172 Fun Facts About Irish

What is the longest river in Ireland?

The River Shannon, about 360 km long, all but cuts the west off from the rest of Ireland, so Cromwell's 1650s land settlement used it as the line and moved Catholic landowners beyond it.

Which country joined the European Economic Community in 1973 alongside Ireland and the United Kingdom?

Denmark, Ireland and the United Kingdom all joined on 1 January 1973; Norway had been due to join with them, but its voters rejected membership in a referendum a few months earlier.

What is the traditional Irish potato pancake, associated with the northern midlands and Ulster, called?

Boxty mixes grated raw potato with mashed potato, and one old rhyme warns that anyone who can't make boxty will never get a man.

Which Dublin-born theatre manager wrote the 1897 Gothic horror novel Dracula?

Bram Stoker ran London's Lyceum Theatre for the actor Henry Irving; he took the name Dracula from an 1820 history of Wallachia and Moldavia written by a British consul.

What is the Irish language called in Irish?

Gaeilge is the Republic's first official language, yet at the 2022 census only about 72,000 people spoke it every day outside the education system.

Which armed insurrection against British rule seized central Dublin for a week in April 1916?

The Easter Rising opened with Patrick Pearse reading a proclamation of an Irish republic from the steps of Dublin's General Post Office, which the rebels made their headquarters.

Ireland's national anthem, 'Amhrán na bhFiann', is commonly known by what English title?

"The Soldier's Song" was written in English by Peadar Kearney, a writer of rebel songs; the Irish words usually sung today are a later translation by Liam Ó Rinn.

Which of Ireland's 32 traditional counties, lying just south of Dublin, is nicknamed the Garden of Ireland?

Wicklow's mountains sheltered rebels so well after the 1798 rising that the government drove a Military Road through them; 26 of the 32 counties now form the Republic.

Which ancient Irish game is often described as the fastest field sport in the world?

Hurling runs through Irish myth: the boy Sétanta was playing it when he was invited to the feast where he killed the smith Culann's guard dog, earning the name Cú Chulainn, 'Culann's hound'.

Which Treasury official, named in 'The Fields of Athenry', ran Great Famine relief?

Charles Trevelyan held relief to a minimum in the belief that it would teach self-reliance; in the ballad, the hero is transported for stealing 'Trevelyan's corn' to feed his family.

From which country was the 16-year-old Saint Patrick carried off by pirates as a slave?

Patrick was seized from Roman Britain at sixteen by Irish raiders and spent six years herding sheep before escaping, as he recounts in his Confessio.

Bloomsday, celebrated in Dublin every 16 June, honours the hero of a novel by which Irish writer?

James Joyce set Ulysses on 16 June 1904, the day of his first outing with his future wife Nora Barnacle; fans now retrace Leopold Bloom's route through Dublin in Edwardian dress.

County Antrim's Giant's Causeway is 40,000 interlocking columns of which rock?

The Giant's Causeway columns are basalt, formed when a Paleogene lava flow cooled and contracted into mostly hexagonal pillars around 50 to 60 million years ago.

How long was the lease Arthur Guinness signed in 1759 on the St James's Gate brewery?

The lease ran for 9,000 years at 45 pounds a year, but it no longer applies: the brewery outgrew its four acres and the company bought the site outright.

Carrauntoohil, the highest peak on the island of Ireland, stands in which county?

Carrauntoohil in County Kerry is not part of any national park: like the rest of its range, the mountain is privately owned, and walkers climb it by the landowners' leave.

How many Irish writers won the Nobel Prize for Literature in the 20th century?

Four: Shaw, Yeats, Beckett and Heaney. James Joyce, arguably the most influential of all, never won.

The Republic of Ireland's rapid economic boom from 1995 onwards was nicknamed what?

The Celtic Tiger reversed Ireland's long history of emigration: labour shortages brought workers in, and the country became a destination for immigrants.

What is the title of the Republic of Ireland's head of government?

Taoiseach, Irish for 'leader', replaced the plainer title President of the Executive Council when Éamon de Valera's constitution came into force in 1937.

Which Irish monk founded a monastery on the Scottish island of Iona around 563?

Saint Columba sailed to Iona with twelve companions; tradition says he left Ireland after a quarrel over a psalter he had secretly copied helped to bring on a bloody battle.

Which people founded the settlements that grew into Dublin and Limerick?

Vikings first came to Ireland for plunder, then in 841 set up a fortified naval camp, a longphort, at Dublin; it grew into a town with a large slave market.

Which animal is Ireland's only native land reptile?

The common lizard ranges further north than any other land reptile and usually bears live young; the slow worms seen around the Burren look like a second native reptile but are thought to be introduced.

Which North American conifer is by far the most widely planted tree in Ireland's forests?

Sitka spruce, named after a town in Alaska, makes up about half of Ireland's forest, which had shrunk to under 2% of the land by 1900 and has been replanted mostly with conifers.

Which body did Ireland leave by becoming a republic in 1949?

