The first “Teddy bear” was put on sale on this day in history, Feb. 15, 1903.

Named after President Theodore Roosevelt, the stuffed bear was first sold by Morris Michtom, a Brooklyn, New York, resident who owned a candy shop, the website for the National Parks Service (NPS) says.

In November 1902, Holt Collier, a widely admired African American outdoorsman of the 19th century, guided President Roosevelt on a hunting trip in Mississippi. As the story goes according to the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Reserve, when Collier cornered and stunned a Louisiana black bear for the president’s benefit, Roosevelt refused to shoot the bear.

He thought it was “extremely unsportsmanlike” to shoot a bear that had been tied up.

After the incident was publicized nationally in an editorial cartoon, a New York store owner created a stuffed toy he called “Teddy’s bear.”

Michtom got Roosevelt’s permission to use his name and then mass produced the toy bears. They were so popular that he soon founded the Ideal Toy Company, according to the NPS.