8 things you didn’t know about St Patrick’s Day

HERE is a little St Patrick’s Day trivia to sprinkle in conversation over corned beef and cabbage today.

1. Patrick’s ‘real’ name was Maewyn Succat, or in Latin, Magonus Succetus. He took on the name Patrick when he became a priest.

2. Approximately 13 million pints of Guinness will be consumed worldwide on St Patrick’s Day, according to WalletHub, which released a St Patrick’s Day by the Numbers report this week.

3. The phrase “drowning the shamrock” is rooted in a tradition in which a shamrock worn on the lapel for St Patrick’s Day was tossed in the last drink of the evening.

4. The shamrock is not the symbol of Ireland. That honour goes to the harp. A popular icon of the holiday, the shamrock was used by St Patrick to teach the Holy Trinity.

5. The first St Patrick’s Day celebration took place in America in Boston, Massachusetts, in 1737.

6. Despite the majority of modern-day St Patrick’s Day celebrations centering around bar crawls and drink specials, from 1903 until 1970 all pubs were closed on the holiday due to religious observances.

7. If Irish folk tales are to be believed, the mystical beings are expressly male.

8. If, by chance, one did happen to find a mystical pot at the end of a rainbow this St Patrick’s Day, and it contained 1,000 gold coins weighing one ounce each.

Source: abcNews