The Commonwealth lost Ireland on 18 April 1949; within days the London Declaration changed the rules so that India could stay in as a republic, but Ireland never rejoined.

John F. Kennedy visited his great-grandfather's homestead at Dunganstown in 1963, in which Irish county?

Wexford was home to Patrick Kennedy, who left the farm at Dunganstown for Boston in 1848 to escape the Famine; his great-grandson came back as US president five months before his death.

Which colour, rather than green, did the Anglo-Irish Order of St Patrick adopt when it was founded in 1783?

Blue was chosen because the Order of the Thistle had already taken green and orange seemed too sectarian; a blue field still backs the Irish president's standard.

The first Saint Patrick's Day parade held in Ireland took place in 1903 in which south-eastern city?

Waterford's 1903 parade came long after emigrants had made the custom their own: North American cities had been parading for well over a century, and Dublin had no official parade until 1931.

Which nickname for Ireland is first recorded in William Drennan's 1795 poem?

The Emerald Isle is credited to Drennan, a Belfast doctor who helped to found the United Irishmen and had stood trial for sedition, and been acquitted, the year before.

Which volcanic Caribbean island keeps Saint Patrick's Day as a public holiday?

Montserrat's holiday commemorates the enslaved Africans who planned an uprising for 17 March 1768, counting on the Irish slave owners being drunk on the saint's day; the plot failed and cost nine of them their lives.

Which Saint Patrick's Day custom drops the sprig worn all day into the last drink of the night?

'Drowning the shamrock' ends the day: the sprig goes into a final glass of whiskey, beer or cider, a toast is drunk, and it is then swallowed or tossed over the shoulder for luck.

Which instrument appears on the Guinness logo?

The harp, modelled on the medieval 'Brian Boru' harp kept at Trinity College, was trademarked by Guinness in 1876, and it faces the opposite way from the harp on Ireland's coat of arms.

Guinness brewer William Sealy Gosset published which statistical test under the pen name 'Student'?

The t-test appeared in 1908 under the name 'Student' because Guinness had its scientific staff publish under pen names; Gosset devised it to judge small samples in brewing.

The 'widget' inside a can of Guinness is a small plastic ball containing which gas?

Nitrogen's low solubility lets the beer sit under high pressure without turning fizzy, producing the creamy surge.

Guinness merged with Grand Metropolitan in 1997 to form which drinks giant?

Diageo, the company the merger created, is a multinational based in London rather than Dublin, so Ireland's most famous stout answers to a head office abroad.

The Táin Bó Cúailnge, the great epic of the Ulster Cycle, is usually translated into English as what?

Táin Bó Cúailnge means 'The Cattle Raid of Cooley': Queen Medb of Connacht invades Ulster for the brown bull of Cooley and the teenage Cú Chulainn holds off her army.

In Irish mythology, the god-like Tuatha Dé Danann's monstrous enemies were which supernatural race?

The Fomorians were the Tuatha Dé Danann's foes; at the Second Battle of Mag Tuired, Lugh killed their champion Balor of the Evil Eye, his own grandfather.

The Morrígan, Macha and Badb form a triad of Irish goddesses associated with what?

War goddesses all three; the Morrígan often takes the form of a crow over the battlefield, stirring warriors to fight and foretelling who will die.

In Irish myth, what is the roving warrior band led by Finn mac Cumhaill called?

The Fianna followed Finn mac Cumhaill, who as a boy burned his thumb while cooking the Salmon of Knowledge, sucked it, and gained the fish's wisdom.

What is the small leather-covered, cork-centred ball used in Ireland's national stick game?

The sliotar may be carried in the hand for no more than four steps, so players run with it balanced on the flat end of the stick instead.

Which 14th-century statute tried to stop English settlers from adopting Irish language, dress and customs?

The Statute of Kilkenny was aimed at settlers who had become 'more Irish than the Irish themselves', but it proved impossible to enforce and soon became a dead letter.

Which stage show, first seen in 1994, popularized Irish stepdance worldwide?

Riverdance began as a seven-minute interval act at the 1994 Eurovision Song Contest in Dublin, led by Michael Flatley and Jean Butler, and became a full show in 1995.

Sean-nós, the 'old style' of Irish dance, was traditionally performed on a barrel, a table or what?

A door laid flat, lifted off its hinges, made a small wooden stage, and a dancer's skill showed in how well the steps were kept within its narrow bounds.

What are Ireland's officially recognised Irish-speaking districts, found mostly along the west coast, collectively called?

The Gaeltacht was home to about 106,000 people at the 2022 census, yet only about 20,000 of them said they spoke Irish every day.

Which ancient script, dating to at least the 4th century AD, was Irish first written in?

Ogham was cut as strokes and notches along the edges of standing stones; roughly 400 inscriptions survive, and most do no more than record a person's name.

Which of Ireland's four provinces is the only one without a living native dialect of Irish?

Leinster's own Irish survived well into the 19th century before dying out, which is why the three living dialects are named after Munster, Connacht and Ulster.

What is the name of the language spoken by Ireland's nomadic Travellers?

