I thought since St Patricks Day is on its way I would grace you all with a bit of Irish History 
My sis recently got into numerous debates and some turned out to be pretty heavy arguments about facts and truths of Irish history& facts!
One boring Sunday afternoon she decided to take a trip to Cyber Space..First Class of course Read on ….
——————————–
According to some historians, over 40% of all American presidents have had some Irish ancestry.
Saint Brendan is said to have discovered America 1,000 years before Columbus.
The Newgrange passage tomb in County Meath was constructed around 3200 BC, making it more than 600 years older than the Giza Pyramids in Egypt, and 1,000 years older than Stonehenge.
“Cemetery Sunday” is a lesser-known tradition still practiced around Ireland, although it seems to take place on whatever date is most convenient for local church leaders. A mass is celebrated for families of those buried in the local church graveyard, after which an effort is made over several days to clean up the churchyard. Special attention is traditionally given to the graves of those who have no one left among the living to remember them.
A single day of good weather that pops up in a long stretch of bad days is known in Ireland as a “pet day.”
“11th Night” is a celebration still widely observed by Protestant groups in northern Ireland, who build huge bonfires across the country on the night of July 11th. The fires are lit on the night before the July 12th commemoration of William of Orange’s defeat of King James, a Catholic, in 1690 in the Battle of the Boyne. The battle took place near Drogheda, north of Dublin.
IRELAND FACT: CRYING AT FUNERALS…”Keening” is the Irish version of loud crying at wakes practiced in several European cultures (Italy in particular). It involves wailing and expressing endearments in Gaelic to the deceased. At some wakes, the Keening goes on for hours, with many participants.
Famous wit Oscar Wilde was born Oscar Fingal O’Flahertie Wills Wilde in Dublin in 1854.Bram Stoker was working as a civil servant in Dublin when he wrote “Dracula” in 1897.
In 1859, Irish scientist John Tyndall was the first to correctly explain why the sky is blue. The explanation may surprise you. The sun puts out a full spectrum of light colors – but your eyes are most sensitive to blue and red/purple colors. Molecules in the air scatter the sun’s blue light faster than they scatter its red light. A day-time sky without clouds looks blue because the sun is close to you, and relatively little of the blue light has been scattered. You see red and orange colors at sunset because the light must travel a greater distance to you, and all the blue light has been refracted away from your line of sight by the time the sun’s light hits you – not because of dust or other particles in the air as is widely believed.
Dublin was originally called “Dubh Linn,” which means “Black Pool.” The name refers to an ancient treacle lake in the city, which is now part of a penguin enclosure at the Dublin City Zoo.
A small number of devotees still go to holy wells in Ireland to “pay rounds,” by circling a well three times and making a sign of the cross over it with a pebble. All ceremonies at holy wells were once frowned upon by The Church, which saw them as holdovers from Ireland’s pagan era.
The Vikings founded Dublin in 988.
The lyrics to “Danny Boy” were allegedly written by an English barrister named Fred Weatherly, while he was riding on a commuter train.
The first three days of April are called the “Borrowed Days” and are traditionally associated with bad weather. This derives from an old legend where a mythical cow boasted about March being unable to kill her. The result was that March borrowed three days of terrible weather from April to try and finish the cow off.
Even Saint Patrick liked a tipple. It was once popular in Ireland to pin sprigs of shamrocks on your coat on Saint Patrick’s day in remembrance of his using shamrock leaves to illustrate the idea of the holy trinity. At the end of the day, one would “drown the shamrock” by putting a few shamrocks into a glass and covering them with whiskey.
The very first St. Patrick’s Day parade in America was hosted by the Charitable Irish Society of Boston in 1737.
Historians believe St. Patrick’s real name was “Maewyn Succat.”
“Gulliver’s Travels” writer Jonathan Swift is buried in St. Patrick’s Cathedral in Dublin.
In 1800, the population of Ireland was almost twice as large as that of the United States. By 2000, America’s population was about 60 times that of Ireland
IRELAND FACT: THE REAL FIRST SAINT OF EIRE…Ireland’s first saint was not Saint Patrick. He was Saint Abban, who went to preach in England during the 2nd century.
St. Patrick introduced the Roman alphabet and Latin literature into Ireland. After his death, Irish monasteries became Europe’s leading intellectual centers.
The national symbol of Ireland is the Celtic harp, not the shamrock.
St. Patrick had a very limited education, and is said to have been self-conscious about his weak writing skills.
In the days of sailing ships, Irish sea captains often carried pebbles from Scattery Island, the home of the Saint Cannera, the patron saint of sailors.
There are seven huge stone forts on the Aran Islands: Dun Aonghasa, Dun Ducathair, Dun Eoghanachta and Dun Eochla on Inishmore; Dun Chonchuir and Dun Fearbhai on Inishmaan, and Dun Formna on Inisheer. The preface “Dun” means “fort of a chieftain.”
