Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus (1897)

In 1897, Dr. Philip O'Hanlon, a coroner's assistant on Manhattan's Upper West Side, was asked a question by his then eight-year-old daughter, Virginia, which many a parent has been asked before: whether Santa Claus really exists. O'Hanlon deferred. He suggested Virginia wrote asking the question to one of New York's most prominent newspapers at the time, The Sun, assuring her that "If you see it in The Sun, it's so." The response to Virginia's letter by one of the paper's editors, Francis Pharc