The first St. Patrick’s Day parade took place not in Ireland, but in the United States. Boston in 1737.
Legend has it, if you kiss the Blarney Stone, it is believed you will be given the “Gift of the Gab.”
There are 34 million U.S. residents who claim Irish ancestry. This number is almost nine times the population of Ireland itself (3.9 million). Irish is the nation’s second most frequently reported ancestry after German.
St. Patrick himself was not Irish, but English.
The St. Patrick’s Day custom came to America in 1737.
By law, pubs in Ireland were closed on St. Patrick’s Day, a national religious holiday, as recently as the 1970s
Chicago is famous for dyeing the Chicago River green on St. Patrick’s Day. The tradition began in 1962, when a pipe fitters union—with the permission of the mayor—poured a hundred pounds (45 kilograms) of green vegetable dye into the river. (On the job, the workers often use colored dyes to track illegal sewage dumping.) Today only 40 pounds (18 kilograms) of dye are used, enough to turn the river green for several hours.
