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The Truth Behind St. Patrick's Day: Celebrations Did Not Originate in Boston

posted by cmn32480 on Saturday March 17 2018, @02:51PM   Printer-friendly
from the celebrate-with-sangria-not-beer dept.

"exec" writes:

Irish culture will soon be celebrated across the globe with parades, pub crawls and seas of green. But newly uncovered documents prove unlike previous belief, St. Patrick's Day celebrations did not start in Boston, rather at least 100 years earlier in St. Augustine, Florida.

The curious discovery comes from a rather unlikely source: gunpowder expenditures lists from St. Augustine for the years 1600-1601.While cannons and other artillery were often fired to help guide ships safely across St. Augustine's protective sandbar, they were also shot off during times of public celebrations and religious festivities.

A single entry from March 1600 states St. Augustine's residents gathered together and processed through the streets in honor of the feast day of San Patricio, or St. Patrick. As they made their way through the town, cannons fired from the wooden fort in celebration of the Irish saint.

"It was certainly a surprise," said historian J. Michael Francis, PhD, University of South Florida-St. Petersburg, who uncovered the document. "It did not register the first time I saw the name "San Patricio," the Spanish name for St. Patrick. After a few seconds it actually hit me that there was a St. Patrick's Day parade/procession in St. Augustine in 1601. Even more surprising was that the document identified St. Patrick as the patron saint of the city's maize fields."

https://phys.org/news/2018-03-truth-st-patrick-day-celebrations.html

-- submitted from IRC

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  • (Score: 2, Insightful) by khallow on Sunday March 18 2018, @05:03AM (2 children)

    by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Sunday March 18 2018, @05:03AM (#654354) Journal

    Its intent (and probably, its effect) is to make the fits of stupidity that result in a gunshot would *less common* so that the folks in $CITY don't have to deal with them as often.

    Well that is the theory. Practice is a different matter. Making everything worse for everyone because there are stupid people is not a good response.

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  • (Score: 2) by requerdanos on Monday March 19 2018, @04:33PM (1 child)

    by requerdanos (5997) Subscriber Badge on Monday March 19 2018, @04:33PM (#654976) Journal

    Making everything worse for everyone because there are stupid people is not a good response.

    Completely agreed. Unfortunately, however, that puts the burden on the stupid people* to stop messing it up for the rest of us to the extent that cities pass laws against things that stupid people "might" mess up.

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    * Stupid is as stupid does. I have been the "stupid people" at times, and so, most likely, have you. One tends (only a tendency) to grow out of it.

    • (Score: 1) by khallow on Monday March 19 2018, @05:49PM

      by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Monday March 19 2018, @05:49PM (#655029) Journal

      Unfortunately, however, that puts the burden on the stupid people* to stop messing it up for the rest of us to the extent that cities pass laws against things that stupid people "might" mess up.

      No, it puts the burden on us to stop those laws.