Shelta, also called the Cant or Gammon, mixes Irish and English, and Travellers have used it mainly to keep their meaning from outsiders, especially when doing business.

Dublin sits at the mouth of which river?

The Liffey splits Dublin into the Northside and the Southside, and even the postal districts follow it: as a rule, odd numbers lie north of the river and even numbers south.

The name Cork comes from the Irish word corcach, meaning what?

Marsh is right: Cork grew on boggy islands in its river, and in the 1780s main streets such as St Patrick's Street were laid over the channels between them.

Belfast stands on the banks of which river?

The Lagan is where Harland & Wolff launched the Titanic on 31 May 1911, sliding the hull down a slipway greased with tonnes of soap and tallow.

In later folklore, leprechauns are depicted as practising which trade?

Shoemaking is the leprechaun's trade in later folklore, where he is a solitary cobbler who must reveal his hidden crock of gold to anyone who manages to catch him.

The word banshee comes from Irish words that literally mean what?

'Woman of the fairy mound' is what bean sí means; her keening wail was said to warn a family that one of its members was about to die.

The Irish word seamróg, source of "shamrock", literally means what?

'Young clover' is right: seamróg is a diminutive of seamair, clover. The tale of Saint Patrick using its leaves to teach the Trinity is not found in writing before 1726.

Which saint's February feast became an Irish public holiday in 2023?

Brigid of Kildare is said to have built her convent beneath a great oak, hence Kildare, 'church of the oak', and she chose a bishop, Conleth, to govern it alongside her.

The Princess Bride's Cliffs of Insanity were filmed at which Irish cliffs?

The Cliffs of Moher reach 214 m, yet they are far from Ireland's tallest: Slieve League in Donegal rises nearly three times as high.

Legend says that kissing the Blarney Stone grants which gift?

Eloquence, 'the gift of the gab', once took real nerve to win: before guard rails were fitted, kissers were held by the ankles and lowered head-first from the top of the castle to reach the stone.

The Book of Kells is a lavishly illuminated Latin copy of which texts?

The Gospels fill the Book of Kells, which was stolen in the 11th century for its cover of gold and jewels; it turned up months later under a sod, with the cover torn off.

Sunrise lights Newgrange's chamber at which time of year?

Midwinter sunrise shines down the passage to light the chamber; the effect went unseen in modern times until archaeologist Michael O'Kelly watched it on 21 December 1967.

Which two other passage tombs share the Brú na Bóinne World Heritage Site with Newgrange?

Knowth and Dowth flank Newgrange on the bend of the Boyne; Dowth still has a crater in its top, left by a botched excavation in 1847 that was never filled in.

Which is the largest of the three Aran Islands?

Inishmore, like its two neighbours, is bare limestone with no natural topsoil, so islanders made their own fields by spreading seaweed and sand from the shore.

Trinity College Dublin was founded in 1592 by which monarch?

Elizabeth I's college was built for the Protestant elite: Catholics could not take its degrees until 1793, and their own bishops then kept a ban on attending until 1970.

Croke Park is the headquarters of which sporting organisation?

The GAA long barred rival sports from Croke Park under its Rule 42, relaxing it in 2005 only so that rugby and soccer internationals could be played there while Lansdowne Road was rebuilt.

In a Gaelic football scoreline such as 2-11, what does the first number count?

Goals come first, and each is worth three points, so a team on 2-11 beats one on 1-13 by 17 points to 16.

In which year did Jameson, Powers and the Cork Distilleries Company merge to form Irish Distillers?

Irish Distillers was formed in 1966 when John Jameson & Son, John Power & Son and the Cork Distilleries Company merged; Bushmills joined in 1972 and Pernod Ricard bought the group in 1988.

John Jameson, the man behind Dublin's famous whiskey, was an immigrant from which country?

Scotland: Jameson was born in Alloa and married Margaret Haig, of the Scotch whisky family, before moving to Dublin, where he managed and later owned the Bow Street distillery.

Jameson's annual sales passed how many cases in 2019?

Jameson passed 8 million cases in the year to June 2019, up from 7 million the year before, by far the biggest seller among Irish whiskeys.

Traditional Irish stew is made with root vegetables and which meat?

Lamb or mutton, because mutton was cheaper and more common in leaner times; beef is common today.

Colcannon's Irish name cál ceannann means what?

White-headed cabbage: cál is 'cabbage' and ceannann 'white-headed', so the name never mentions the mashed potato that the cabbage or kale is stirred into.

Barmbrack, the fruit bread with a hidden ring, is associated with which holiday?

Halloween brack doubles as a fortune-telling game: whoever finds the ring in their slice is supposed to marry within the year, while the pea means no wedding this year.

On a Claddagh ring, what does the crown represent?

Loyalty is the crown's meaning, with the heart for love and the clasped hands for friendship; by custom, wearing it on the right hand with the heart's point towards the wrist shows the wearer is in a relationship.

Aran jumpers were originally knitted with unscoured wool retaining what natural oil?

Lanolin, the natural grease in unwashed sheep's wool, made the early Aran jumpers water-resistant, so they stayed wearable even when wet.

