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It’s been a really tough week of news. Today, we’re going to take a break to mark a birthday.

That is Smokey Bear’s 75th birthday, to be precise, and it’s on Friday.

Yes, I’m talking about the one from the ads, in which Smokey, a bear who wears a ranger hat, solemnly intones: “Only you can prevent forest fires.”

And no, I didn’t forget a “the” in his name.

If you, like me, had a vague sense that Smokey Bear had always existed as a figure untethered from time, then you might be surprised to learn that he was first conceived in 1944 by the War Advertising Council, what is now the Ad Council.

“The genius of F.D.R. at the time was that he realized when Pearl Harbor was bombed that he needed the will of the country behind him,” Lisa Sherman, the Ad Council’s chief executive today, told me.