Uncle SamUncle Sam Needs To Go On A Diet

Uncle Sam,There are two memorials to Uncle Sam, both of which commemorate the life of Samuel Wilson. The first is near Riverfront Park in Troy, NY, which was where he lived. The second is in Arlington, MA, which is where he was born.
Uncle Sam is the national personification of the United States and sometimes more specifically of the American government, with the first usage of the term dating from the War of 1812. He is depicted as a stern elderly white man with white hair and a goatee beard, and dressed in clothing that recalls the design elements of flag of the United States—for example, typically a top hat with red and white stripes and white stars on a blue band, and red and white striped trousers. The first use of the term in literature is seen in an 1816 allegorical book, The Adventures of Uncle Sam in Search After His Lost Honor by Frederick Augustus Fidfaddy, Esq.

Earlier representative figures of the United States included such beings as “Brother Jonathan,” used by Punch magazine. These were overtaken by Uncle Sam somewhere around the time of the Civil War. The female personification “Columbia” has seldom been seen since the 1920s. The well-known “recruitment” image of Uncle Sam was created by James Montgomery Flagg, an illustrator and portrait artist best known for commercial art. The image of Uncle Sam was shown publicly for the first time, according to some, in a picture by Flagg on the cover of the magazine Leslie’s Weekly, on July 6, 1916, with the caption “What Are You Doing for Preparedness?” More than four million copies of this image were printed between 1917 and 1918. The image also was used extensively during World War II.

sources : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncle_Sam