The name uilleann pipes translates as "pipes of the" what?

Uilleann is the genitive of uillinn, 'elbow': the bellows strapped under the arm are pumped with the elbow; the name was promoted by the historian W. H. Grattan Flood in the early 1900s.

Which Irish instrument is played with a short stick called a tipper, or cipín?

Bodhrán players beat the skin with the tipper while the free hand, reaching through the frame drum's open back, presses the inside of the skin to change its pitch and tone.

Piper Paddy Moloney led which band to six Grammy Awards?

The Chieftains carried Irish traditional music around the world, and in 1983 they played on the Great Wall of China at the invitation of the Chinese government.

The Dubliners were originally named after which founding member?

Ronnie Drew lent his name to The Ronnie Drew Ballad Group in 1962, but he disliked it, so the band renamed itself after the short-story collection Luke Kelly happened to be reading: Dubliners.

Which Dublin band began with a 14-year-old drummer's school notice?

U2 first met in drummer Larry Mullen Jr.'s kitchen; he later joked it was 'The Larry Mullen Band' for about ten minutes, until Bono walked in.

Which Irish band wrote the 1994 hit 'Zombie' after an IRA bomb killed two boys in Warrington?

The Cranberries' singer Dolores O'Riordan wrote 'Zombie' while on tour, moved by the deaths of Johnathan Ball, 3, and Tim Parry, 12; the Limerick band had started out as The Cranberry Saw Us.

Which singer left her family's band Clannad to go solo?

Enya, born Eithne Ní Bhraonáin, spent two years in Clannad alongside her siblings and uncles, then left with the band's manager and producer Nicky Ryan to start a solo career.

Which Dublin singer was 20 when she released her debut album, The Lion and the Cobra, in 1987?

Sinéad O'Connor co-produced The Lion and the Cobra herself, recording it in the later stages of pregnancy with her first child, and took its title from Psalm 91.

Who was Thin Lizzy's bassist, lead vocalist and principal songwriter?

Phil Lynott fronted Thin Lizzy on bass and vocals; guitarist Eric Bell took the name from Tin Lizzie, a robot in The Dandy comic, and the added 'h' was a joke on the Dublin accent, which says 'thin' as 'tin'.

Westlife formed in 1998 in which Irish town?

Westlife began in Sligo, where Shane Filan, Kian Egan and Mark Feehily had performed as IOYOU before Louis Walsh added Nicky Byrne and Bryan McFadden in 1998.

The Pogues' original name Pogue Mahone anglicises an Irish phrase meaning what?

Kiss my arse is what póg mo thóin, anglicised as Pogue Mahone, means; after BBC Radio Scotland complained, Radio 1's David Jensen began calling the band 'the Pogues' on air, and the name stuck.

The novel Ulysses is modelled, episode by episode, on which ancient epic?

The Odyssey gives Ulysses its frame: the hero's ten-year voyage home shrinks into a single day in Dublin, with Leopold Bloom as Odysseus, Stephen Dedalus as Telemachus and Molly as Penelope.

Oscar Wilde was a key figure in which late-19th-century movement?

Wilde championed Aestheticism, 'art for art's sake', lecturing on it across America in 1882 and embodying it in The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890).

Samuel Beckett wrote his works in English and which other language?

Beckett wrote much of his mature work in French, including En attendant Godot, staged in Paris in 1953, which he then translated himself as Waiting for Godot.

Who accepted the 1925 Nobel Prize but refused the money?

George Bernard Shaw said his readers and audiences already gave him more than enough money, so he had the prize fund a foundation translating Swedish literature into English.

Which Irish poet's 1966 debut collection, Death of a Naturalist, opens with the poem 'Digging'?

Seamus Heaney, a farmer's son from County Derry, vows in 'Digging' to dig with his pen instead of the spade his father and grandfather handled; the book won the Somerset Maugham Award.

Which island of tiny people did Jonathan Swift dream up?

Lilliput's six-inch people quarrel bitterly over which end of a boiled egg to break, Swift's mockery of the religious feuds of his own day; Brobdingnag, by contrast, is his land of giants.

Which Sally Rooney novel was published in 2024?

Intermezzo follows two brothers after their father's death, one of them a 22-year-old chess player; the title borrows a chess term for an unexpected in-between move, as well as the word for a musical interlude.

British ex-soldiers recruited in 1920 to reinforce Ireland's police were known by what nickname?

The Black and Tans got their name from a shortage of police uniforms, which left recruits in a mix of khaki army trousers and dark RIC tunics; the war they joined ran from January 1919 to the ceasefire of July 1921.

Which role did Michael Collins hold in the IRA during the War of Independence?

Collins was the IRA's Director of Intelligence, running the 'Squad' that shot British agents on Bloody Sunday, 21 November 1920; he later commanded the National Army until his death in August 1922.

Which leader's Clare by-election win forced Catholic emancipation in 1829?

