Who was St Patrick?
Mon 13 Mar 2017
This article was originally posted by GB Mag, an online magazine for international students helping and inspiring you to make the most of your time in the UK.
Every year on 17 March the Irish, and everyone else for that matter, celebrate the life of the patron saint of Ireland, St. Patrick. In fact Saint Patrick's Day is celebrated in more countries than any other festival
To make sure you are up on your St. Paddy’s Day trivia GB Mag has put together some fun facts that you can drop into conversation whilst wearing your obligatory shamrock and downing your Guinness…may the luck of the Irish be with you!
- St. Patrick wasn’t Irish. He was English! According to sources his parents were Roman-British. Shocking!!!
- St. Patrick was not called Patrick: Most sources agree that his actual name was Maewyn Succat
- At the age of sixteen, he was captured and sold into slavery in Ireland. He turned to God to help him endure his enslavement…now who wouldn’t
- The actual colour of St. Patrick is blue. Green became associated with St. Patrick’s Day as it’s the colour worn by immortals. It was also thought that wearing green helped your crops to grow
- Miracles associated with St. Patrick include driving the snakes out of Ireland, but there is evidence to suggest that there weren’t any snakes in Ireland in the first place
- Your odds of finding a lucky four-leaf clover at about 1 – 10,000
- The phrase “Drowning the Shamrock” derives from floating a shamrock on top of whiskey before drinking it. The Irish believe it brings you good luck for a year
- The first ever St. Patrick’s Day wasn’t celebrated in Ireland but in Boston in 1737
- 34 million Americans have Irish ancestry. That’s almost nine times the population of Ireland, which has 4.1 million people
- Legend has it that the shamrock was used by St. Patrick to demonstrate the Holy Trinity (The father, son and the Holy Spirit) to the pagans
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