February 23 in History
1905 - The first Rotary Club is founded by Chicago attorney Paul P. Harris
One of the largest non-political and non-religious service organizations in the world, the first Rotary Club was formed when attorney Paul P. Harris called together a meeting of three business acquaintances in downtown Chicago, United States, at Harris’s friend Gustave Loehr‘s office on this day in 1905. In addition to Harris and Loehr (a mining engineer and freemason), Silvester Schiele (a coal merchant), and Hiram E. Shorey (a tailor) were the other two who attended the first meeting. The members chose the name Rotary because initially they rotated subsequent weekly club meetings to each other’s offices, although within a year, the Chicago club became so large it became necessary to adopt the now-common practice of a regular meeting place.
The National Association of Rotary Clubs in America was formed in 1910. On November 3, 1910, a Rotary club began meeting in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, the beginning of the organization’s internationality. The name was changed to Rotary International in 1922.
With a stated mission to ‘provide service to others, promote integrity, and advance world understanding, goodwill, and peace through [the] fellowship of business, professional, and community leaders’, Rotary today over 46,000[] member clubs worldwide, with a membership of 1.4 million individuals, known as Rotarians.
-Wikipedia
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