IRISH AMERICANS
The father of this industrialist (who invented the mass production assembly line at his Michigan factory) was born in Country Cork, Ireland in 1826.
Henry Ford
What is Ireland called in the Irish language?
Eire
Ireland was partitioned in the early 1900s after a war of independence with Great Britain. Efforts to reunite the Republic of Ireland with Northern Ireland led to years of unrest. In 1998, the Good Friday Agreement finally put an end to the violence. Can you name the former US senator, appointed by President Bill Clinton as the US Special Envoy for Northern Ireland, who is credited as the architect of the Good Friday Agreement?
George Mitchell, a Democrat from Maine
What is the name of Ireland’s most famous brand of beer?
Guinness
Major Barbara, Pygmalion
George Bernard Shaw
Both parents of this film director, widely considered “The Master of Suspense,” were half-Irish and half-English.
Alfred Hitchcock
The island of Ireland is politically divided between which two countries?
The Republic of Ireland, which is a sovereign country; and the much smaller Northern Ireland, which is part of the United Kingdom
The 1840s was a watershed time in Irish history when a fungus wiped out this staple crop — the main source of food for the Irish people. During this decade, a million people died of starvation and more than a million left Ireland, mostly for the United States.
The potato. By the end of the 1840s, half of all immigration to the United States was from Ireland. To this day the Irish population is still not what it was before the famine.
Ireland’s climate is very mild (considering its northern latitude), thanks to this ocean current.
The Gulf Stream
Finnegan’s Wake, Ulysses, Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
James Joyce
Many US presidents have ties to Ireland, including this one, our 40th president, whose grandfather was born in County Tipperary and emigrated via Canada to the US in the 19th century.
Ronald Reagan
What is Irish coffee?
Coffee mixed with Irish whiskey
Can you name the 15th century castle near Cork, Ireland that contains a famous block of stone? According to legend, kissing that stone endows the kisser with “the gift of gab” — great eloquence and skill in the verbal art of flattery.
Blarney Castle (home of the Blarney Stone)
What is the capital of Northern Ireland?
Belfast
A Modest Proposal, Gulliver’s Travels
Jonathan Swift
She was born Margaret Tobin in 1867, the daughter of Irish immigrants. She married a miner, became wealthy when he struck gold, and famously survived the maiden voyage of the RMS Titanic.
(The Unsinkable) Molly Brown
One of Ireland’s most famous writers was this early 20th-century author who penned Finnegan’s Wake, Ulysses, and Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.
James Joyce
According to the ancient Chronicle of Ireland, this Christian (Ireland’s best known and patron saint) arrived in Ireland in 431 AD and was a key figure in bringing Christianity to Ireland.
Saint Patrick
Ireland is the third-largest island in Europe. Can you name the other two?
Great Britain and Iceland
The Picture of Dorian Gray, The Importance of Being Earnest
Oscar Wilde
The Irish-born father of this Nobel Prize-winning American playwright was the model for the stingy and temperamental character James Tyrone in Long Day’s Journey Into Night.
Eugene O’Neill
Saint Patrick is credited with ridding Ireland of this reptile scourge (although scientists argue that it wasn’t St. Patrick but the Ice Age that killed them all off).
Snakes
One of Ireland’s most visited sites is the Giant’s Causeway, which was declared a World Heritage site in 1986. What is the Giant’s Causeway?
A coastal area of Ireland created by an ancient volcanic eruption, resulting in the formation of giant columns that cascade like steps from the cliff above down and into the ocean below.
What is the capital of the Republic of Ireland?
Dublin
The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe (The Chronicles of Narnia), The Screwtape Letters
C. S. Lewis