Tuesday, March 17, 2009

Fun Facts

As I continue to take breaks from writing my papers, or continue to stall, here are some fun facts about St. Patrick's Day I found on the internet:


- In Ireland on St. Patrick’s Day, people traditionally wear a small bunch of shamrocks on their jackets or caps. Children wear orange, white and green badges, and women and girls wear green ribbons in their hair. (Lots of green at school today!)

- In Chicago, the Chicago River is dyed green with a special dye that only lasts a few hours.

- There has been a St. Patrick’s Day parade in Boston, Massachusetts since 1737.

- St. Patrick was born in 385 AD somewhere along the west coast of Britain, possibly in the Welsh town of Banwen. At age 16, he was captured and sold into slavery to a sheep farmer. He escaped when he was 22 and spent the next 12 years in a monastery. In his 30s he returned to Ireland as a Christian missionary. He died at Saul in 461 AD and is buried at Downpatrick.

- Some American towns have “Irish” names. You could visit: Mount Gay-Shamrock, West Virginia; Shamrock Lakes, Indiana; Shamrock, Oklahoma; Shamrock, Texas; Dublin, California and Dublin, Ohio.

- According to the Guinness Book of World Records
, the highest number of leaves found on a clover is 14!

- One estimate suggests
that there are about 10 000 regular three-leaf clovers for every lucky four-leaf clover.

- Legend says that each leaf of the clover means something:
the first is for hope, the second for faith, the third for love and the fourth for luck.

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

2 comments:

Lu said...

Gotta check out Shamrock OK! Interesting stuff!

Jodi said...

I love St. Patrick's Day! A great quote from the movie Fugitive: "If they can dye it green today, why don't they dye it blue the rest of the year?"