My best to all of those green-clad celebrants today on St. Patrick's Day! I don't have any Irish blessings for you (maybe I will put a few in the comments section), but I will give you a couple interesting facts. (Photo compliments of J. Trabert, taken last Friday on my way home from work)
Slainte America! Celebrating St. Patrick's Day with parades and drinking green beer is an American invention. The first St. Patrick's Day Parade was in 1762 in New York City when Irish soldiers serving in the Royal Army got a few bag-pipers together to march through the city. Irish laws forbid pubs from being open on March 17th. The "Paddy powers" finally got their act together and decided to use their patron saint to further Irish tourism and ended the ban in 1994.
Talk about a sweet investment! In 1759, Arthur Guinness signed a lease for 9,000 years on the property at St. James Gates for a whopping $70 a year.
Buzz kill: The annual cost for the "Irish Flu" in the U.S. is $148 billion, due to workers missing work and poor job performance, (source: San Francisco Veterans Affairs Medical Center).
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