capping a campaign Marian McQuade began in 1970; the mother of 15 had once run for Congress herself.

Marian McQuade, founder of National Grandparents Day, was a housewife from which state?

West Virginia. In 1973 it became the first state to proclaim a Grandparents Day, at McQuade's urging, five years before the national one.

Often sung at Christmas, 'Over the River and Through the Wood' describes a trip to grandfather's house for which holiday?

Thanksgiving. Lydia Maria Child's poem sends the sleigh 'to grandfather's house'; later singers swapped in grandmother, and some versions swap in Christmas too.

Marian McQuade campaigned for a national Grandparents Day mainly to ease what?

Elderly loneliness, above all in nursing homes. McQuade said the day was not for grandparents like her to get presents; her lobbying had already won a National Shut-in Day for the housebound, proclaimed in 1972.

The 'grandfather paradox' is a famous puzzle in stories about what?

Time travel. If you went back and killed your grandfather before he had children, you would never be born to make the trip, which is why some argue the past cannot be changed.

What is the official flower of US National Grandparents Day?

Because that flower blooms in spring, people usually give seasonal flowers instead on the September holiday. It is also Alaska's state flower.

Which soul singer wrote 'Grandma's Hands', a 1971 tribute to his own grandmother?

Bill Withers called it his favourite of everything he wrote, and it found a second life in 1996 as the sample behind Blackstreet's hit 'No Diggity'.

Which country celebrates Dzień Babci, or Grandma's Day, on January 21, with Grandpa's Day the day after?

Poland. The custom spread in the mid-1960s after a Poznań newspaper gave actress Mieczysława Ćwiklińska, then playing a grandmother on stage, a cake and flowers and declared a day for grandmothers.

Which country's Grandmothers' Day was invented in 1987 by the coffee brand Café Grand'Mère?

France. The marketing idea outgrew its maker: the day reached French calendars, and by 1999 the brand was keeping its own name out of the promotion.

Italy's Festa Nazionale dei Nonni on October 2 coincides with which Catholic feast?

Guardian Angels' Day. Italy's 2005 law also set up a national prize, awarded by the country's president each year to ten grandparents for outstanding deeds.

Spain and Brazil mark Grandparents' Day on July 26, the feast of which saints, the grandparents of Jesus?

Saints Joachim and Anne. Neither is named in the Bible: their story comes from the second-century Gospel of James, which has them long childless before Mary's birth.

Who declared a World Day for Grandparents and the Elderly in 2021, held each fourth Sunday of July?

Pope Francis. Catholics can earn a plenary indulgence on the day by attending a Mass for the elderly or by visiting someone who is alone.

The phrase 'grandfather clause' comes from Southern US laws of around 1900 that restricted what?

Voting. The clauses exempted men whose forebears could vote before 1867 from new literacy tests and poll taxes, protecting poor white voters while shutting out Black ones.

Which British monarch became known as 'the grandmother of Europe'?

Queen Victoria. Her nine children married into royal houses across the continent, so the First World War pitted her grandsons George V and Kaiser Wilhelm II against each other.

Which US president called the grandmother who helped raise him 'Toot'?

Barack Obama. 'Toot' was short for tutu, a Hawaiian word for grandmother, and Madelyn Dunham died two days before the 2008 election that made him president.

Which actress played Violet, the Dowager Countess and grandmother of the Crawley sisters, in Downton Abbey?

Maggie Smith said she never watched the series herself: seeing her own performances was frustrating, she explained, because she always spotted things she would do differently.

Which US president was the grandson of an earlier president?

Benjamin Harrison. His grandfather William Henry Harrison died about a month into his term in 1841, the shortest presidency of all; Benjamin served a full four years.

Which animated film centres on the magical Madrigal family and its matriarch, Abuela Alma?

Encanto. The family's magic began the night Abuela Alma fled an armed attack that killed her husband, and she spends the film terrified of losing her home a second time.

Which 1960s sitcom featured Granny, the feisty mother-in-law of Jed Clampett?

The Beverly Hillbillies. The actress behind Granny was less than six years older than Buddy Ebsen, who played her son-in-law Jed.

Alan Arkin won an Oscar as the foul-mouthed grandfather in which 2006 road-trip comedy?

Little Miss Sunshine. His character dies partway through the trip, and the family smuggles the body out of a hospital window so they can still reach the pageant.

A 'granny knot' is the unreliable, mis-tied version of which everyday knot?