Daniel O'Connell's 1828 win in Clare left the government fearing insurrection if a Catholic was kept out of his seat, so it passed the Relief Act within a year; Ireland remembers him as 'the Liberator'.

The 1998 Belfast Agreement, which largely ended the Troubles, is better known by which holy day's name?

Good Friday fell on 10 April 1998, the day the parties finally agreed, a day after chairman George Mitchell's deadline; referendums on both sides of the border approved the deal that May.

Which building is the official residence of the president of Ireland?

Áras an Uachtaráin began in 1751 as the Phoenix Park ranger's lodge and later housed British viceroys; Douglas Hyde, the first president, moved in during 1938 and every president since has lived there.

Who was Ireland's first female president?

Mary Robinson, a barrister and senator backed by Labour, won the 1990 election and served from December 1990 until September 1997, leaving to become UN High Commissioner for Human Rights.

Michael D. Higgins served as mayor of which city before becoming president?

Galway elected Michael D. Higgins mayor twice; as arts minister in the 1990s he set up the Irish-language television channel now called TG4 and lifted the broadcasting ban on Sinn Féin.

On Ireland's tricolour, what does the white between green and orange signify?

A lasting truce between 'Orange and Green' is how the Young Irelander Thomas Francis Meagher explained the white in 1848, hoping Irish Protestants and Catholics would clasp hands beneath the flag.

Aer Lingus's name means what in Irish?

Air fleet is the meaning of aerloingeas, which Aer Lingus anglicises, yet the state airline began in 1936 with a fleet of one: a six-seat biplane named Iolar, 'eagle', flying from Baldonnel to Bristol.

Which airline began in 1985 flying Waterford to London Gatwick?

Ryanair's lone 15-seat turboprop has since grown into hundreds of jets, run from a head office in Swords, beside Dublin Airport.

Brian Boru, High King of Ireland, was killed in 1014 just as his army won which battle?

Clontarf was a victory over the king of Leinster and his Norse allies, but Brian, by then in his seventies, did not live to enjoy it: Brodir, a Norse leader, killed him, by tradition while he was at prayer.

Glendalough's monastic settlement was founded in the 6th century by which saint?

Kevin came to Glendalough, the 'valley of two lakes', to get away from his followers and live as a hermit; a small cave in the cliff above the upper lake is still called St Kevin's Bed.

The peaks called the Twelve Pins, or Twelve Bens, rise in which region of western Ireland?

Connemara's Twelve Bens top out at about 730 m on Benbaun, and local hillwalkers set themselves the challenge of climbing all twelve in a single day.

Dublin's Ha'penny Bridge was originally named after whom?

The Duke of Wellington, born in Ireland, gave the 1816 footbridge its first name; the halfpenny toll, set to match the fares of the ferries the bridge replaced, supplied the nickname that stuck.

Which animals have roamed Dublin's Phoenix Park since the 17th century?

Fallow deer have grazed here since the 17th century, when the Duke of Ormond began turning the land into a hunting park and had to wall it in to keep the deer; the herd still roams inside the 11 km wall.

The Spire of Dublin stands on the site of which former monument?

Nelson's Pillar lost its upper section and its statue to a republican bomb in March 1966; days later the Irish Army blew up the stump as a watching crowd cheered, and the Spire rose on the site in 2003.

"Danny Boy" is set to which traditional Irish melody?

Londonderry Air is said to have reached the English lawyer Frederic Weatherly through his sister-in-law in America; he fitted it to the 'Danny Boy' words he had written in 1910 and published the result in 1913.

Who wrote "Ireland's Call", commissioned for the 1995 Rugby World Cup?

Phil Coulter, the Derry songwriter behind 'The Town I Loved So Well', wrote 'Ireland's Call' for the 1995 World Cup so players from both jurisdictions had a shared anthem.

Puck Fair, held each August in Killorglin, crowns which animal as king?

A goat, caught wild in the nearby mountains, is crowned King Puck by a local schoolgirl known as the Queen of Puck, hoisted onto a high stand over the town, and led back to the hills when the fair ends.

Which travelling festival of Irish traditional music was first held in Mullingar in 1951?

Fleadh Cheoil simply means 'music festival'; musicians qualify through county and provincial rounds, and sessions spill onto the streets and into the pubs of whichever town is hosting.

Cobh was known by what name from 1849 until 1920?

Cobh became Queenstown after Queen Victoria landed there in 1849 and reverted in 1920; it was the Titanic's last port of call in April 1912.

Which Irish butter brand belongs to the dairy co-operative Ornua?

Kerrygold was developed by Tony O'Reilly, then general manager of the Irish Dairy Board, as a single export brand for Irish butter; the board renamed itself Ornua, 'new gold', in 2015.

Which sitcom did Lisa McGee create?

Derry Girls draws on Lisa McGee's own 1990s childhood in the city, and a mural of its cast on the side of a Derry pub has become a tourist stop in its own right.

Which conflict echoes through The Banshees of Inisherin?

The Irish Civil War is nearing its end in the film's April 1923 setting, and Martin McDonagh lets its distant cannon fire shadow the sudden falling-out of two lifelong friends.

