This is an I-Heart podcast.

This is Lee Habib, and this is Our American Stories, the show where America is the star

and the American people, coming to you is the star and the American people,

coming to you from the city where the west begins, Fort Worth, Texas.

Winnie the Pooh is as American as Apple Pie.

Unfortunately, most people only know Disney's Pooh, not the original.

Let's take a listen to this story and find out.

Alan Alexander Milne, or A.A. Milne, began writing humorous pieces as a schoolboy and continued

to do so while attending Cambridge.

In 1903, he left Cambridge and went to London to write.

Although he was broke, by the end of his first year, he persevered and supported himself until 1906,

writing detective stories and plays.

In 1913, he married his wife Daphne, and two years later, though a pacifist, went to France to serve in World War I.

In 1920, the couple's only son, Christopher Robin, was born, and they purchased the farm in Sussex.

A nearby forest inspired the 100-acre wood,

where Winnie the Pooh's adventures would be set.

When Christopher Robin was about a year old,

he received a stuffed bear as a present.

The child soon accumulated a collection of similar animals,

which inspired Milne to begin writing a series

of whimsical stories about the toys. Christopher Robbins' actual stuffed toys are now under

glass in the New York Public Library, where 750,000 people visit them every year. Milne published

...