Square knot. Tie both halves in the same direction instead of mirroring them and you get a granny, a weaker knot that can slip or jam without warning.

Most people have how many great-grandparents?

Eight. The slots keep doubling, so about 30 generations back there are a billion of them, more than the world's whole population then, and the same ancestors must fill many slots.

Which relative shares about a quarter of your DNA, the same as a grandparent?

Half-sibling. You share one parent instead of two, so the overlap is half a full sibling's 50%, the same quarter that passes down two generations from a grandparent.

Fossil teeth suggest far more humans began living to grandparent age about how long ago?

30,000 years ago. Adults of grandparent age became about five times more common then, and one theory is that elders' knowledge, such as where to find water in a drought, helped groups survive.

What do you call two people whose grandparents were siblings?

Second cousins share a pair of great-grandparents. Anthropologist Robin Fox reckons that about 80 percent of all marriages in history were between second cousins or closer.

The 'grand-' in grandparent entered English around 1200 from which language?

Anglo-French. Its graund dame, a grandmother, reached English first, and the later 'grandmother' pushed out the Old English ealdemodor, literally 'old mother'.

In the Philippines, what are a grandfather and grandmother called?

Lolo and Lola. Filipino children traditionally greet them with mano, bowing to press the back of the elder's hand to their own forehead and ask for a blessing.

In which language is a grandmother called mormor or farmor, depending on the side of the family?

Swedish. Mormor is literally 'mother's mother' and farmor 'father's mother', so a Swede always says which grandmother is meant.

In Hindi and Urdu, which pair of words means your mother's parents?

Nana and Nani. Hindi and Urdu name relatives by side of the family: a mother's brother is Mama, while a father's younger brother is Chacha.

Which French writer published L'Art d'être grand-père (The Art of Being a Grandfather)?

Victor Hugo wrote the poems for Georges and Jeanne, the grandchildren he helped bring up after his son, their father, died in 1871.

The "grandmother hypothesis" is an evolutionary explanation for what?

Menopause. Kristen Hawkes built the idea on the Hadza of Tanzania, where a weaned child's growth tracked how many tubers its grandmother dug up, not its mother.

Which singer's 'Nancy Mulligan' tells how his grandparents married across Ireland's Protestant-Catholic divide?

Ed Sheeran. He says nobody came to their wedding, and that his grandfather, a dentist, melted down gold teeth from his surgery to make the ring.

Grandma Moses took up painting in her seventies when arthritis ended which pastime?

Embroidery. She had stitched farm scenes in yarn, and when her hands could no longer manage a needle she was urged to paint them instead; she lived to 101.

From 1947, which company's greeting cards carried Grandma Moses's paintings into homes across America?

Hallmark. Her break came when a collector saw her paintings in a drugstore window; before that she had sold them at country fairs beside her prize-winning preserves.

Maria Ann Smith grew the first Granny Smith apple from a chance seedling in which country?

Australia. She showed neighbours the seedling on her farm near Sydney in 1868 and died two years later, some twenty years before the apple that carries her name began winning prizes.

The grandfather clock is named after an 1876 song in which the clock stops when what happens?

Its owner dies. Henry Clay Work's 'My Grandfather's Clock' was a huge hit, and furniture dealers borrowed its title for what had been known as tall-case clocks.

In The Princess Bride (1987), who plays the grandfather reading to his sick grandson?

Peter Falk. When the boy asks to hear the story again, his grandfather answers with the hero's own line, 'As you wish', which the film has taught us means 'I love you'.

What happens to bedridden Grandpa Joe when Charlie finds his Golden Ticket?

He suddenly regains his mobility, leaping from the bed he shares with the three other grandparents; that instant recovery later made Grandpa Joe an online joke as fiction's great freeloader.

Which actor voices Grampa Simpson, as well as Grampa's son Homer?

Grampa is a World War II veteran and retired farmer who was packed off to the Springfield Retirement Castle by Homer.

Which children's classic follows an orphan sent to live with her gruff grandfather?

Heidi. In the Swiss Alps, the villagers call her grandfather the Alm-Uncle and gossip that he never sets foot in church, but Heidi gradually coaxes the old recluse back to the village.

Before the Brothers Grimm added a rescue, who published the first printed Little Red Riding Hood?

Charles Perrault. In his 1697 tale the wolf simply eats the girl and a moral follows; the Grimms' huntsman, who snips the sleeping wolf open with scissors, arrived over a century later.

Pixar's Coco takes place during which Mexican holiday?