Saoirse Ronan's breakthrough Oscar-nominated role came in which 2007 film?

Atonement cast Ronan as 13-year-old Briony Tallis, who accuses her sister's lover of a crime he did not commit; the Best Supporting Actress nomination arrived when Ronan was 13 herself.

In 2016, Conor McGregor became the first UFC fighter to do what?

Hold two titles simultaneously: already featherweight champion, McGregor stopped Eddie Alvarez at Madison Square Garden in November 2016 to add a second belt, but two weeks later the first passed to José Aldo without a fight.

Katie Taylor became undisputed world champion in which weight class by beating Delfine Persoon in 2019?

Lightweight: Taylor edged Persoon on a majority decision at Madison Square Garden, adding the Belgian's WBC belt to her own three to hold all four, and granted her a rematch the following August.

Rory McIlroy completed golf's career grand slam in 2025 by finally winning which major?

The Masters had been the missing piece since 2014; McIlroy beat Justin Rose in a playoff at his 11th attempt to become the sixth man, and the first European, to win all four majors.

Which Ireland centre retired in 2014 as rugby's most-capped player?

Brian O'Driscoll's 141 Tests, 133 for Ireland and eight for the Lions, passed George Gregan's world record, and his last match was a win in Paris that sealed the 2014 Six Nations title.

The extinct Irish elk, a giant deer with enormous antlers, is best known from skeletons found where in Ireland?

Peat bogs and the lake clays beneath them have yielded so many skeletons in Ireland that the name stuck, though the giant deer was neither exclusively Irish nor an elk and ranged across Europe and northern Asia.

The Latin name Hibernia for Ireland was respelt under the influence of the Latin word for what?

Winter, or rather hibernus, 'wintry': Latin writers bent the Celtic name they heard for the island towards a word they knew, as though Ireland were the wintry land, and the same root gives English 'hibernate'.

The ancient geographer Ptolemy once called Ireland 'Mikra Brettania', a Greek name that translates as what?

Little Britain was his label for Ireland in the Almagest, set against Megale Brettania, 'Great Britain', for the larger island; in his later Geography he called the two islands Iwernia and Albion instead.

Which ousted King of Leinster recruited Strongbow and his Cambro-Norman knights to invade Ireland?

Dermot Mac Murrough, driven from Leinster in 1166, recruited Richard de Clare, 'Strongbow', promising him his daughter Aoife and the succession; Strongbow himself landed near Waterford in 1170.

The 1607 Flight of the Earls left confiscated lands that were colonised by settlers from Britain in which scheme?

The Plantation of Ulster began officially in 1609, after the Crown treated the earls' departure as treason and took their lands; Hugh O'Neill and Rory O'Donnell, who had sailed from Rathmullan, never came home.

A 1944 storm warning from neutral Ireland delayed which Allied operation by 24 hours?

D-Day slipped from 5 to 6 June after Maureen Flavin, a post office assistant on the Mayo coast, logged falling pressure on her 21st birthday; Ireland secretly passed such readings to the Allies.

Irish police logged dozens of traffic offences against 'Prawo Jazdy', which is Polish for what?

Driving licence is printed at the top of Polish licences, so officers copied it down as the driver's name. The blunder won the force a 2009 Ig Nobel Prize.

Slats, an animal born at Dublin Zoo in 1919, became the first mascot in which film studio's logo?

MGM used Slats, a lion originally named Cairbre, in the logo on its films from 1924 to 1928. Cairbre is Irish for 'charioteer'.

Dublin's Whitefriar Street Church holds relics of which saint, a gift from Pope Gregory XVI?

Valentine reached Dublin in the 1830s, when his partial remains were sent from Rome to the Carmelite priest John Spratt. The shrine is now a place of pilgrimage for people seeking love.

Which English word comes from a County Mayo land agent shunned by his whole community in 1880?

Boycott was the surname of Lord Erne's agent, a retired army captain whose workers quit and whose neighbours isolated him during a Land League rent campaign. He left Ireland that December.

Irish-born architect James Hoban won a 1792 competition to design which Washington landmark?

The White House was modelled by Hoban on a ducal mansion in Dublin that now houses the Irish parliament. He returned to rebuild it after it was burned in 1814.

Which Belfast shipyard built RMS Titanic and the sister liners Olympic and Britannic?

Harland and Wolff was formed in 1861 by Edward Harland and Hamburg-born Gustav Wolff. Its twin gantry cranes, Samson and Goliath, still dominate the city skyline.

In the legend of the Children of Lir, a jealous stepmother turns the children into which birds?

Swans they stayed for 900 years, spending 300 on each of three waters, though the spell let them keep their human voices and sing.

Which US president traced his roots to Moneygall, the Offaly village an ancestor left in 1850?

Barack Obama visited in 2011, and a motorway service area on the edge of the village is now named Barack Obama Plaza. His great-great-great-grandfather Falmouth Kearney emigrated at 19.

The name Dublin comes from the old Irish words 'dubh linn', which translate as what?