Ireland was once densely forested, but was practically denuded of tree cover in the 17th century.
Kilkenny-born architect James Hoban designed the original White House in Washington after winning a competition sponsored by President George Washington and Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson in 1792. It’s said that Jefferson submitted his own design under a pseudonym but failed to take top prize. When the White House was burned by the British during the war of 1812, Hoban was called in to oversee a three-year-long restoration of the building.
Grace O’Malley, known as the “Queen of the Pirates,” commanded a ship with a crew of over 200 men off the west coast of Ireland the 1500’s. Read “Queen of the Pirates”
The tune of the “Star Spangled Banner” was composed by the great blind harper Turlough O’Carolan, who died about 35 years before the American revolution.
Medieval laws in Ireland allowed a man to divorce his wife if she damaged his honor through infidelity, thieving or “making a mess of everything.”
“Tallaght” in Dublin is an old name that means “The Plague cemetery.”
Killyleagh Castle, in County Down, Northern Ireland, is the oldest occupied castle in Ireland. Built in the 13th century, it is still in use as a private home.
According to tradition, a wedding party should always take the longest road home from church.
Ernest Shackleton, famed for his participation in the 1901-1904 Antarctic expedition across the Ross Ice Shelf, was born in Kilkee, County Clare.
The first American general to die in The Revolution was Richard Montgomery, who was born in Donegal.
Aran Island sweaters have a variety of “family weaves.” These were developed because when a fisherman drowned, his sweater would often be the only thing washed up on shore. The distinctive weave would tell a family their loved one had been lost.
ODD IRISH FACTS!!
Achill Island is the largest island off Ireland’s coast. It’s 56 miles square, with dramatic landscape featuring wild cliffs and moors.
The northern Spanish town of Santiago de Compostela is known as “el Dingle de Santiago” in memory of a journey that Irish religious pilgrims made there in medieval times.
Killary Bay, on the Mayo-Galway border, is the only true fjord in Ireland. A fjord is a long, narrow inlet from the sea between high slopes.
Ireland’s 15 principal railway stations are named after the leaders of the 1916 uprising.
An “An Fáinne” is a lapel pin, worn by some fluent Irish speakers to invite others to speak to them in the traditional language.
Director John Huston filmed the New Bedford, Massachusetts scenes in his 1956 movie “Moby Dick” in Youghal, County Cork.
Famed Hollywood movie director John Ford was born Sean O’Feeney in 1894, in Spiddal, County Galway.
The scenic “Wicklow Way” is the oldest and most popular hiking route in Ireland. Stretching from the Dublin suburb of Rathfarnham in a south-westerly direction toward the village of Clonegal, in County Carlow, the 25 year old public walking route is traversed by over 20,000 people each year.
James Joyce once called Guinness stout “the wine of Ireland.”
Ireland has virtually no coal deposits, even though it’s just 60 miles from Wales, one of the world’s richest coal fields.
Muhammad Ali has some Irish heritage. His great grandfather was born in Ennis, County Clare, and emigrated to Kentucky in the 1860s. There, he married an African-American woman. A son born to this couple also married and African-American woman, who gave birth to Ali’s mother, Odessa Grady. She married a man named Cassius Clay, and the two moved to Louisville, where the future champ was born.
Baileys Irish Cream which was launched in Ireland in the early seventies, is now the most popular liqueur in the world.
Louth is the smallest county in Ireland; Cork is the largest.
About 30% of the people in Australia are of Irish descent.
Ireland is the world’s only country with a musical instrument for a national symbol: the harp.
It’s not the custom in Ireland to wear green ties, hats or other green clothes on St. Patrick’s Day. A sprig of shamrock in the coat lapel is the preferred display.
One old Irish superstition holds that May is an unlucky month to get married in, because of its association with the Virgin Mary. This superstition seems to have lost its power, however, since May is now one of the most popular wedding months for Irish people.
The Irish tricolor flag, created in 1848, was designed to reflect the country’s political realities. Orange stands for Irish Protestants, green for Irish Catholics and the white stripe for the hope that peace might eventually be reached between them.
The tallest identical twins ever born were the Knipe Brothers from Magherafelt in County Derry who were 7ft 2in. They were born in 1761.
Ireland’s highest mountain is Carrantouhill, in County Kerry (3,445 feet).
Trinity College in Dublin, which happens to be Ireland’s oldest university, has famous alumni including Oscar Wilde and Bram Stoker.
Pop singer Christina Aguilera’s mother is Irish-American.
Presidential contender Barack Obama’s maternal great, great, great grandfather Fulmuth Kearney came from Moneygall, in County Offaly. Mr. Kearney came to America in 1850.
Jaysus it’s a small world!!!!