Day of the Dead. The title belongs not to the boy but to his great-grandmother, Mamá Coco, and the film ends with Miguel singing to revive her fading memory of her father.

Looney Tunes' Granny is best known as the owner of which character?

Tweety. He was pink and featherless in his first three cartoons, until censors objected that the bird looked naked and the studio gave him yellow feathers.

On The Waltons, grandparents Zeb and Esther were played by Will Geer and which actress?

Ellen Corby. After a stroke in 1976 she returned to the series with Grandma Walton written as recovering from one too, her lines pared to a word or two.

Which actor played Grandpa, the vampire father-in-law of Herman, on The Munsters?

Al Lewis. In 1998 he ran for governor of New York as the Green Party candidate and drew more than 50,000 votes.

"Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer" was first recorded in 1979 by which duo?

Elmo and Patsy. Elmo says Patsy never sang on the record; the pair picked the tune up from its writer after sharing a stage with him at a Lake Tahoe hotel.

In Roald Dahl's The Witches, the boy narrator's grandmother comes from which country?

Norway. Dahl, whose own parents were Norwegian, made the grandmother a retired witch-hunter who trains her grandson to spot a witch.

Grandfather Mountain, home of the Mile-High Swinging Bridge in the Blue Ridge, is in which state?

North Carolina. Early settlers named it for the profile of an old man they saw in the mountain; the Cherokee had called it Tanawha, after a great hawk or eagle.

Granny, a matriarch once believed to be over 100 years old, led a family of which animals off Washington?

Orcas are among the few animals whose females live for decades after their last calf, and Granny led J pod into old age. Later studies cut her estimated age to between 65 and 80.

In East Slavic New Year tradition, gift-bringer Ded Moroz is helped by Snegurochka, the Snow Maiden, who is his what?

His granddaughter Snegurochka goes with him on his rounds. The pair leave presents under the New Year tree on New Year's Eve instead of at Christmas.

In Disney's Moana films, Gramma Tala returns after her death as the spirit of which sea creature?

A manta ray is the form Tala's spirit takes when she reappears to inspire Moana at her lowest point. Rachel House voiced the grandmother again in Moana 2.

Actress Riley Keough, star of Daisy Jones & the Six, is the eldest grandchild of which music legend?

Elvis Presley is her grandfather through her mother, Lisa Marie. When Lisa Marie died in 2023, his Graceland estate passed to Keough alone.

In Prokofiev's Peter and the Wolf, which orchestral instrument plays the part of Peter's grumbling grandfather?

The bassoon voices the grandfather, while a flute is the bird, an oboe the duck and three horns the wolf. Prokofiev wrote the piece in 1936 to introduce children to the orchestra's instruments.

Which actress played Sophia on The Golden Girls despite being younger than Bea Arthur, her on-screen daughter?

Estelle Getty relied on wigs and heavy makeup to pass for a woman in her 80s, though she was really a year younger than Arthur. The role won her an Emmy in 1988.

In Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, which villain does Kylo Ren reveal to be Rey's grandfather?

Emperor Palpatine is her father's father. Rey refuses the inheritance and ends the film giving her name as Rey Skywalker.

Louis XIV outlived two generations of heirs, so which relative finally succeeded him as Louis XV in 1715?

His great-grandson took the throne aged five, after smallpox killed the old king's son and measles his grandson within a year of each other. Louis XIV had reigned for 72 years.

The children's game Americans call Red Light, Green Light is traditionally known in Britain as Grandmother's what?

Footsteps is the word: players creep up on 'Grandmother' and must freeze whenever she turns round. The same game is the deadly first round of Netflix's Squid Game.

Kublai, who founded China's Yuan dynasty and employed Marco Polo, had which conqueror as his grandfather?

Genghis Khan held a ceremony for the young Kublai after the boy's first hunt in 1224. Kublai went on to finish the conquest of China that his grandfather had begun.

Bubbe and zayde, affectionate words for a grandmother and grandfather, came into English from which language?

Yiddish gave English both words, and 'bubbe' also lives on in the phrase 'bubbe maiseh', the equivalent of an old wives' tale.

Which language gave English 'babushka', a word for a grandmother that also names a headscarf tied under the chin?

Russian uses the word for a grandma or any old woman. English speakers borrowed it for the scarf such women wore, knotted below the chin.

Nain and Taid are the usual words for a grandmother and grandfather in the north of which country?

Wales is split on the matter: northerners say Nain and Taid, while in the south the same grandparents are Mam-gu and Tad-cu.

