posted by elana
on Tue, Mar 15, 2011
It's about that time of year when people start doing funny things with the color green. Green food, green clothes, and most importantly..GREEN BEER! Yes..that's right..I'm talking about St. Patrick's Day!
Want to celebrate one of America's biggest beer holidays in style? We have a ridiculously fun bus tour departing Saturday, March 19. Our bus visits three craft breweries in Northern CA and lasts seven hours! So hop on our bus..green beer here we come!
Psst..here are some fun facts about St. Patty's Day (some of these facts just may turn up in our trivia on the bus!):
- St. Patrick’s Day is observed on March 17 because that is the feast day of St. Patrick, the patron saint of Ireland. It is believed that he died on March 17 in the year 461 AD. It is also a worldwide celebration of Irish culture and history.
- Montreal is home to Canada’s longest running St. Patrick’s Day parade, which began in 1824.
- 34 million Americans have Irish ancestry, according to the 2003 US Census. That’s almost nine times the population of Ireland, which has 4.1 million people.
- At age 16, St. Patrick 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.
- 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.
- The Irish flag is green, white and orange. The green symbolizes the people of the south, and orange, the people of the north. White represents the peace that brings them together as a nation.
- The name "lephrechaun" has several origins. It could be from the Irish Gaelic word "leipreachan," which means "a kind of aqueous sprite." Or, it could be from "leath bhrogan," which means "shoemaker."
- According to the Guinness Book of World Records, the highest number of leaves found on a clover is 14!
