Friendship day 2017 is going to be celebrated on 6th of August as it is celebrated on the first Sunday of August each year in India. The day began to be celebrated in the west – in South American countries, particularly in Paraguay and an International observance for Friendship Day was proposed close to sixty years ago, in 1958.

The day was initially proposed by the greeting card industry as a way of business but it soon outgrew that and became a subject of interest on social media. Countries including India, Bangladesh, and Malaysia saw a spurt of interest on social media for celebrating the day.

The World Friendship Crusade proposed 30 July to be observed as Friendship Day in 1958. However, General Assembly of the United Nations announced it to be officially celebrated on 30 July in 2011. However, many countries of the world including India observe the day on the first Sunday of August.

Here are some interesting facts about Friendship Day and about friendship in general that you shouldn’t miss out.

– The day was originated and promoted by Joyce Hall, who is the founder of Hallmark cards. Many consumers opposed it as being merely a commercial gimmick to expand the business of greeting cards. This led to dying out of the tradition of celebrating the day in Europe. However, it is still celebrated in many parts of Asia.

– United States Congress announced the first Sunday of August to be celebrated as Friendship Day in the year 1935.

– The idea to have a day that commemorates the relationship of friendship was proposed by Dr. Artemio Bracho in Paraguay.

– World’s first Friendship Day was celebrated on July 30, 1958, in Paraguay.

– Winnie the Pooh was announced as the world’s ambassador of friendship by Nane Annan, wife of UN Secretary General Kofi Annan in the year 1998 to honor the celebration of Friendship Day.

– A song was released by the famous band Beatles, ‘With a little help from my friends’ in 1967. The song marked the tenth anniversary of Friendship Day and got very popular among people.

– The countries Brazil, Argentina, Ecuador, and Uruguay celebrate Friendship Day every year on July 20 as Dia del Amigo (Friendship Day in Spanish).

– All over the world where the festival is celebrated, people exchange cards, gifts, flowers and friendship bands to show love to their friends. Friendship bands are particularly very common in India, Bangladesh, Nepal and some parts of South America.

– Many people all over the world dismissed Friendship Day as being merely a marketing gimmick as it was getting commercialized.

– A less common day, Women’s Friendship Day is also celebrated by women across the world on third Sunday of September.

– First National Women’s Friendship Day was celebrated in 1999 in Kappa Delta Sorority in Memphis, Tennessee, United States. They celebrated the day to mark the importance of women friends in one’s life. The day got a lot of popularity and since 2009, the entire month of September is celebrated in the honor of women’s friendship bonds. The month of September is now known as International Women’s Friendship Month.

– Till a decade back, the day was celebrated in India by friends tying friendship bands to each other. The Bollywood movie ‘Kuch Kuch Hota Hai’ also popularized the idea of friendship bands and it became a frenzy among teenagers and youth. But lately, social media has taken over that trend. Now, the internet is instrumental in the promotion of Friendship’s Day not only in India but in the entire Southeast and South Asian market.

– If we talk about Americans, a study by National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago conducted in 2004 showed that the average number of trusted friends for a person dropped by a third in the last two decades and people who had no confidantes had doubled up.

– When it comes to having a large social circle with 10 or more close friends, people of Brazil and Philippines topped a social media survey which was recently conducted.

– The sitcom ‘Friends’, which is popular throughout the world and is a favorite among many Indians, has played a role in defining friendship goals for the millennials.

– The antipathy between friendship and love has now been confirmed by a research led by Robin Dunbar, head of the Institute of Cognitive and Evolutionary Anthropology at Oxford University. He showed that when men and women start a new relationship, they were likely to lose their closest friends.

– As the dynamics of friendship are changing throughout the globe, so is the way people make friends. Now, more and more friends are being made online and in fact, studies have shown that people are more honest to online friends than they are to those they meet in person. Women are more likely to make online friendships than men.