Mitochondrial DNA is inherited only through mothers, so yours matches which of your four grandparents?

Your maternal grandmother passed it to your mother, who passed it to you. A father's mitochondria rarely get through: those in the sperm are usually destroyed by the egg after fertilisation.

The 'grandmother cell', a term coined at MIT around 1969, is a hypothetical example of which kind of body cell?

A neuron of this kind would fire for just one concept, such as your grandmother's face. A 2005 study found brain cells that responded to single celebrities, hence the nickname 'Jennifer Aniston neuron'.

A 'granny square', worked in rounds from the centre outward and joined into blankets, belongs to which craft?

Crochet is the only way to make one: granny squares cannot be produced by machine, so every one you see was worked by hand.

An old saying about giving needless advice to an expert warns against teaching your grandmother to suck what?

Eggs complete the saying. One theory is that toothless grandparents had long sucked raw eggs through a pinhole in the shell, so they hardly needed lessons.

Clockmakers know the tall pendulum timepiece popularly called a grandfather clock as which type of clock?

Longcase is the trade name, after the tall case that holds the pendulum. Slightly shorter versions are known as grandmother clocks.

Which two-time Oscar winner played the title grandfathers in both Dirty Grandpa and The War with Grandpa?

Robert De Niro plays a widower who drags Zac Efron's uptight lawyer to spring break in the first, and a grandfather fighting a prank war over a bedroom in the second.

Which comedian wore prosthetic makeup to play 86-year-old Irving Zisman in the hidden-camera film Bad Grandpa?

Johnny Knoxville sat through three and a half hours of makeup every morning to fool the public. The disguise earned the Jackass series its first Oscar nomination.

Which actress played Queen Clarisse, the royal grandmother who gives Mia 'princess lessons' in The Princess Diaries?

Julie Andrews was semi-retired when she took the part, her first Disney film since Mary Poppins 37 years earlier. It was even shot on the same sound stage.

On Young Sheldon, the boy genius's grandmother Connie Tucker, played by Annie Potts, goes by which nickname?

Meemaw is what Sheldon calls her, while her own pet name for him is 'Moonpie'. She is one of his strongest advocates in the family.

Which Nickelodeon cartoon hero lives with his grandparents Phil and Gertrude in the Sunset Arms boarding house?

Arnold, the fourth-grade hero of Hey Arnold!, is raised by his eccentric grandparents, and the boarding house's tenants drive many of the show's plots.

In Jurassic Park, the children Lex and Tim are the grandchildren of which character?

John Hammond, the park's founder, sends his grandchildren on the first tour. Richard Attenborough took the part as his first acting role in 14 years.

Which filmmaker dresses up to play Madea, the tough old woman Entertainment Weekly called a 'gun-toting granny'?

Tyler Perry based Madea on his own mother and aunt, calling her a PG version of the two women and a way of paying homage to them.

Youn Yuh-jung won an Oscar as a grandmother who joins her family on an Arkansas farm in which 2020 film?

Minari made Youn the first Korean actor to win an Oscar. Her character, Soon-ja, shares a room with the family's little boy, who complains she isn't like a real grandmother.

Which Harry Potter character is raised by his grandmother Augusta after Death Eaters torture his parents into insanity?

Neville Longbottom's family feared for years that he had no magic at all. He ends the series pulling the Sword of Gryffindor from the Sorting Hat and killing the snake Nagini.

Which Oscar-winning actor played Charlie Bucket's Grandpa Joe in the 1971 film Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory?

Jack Albertson had already won his Oscar for the 1968 film The Subject Was Roses, and later took an Emmy for the sitcom Chico and the Man.

Which former star of The Avengers played Olenna Tyrell, the witty grandmother of Margaery, in Game of Thrones?

Diana Rigg, once Emma Peel, played the 'Queen of Thorns', a title that plays on the rose of the Tyrell family crest. She won an Emmy in 1997 as Mrs Danvers in Rebecca.

In which Dickens novel does the orphan Nell Trent leave London to live as a beggar with her gambling grandfather?

The Old Curiosity Shop never gives the grandfather a name. He gambles at cards hoping to leave Nell an inheritance, and loses the shop to the moneylender Quilp instead.

In Frank Herbert's Dune, which enemy of House Atreides turns out to be the secret grandfather of Paul?

Baron Harkonnen is the secret father of Paul's mother, Jessica. Neither of them knows it, and Paul works out the truth through his own prescient visions.

