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(contains factual errors)
1941 Madame Chiang Kai Shek sends a pair to America, the imaginatively-named Pan-Dee and Pan-Dah. Still reeling from the attack on Pearl Harbor a few weeks before, America decides to reciprocate this well-timed gift with billions of dollars in aid to her husband.
The original pair of Unity Pandas were donated by China to Roosevelt, and his wife was an avid knitter…
First Lady of Knitting
First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt was often photographed knitting for the war effort or at least carrying her voluminous knitting bag. She effectively launched the World War II knitting effort at a Knit for Defense tea held at the Waldorf-Astoria in New York City on September 31, 1941. Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt’s daughter Anna Roosevelt Boettiger, who wrote for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer and was married to its publisher John Boettiger, lived in Seattle from 1936 to 1943. The so-called First Knitter of the Land was a frequent visitor.
