In 2011, the population of Ireland was about 6.4 million, ranking it the second-most populous island in Europe after Great Britain.
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The earliest evidence of human presence in Ireland is dated at 12,800 BC.
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English was first introduced to Ireland in the Norman invasion in the 12th century.
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In 1801, the Kingdom of Ireland and the Kingdom of Great Britain merged to create a United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland.
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"Happy hours" are banned in Ireland.
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There's a bar in Ireland that opened in the year 900 A.D. and is still operational. It's called "Sean's Bar".
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Sucking a king's nipples was a gesture of submission in ancient Ireland.
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There has never been snakes in Ireland because being cold-blooded, snake couldn't survive the frozen ground during the ice age in the past.
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The population of Ireland still hasn't recovered from the famine of 1845-1852. It was at 8 million before the famine and is at 6.5 million today.
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Due to its isolation from the European mainland, Ireland lacks several species common elsewhere in Europe, such as moles, weasels, polecats or roe deer.
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The Irish surname prefix "Mac" means "son of," while "O" means "descendant of."
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Less than 10% of the population of the Republic of Ireland today speak Irish regularly outside of the education system.
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All polar bears alive today can trace their ancestry back to one female brown bear who lived in Ireland 50,000 years ago.
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More Guinness beer is drunk in Nigeria than Ireland.
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The world's oldest yacht club is the Royal Cork Yacht Club which opened in Ireland in 1720.
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Martin Luther King Jr. had Irish ancestry through his paternal great-grandfather.
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If one of your grandparents are Irish, you could claim Irish citizenship no matter where you live or born without knowing anything about Ireland.
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13 people died of alcohol poisoning in 1875 in Ireland when a brewery caught fire causing whiskey to flow through the streets.
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Before the Columbian Exchange, there were no oranges in Florida, no bananas in Ecuador, no potatoes in Ireland, no coffee in Colombia, no pineapples in Hawaii, no rubber trees in Africa, no tomatoes in Italy, and no chocolate in Switzerland.
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From 12 March 1944, Britain barred all travel to Ireland in order to prevent the leaking of the date of the D-Day landings.
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Dublin is home to Ireland's National Leprechaun Museum.
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The real St. Patrick wasn't even Irish. He was born in Britain around A.D. 390 to an aristocratic Christian family with a townhouse, a country villa, and plenty of slaves.
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Blasphemy is still a crime in the Republic of Ireland. The fine goes up to €25,000.
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Almost all the Botox in the world is made in a single factory in Westport, Ireland.
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