Which fantasy author created Granny Weatherwax, the formidable witch of the Lancre coven on the Discworld?

Terry Pratchett cast her as the Crone in a coven modelled on the Maiden, the Mother and the Crone, a role the other witches tactfully call 'the other one'.

Banjo-picking Grandpa Jones became a familiar face as a charter cast member of which country comedy show?

Hee Haw gave Grandpa Jones a running sketch in which the cast called out to ask what was for supper and he reeled off a country menu, often in rhyme.

Which mother-and-daughter country duo won a Grammy for a hit asking Grandpa about the good old days?

The Judds, Naomi and her daughter Wynonna, won the Grammy for best country duo or group, and Jamie O'Hara took a second one for writing the song.

In the Book of Genesis, which patriarch, said to have lived 969 years, was the grandfather of Noah?

Methuselah has the longest lifespan claimed in the Bible, which turned his name into a byword for great age. His son Lamech was Noah's father.

In the Bible, Obed, the son of Ruth and Boaz, grew up to become the grandfather of which king?

David was the son of Jesse, Obed's son, which makes Ruth the great-grandmother of Israel's most celebrated king.

Which New Testament grandmother does Paul praise for passing her sincere faith down to Timothy?

Lois is named just once, in 2 Timothy, beside her daughter Eunice, who was Timothy's mother. She has long been held up as a model for Christian grandmothers.

Which term for the return of a long-lost ancestral trait comes from the Latin for a great-great-great-grandfather?

Atavism comes from atavus, a distant forefather. Examples include human babies born with a small tail, and bird embryos coaxed into growing teeth.

In Greek mythology, which primordial goddess, mother of the Titans, was the grandmother of Zeus on both sides?

Gaia bore the Titans Cronus and Rhea, who were brother and sister as well as the parents of Zeus. In Hesiod's telling she also took the infant Zeus into her care so that his father could not swallow him.

The author of Brave New World had which 19th-century biologist, nicknamed 'Darwin's Bulldog', as his grandfather?

Thomas Henry Huxley won the nickname for his pluck in defending evolution in debate. His son Leonard was the father of both the novelist Aldous and the biologist Julian.

As a little girl, the future Elizabeth II called which king, her grandfather, 'Grandpa England'?

George V doted on the little princess in return, and joined the family in calling her 'Lilibet', her own early attempt at saying Elizabeth.

Which Frankish leader, victor over an Umayyad army at Tours in 732, was the grandfather of Charlemagne?

Charles Martel also supplied the name, since Charlemagne was named after him. The generation in between was Pepin the Short, Charlemagne's father.

The Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo search for children stolen under which country's 1976–83 dictatorship?

Argentina's grandmothers had found 133 of the missing grandchildren by 2023, matching them against blood samples that relatives stored in a national genetic data bank.

Opal Lee, nicknamed its 'grandmother', campaigned for decades to make which day a US federal holiday in 2021?

Juneteenth became the eleventh federal holiday after Lee, at 89, set out to walk from Fort Worth to Washington to press her case.

In 1955, 67-year-old Emma 'Grandma' Gatewood became the first woman to hike which trail alone from end to end?

Appalachian is the trail, and she walked its whole length in canvas sneakers with a shower curtain for shelter. She later became the first person to hike it three times.

Which basketball Hall of Famer made the underhand 'granny-style' free throw famous, retiring with a 90% NBA average?

Rick Barry's 90% was the best in NBA history when he retired in 1980. Shaquille O'Neal, a famously poor free-throw shooter, said he would rather miss every time than copy him.

In Mandarin, a mother's parents are wàipó and wàigōng; what does the prefix 'wài' marking her side literally mean?

Outer is the meaning: a mother's relatives belonged to another clan with a different surname, so her whole side of the family tree carries the prefix.

Which British charity introduced Grandparents' Day to the United Kingdom in 1990?

Age Concern launched the day, though the British public never widely took it up. In 2009 the charity merged with Help the Aged to form Age UK.

Charles Darwin's grandfather Josiah, a pioneering industrial potter, founded which famous English pottery firm?

Wedgwood dates from 1759, and the family ran through Darwin's life twice: he went on to marry Emma, another of Josiah's grandchildren.

Which Hitchcock leading lady is the grandmother of Fifty Shades actress Dakota Johnson?

Tippi Hedren was spotted by Hitchcock in a diet-drink commercial and given her first credited film role in The Birds. Her daughter, Melanie Griffith, is Johnson's mother.