Black pool referred to a dark tidal pool behind what is now Dublin Castle. The city's modern Irish name, Baile Átha Cliath, means something quite different: town of the hurdled ford.

Fungie, who lived alone in Dingle Harbour from 1983 to 2020, was which kind of wild animal?

Dolphin is right: Fungie was a male bottlenose who sought out human company, and Guinness World Records named him the oldest solitary wild dolphin in the world.

Which Sinn Féin candidate became the first woman elected to the UK House of Commons in 1918?

Constance Markievicz won while held in Holloway Prison and, following her party's abstentionist policy, never took the seat. She sat in the breakaway Dáil instead.

Which Nobel-winning poet co-founded the Abbey Theatre and served two terms as a Free State senator?

W. B. Yeats opened the Abbey with Lady Gregory and John Millington Synge, and the Nobel committee praised poetry that 'gives expression to the spirit of a whole nation'.

Which singer won Eurovision for Ireland in 1980 and 1987, then wrote the winning song of 1992?

Johnny Logan won with 'What's Another Year' and 'Hold Me Now', then gave Linda Martin 'Why Me'. He was born in Australia while his tenor father was touring there.

Which east-coast county, nicknamed 'the Wee County', is the smallest on the island of Ireland?

Louth covers just 826 square kilometres, hence the nickname, yet it ranks 17th of the island's counties by population.

Which County Clare spa town is known for a September matchmaking festival that dates back to 1857?

Lisdoonvarna draws upwards of 40,000 romantic hopefuls, bachelor farmers and revellers to one of Europe's largest matchmaking events. The town grew up around sulphur springs.

Clare-born John Philip Holland designed which type of vessel, bought by the US Navy in 1900?

Submarine research by Holland was bankrolled for years by the Fenians, Irish revolutionaries, until they fell out over payment. One early boat was named Fenian Ram.

Which Dublin crisp brand, launched in 1954, is credited with the first cheese and onion flavour?

Tayto's founder, nicknamed 'Spud', is credited with inventing the first process for flavouring crisps. A separate Northern Ireland company sells crisps under the same name by agreement with the Dublin firm.

Which trophy do the winners of the All-Ireland senior Gaelic football final lift each year?

Sam Maguire Cup winners lift a faithful model of the Ardagh Chalice, an early Christian treasure. The 1928 original was retired in the 1980s and replaced with an identical copy.

Which hero of Irish myth, born Sétanta, took a new name after killing a smith's fierce guard dog?

Cú Chulainn means 'Culann's hound': the boy offered to guard the house himself until a new dog was reared. At 17 he defended Ulster alone against Queen Medb's armies.

Which sport, played mainly in Cork and Armagh, is won by covering a course in the fewest throws?

Road bowling players fling a 28-ounce iron ball, called a bullet, along a set course of country lanes. A similar game, klootschieten, is played in the Netherlands.

Which party formed in 1933 from a merger of Cumann na nGaedheal, the Centre Party and the Blueshirts?

Fine Gael means 'Family (or Tribe) of the Irish'. To avoid looking like the old ruling party under a new name, it handed the leadership to Blueshirt chief Eoin O'Duffy.

Sinn Féin, the party founded by Arthur Griffith in 1905, has an Irish name meaning what?

We ourselves is the literal sense, though the name is frequently mistranslated as 'ourselves alone' after an early-20th-century slogan, Sinn Féin Amháin.

Which New York-born politician quit Sinn Féin in 1926 to found a new party, later becoming president?

Éamon de Valera was first registered at birth as George de Valero. His new party dropped the old refusal to sit in the Dáil, and he went on to serve three terms as head of government.

Ireland's two traditionally dominant parties both grew from a Sinn Féin split over which 1921 deal?

Anglo-Irish Treaty supporters narrowly won the Dáil vote, but the split led to the Irish Civil War, and the rival camps hardened into the country's two main parties.

Which party did James Connolly, James Larkin and William O'Brien found at Clonmel Town Hall in 1912?

Labour began as the political wing of the Irish Trades Union Congress. Connolly, born in Edinburgh to Irish parents, was executed four years later for his part in the 1916 rebellion.

Which party did Desmond O'Malley launch in 1985 with defectors from Ireland's two largest parties?

Progressive Democrats took 14 seats at their first election, briefly becoming the third-largest party, and later joined four coalition governments before dissolving in 2009.

Ian Paisley, founder of the Free Presbyterian Church, launched which political force in 1971?

Democratic Unionist Party roots lie in the earlier Protestant Unionist Party. Paisley led it until 2008, having become First Minister of Northern Ireland in 2007 in a power-sharing executive with Sinn Féin.

Charles Stewart Parnell led which political grouping, Westminster's voice of Home Rule in the 1880s?

Irish Parliamentary Party MPs emerged from the 1885 general election holding the balance of power at Westminster. Parnell had built it from the looser Home Rule League three years earlier.

Who succeeded Gerry Adams as president of Sinn Féin in 2018, the first new leader since 1983?

