Remembering Winnie-the-Pooh
SWAPNA DUTTA
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Everyone loves Winnie and his friends who live in the Hundred Acre Wood. January 18 is celebrated as Winnie the Pooh Day.
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January 18 is celebrated as “Winnie-the-Pooh Day”. It is the birthday of A.A. Milne, the creator of Pooh and his friends.
Born in Kilburn, London on January 18, 1882, Milne is best remembered for his Pooh books, about a boy named Christopher Robin (which is also the name of his son), and characters inspired by his son’s stuffed animals. Of these the most important
is Winnie-the-Pooh. The others include Piglet, Tigger, Eeyore and others. The actual setting of the Pooh stories is Ashdown forest.
Christopher Robin’s bear was originally called Edward. But he was renamed Winnie-the-Pooh after a Canadian bear named Winnie that came from Winnipeg.
From Winnipeg
Winnie was brought to England in 1914 by an army officer named Harry Colebourn and was used as a military mascot in the First World War. It was left in the London Zoo during the war. The bear was Christopher Robin’s favourite at the zoo, and he often spent time inside the cage playing with Winnie. In fact, that is why Christopher Robin chose to call his teddy bear Winnie — usually a girl’s name but Christopher Robin insisted that his bear was a boy.
Colebourn survived the war and presented the London Zoo with Winnie in December 1919. Winnie became a popular attraction and lived until 1934. The name Pooh comes from a swan with the same name. The original Pooh books were illustrated by E.H. Shepherd.
It might interest you to know that Christopher Robin’s toys are now in a museum in New York.
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