Mary Lou McDonald, a Dubliner and former MEP, was the first woman to lead the organisation since Margaret Buckley, its president from 1937 to 1950.

Which SDLP founder shared the 1998 Nobel Peace Prize with David Trimble?

John Hume topped a 2010 RTÉ viewers' poll as 'Ireland's Greatest', ahead of Michael Collins. The Nobel committee said the Good Friday Agreement reflected principles he had stood for.

Glasses are raised across Ireland to the toast 'sláinte', an Irish word that literally means what?

Health is the wish, and the proper reply is 'sláinte agatsa', meaning 'to your health as well'. The same toast is heard on the Isle of Man.

The word whiskey is an anglicised form of the Irish phrase 'uisce beatha', which translates as what?

Water of life was a direct translation of the Latin aqua vitae, the old name for distilled alcohol. English speakers kept only the first word, uisce, meaning water.

Which liqueur, the original Irish cream, was devised in London by an advertising executive?

Baileys came from a team headed by Tom Jago, working to a marketing brief from Gilbeys of Ireland, and blends cream, cocoa and Irish whiskey.

Irish coffee, credited to Foynes chef Joe Sheridan, took off in America at which city's Buena Vista Cafe?

San Francisco travel writer Stanton Delaplane said he drank one at an Irish airport, then worked with the cafe to start serving it in 1952. Sheridan himself later emigrated to work there.

Which County Antrim whiskey prints 1608 on its label, the year a king permitted distilling nearby?

Bushmills takes the date from the permission King James I gave landowner Sir Thomas Phillips, though the company that built the distillery was only formed in 1784.

Which bird, drawn by John Gilroy for 1930s posters, became a lasting symbol of Guinness stout?

Toucan posters carried the jingle 'Guinness is good for you... what one or toucan do'. Crime writer Dorothy L. Sayers, then an advertising copywriter, worked on the campaign.

Bulmers Irish cider, made in Clonmel, is sold outside the Republic of Ireland under which other name?

Magners was created to sell the cider abroad because another firm held the international rights to the Bulmers name. It honours William Magner, who began production in 1935.

A Black Velvet, first mixed in London in 1861 to mourn Prince Albert, tops Guinness or other stout with which wine?

Champagne itself was said to be in mourning when a bartender at Brooks's Club darkened it with stout. Guinness is the usual choice of stout today.

Which County Cork town has housed the distillery behind Jameson, Powers and Redbreast since 1975?

Midleton was picked because it was the only existing site with room to expand when the merged distillers closed their old plants. The old distillery next door is now a visitor centre.

Sean's Bar, certified by Guinness World Records as Ireland's oldest pub, is in which midlands town?

Athlone is home to a pub that claims to date from AD 900, although surveys put the oldest parts of the present building in the 17th century.

Which Cork-born actor, Tommy Shelby in Peaky Blinders, won the Best Actor Oscar for Oppenheimer?

Cillian Murphy has called August 1996 pivotal: in one month his band was offered a record deal, he failed his law exams and he landed his part in the play Disco Pigs.

Which actor, born in Drogheda and raised in Navan, played James Bond in GoldenEye and three sequels?

Pierce Brosnan made his name in America as the title detective in Remington Steele, then starred as 007 from 1995 to 2002, ending with Die Another Day.

Which Dublin-born co-star of John Wayne in The Quiet Man was nicknamed the Queen of Technicolor?

Maureen O'Hara had trained as a shorthand typist, and she typed up the script of The Quiet Man herself for John Ford.

Which Dubliner, the Pigeon Lady in Home Alone 2, was the first Irish actress to win an Oscar?

Brenda Fricker won Best Supporting Actress in 1990 for playing Christy Brown's mother in My Left Foot, and the award opened the door to her Hollywood roles.

Which Dublin actor taught secondary school before playing Mad-Eye Moody in the Harry Potter films?

Brendan Gleeson taught Irish and English at Belcamp College in north County Dublin. Strictly, his Moody in the fourth film is an impostor in disguise, Barty Crouch Jr.

Which Castleknock-born actor went from Ballykissangel to playing the Penguin in The Batman?

Colin Farrell stayed with the villain for the 2024 HBO series The Penguin, which brought him a Golden Globe. An earlier one came for the hitman comedy In Bruges.

Which Limerick-born actor had a 1968 hit with 'MacArthur Park' and later played Dumbledore?

Richard Harris hesitated over the Harry Potter role until his 11-year-old granddaughter threatened never to speak to him again if he turned it down.

Saoirse Ronan, who grew up in County Carlow, was actually born in which country?

United States is right: she was born in the Bronx, New York City, to Irish parents from Dublin, and the family moved back when she was three.

Before acting, Liam Neeson won several regional titles as a teenager in which sport?

Boxing lessons began for Neeson at nine, at the All Saints Youth Club in Ballymena, and he kept fighting until he quit at 17.

Which Dublin-born actor was Oscar-nominated as both lead and supporting actor for Going My Way?

Barry Fitzgerald won the supporting award for the part. Born William Shields, he had started out as a junior clerk in the Dublin civil service.