Top ten strangest events to report this St. Patrick’s season

Snows on California parade, Speaker cries, a St. Pat’s parade in April etc.

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Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, right, becomes emotional while listening to traditional Irish music with President Barack Obama during the Friends of Ireland Luncheon with Irish Prime Minister Enda Kenny, not pictured, in the Capitol's Rayburn Room on March 20. (Photo By Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call)

Photo by CQ Roll Call

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It’s been a good St. Patrick’s season but as always there have been some weird and wacky events too. Here are some of our favorites.

1. Tears From a Speaker
Speaker of the House John Boehner cried during a song by an Irish tenor at the annual St.Patrick’s luncheon on Capitol Hill.  Boehner cries at the drop of a hat apparently.

2. Largest Irish America sign ever
A trio of Dublin artists have created the largest Irish America sign in America in Fort Smith Arkansas. No I don’t know why.

3. Battle of the Leprechauns
Bandon County Cork and a town in Donegal fought over who would have the most people in leprechaun outfits on St. Patrick’s Day for the Guinness Book of Records. Bandon won with over 1,200. No word on how many pots of gold were found.

4. Henry VIII returns
He is now almost as famous as his namesake. President Obama’s eighth cousin Henry Healey from Moneygall in Tipperary  ended up in the White House a few times during St.Patrick’s week as the president embraced his irish heritage and called cousin Henry to come over and join him.

5. Help --It snowed on our parade-- in California
The weather was delightful  on the East Coast but in sunny California, most notably the town of Murphys, it snowed on their parade for the second year in a row upsetting the locals greatly. Murphys was one of the original Gold Rush towns started by two Wicklow brothers.

6. The ‘Irish Car Bomb made me do it’ defense  
Jurors in polo tycoon Polo Tycoon John Goodman's manslaughter trial for killing a man while driving drunk boiled down to whether he drank "Irish car bombs" and "mind eraser" cocktails the night he plowed into Scott Wilson's car.

7. Irish and Italians join forces
What’s this an Irish/Italian joint parade? Baton Rouge, Louisiana has joined the two great ethnic groups together for their annual parade and it seems to be working out swell. Only problem, after a few martinis or Guinness can you tell the flags apart?

8. Joe Biden made a bad Irish joke?
That’s news? Well Joe thought the Irish Prime Minister’s mother was dead when he spoke last year and she was very much alive. This year he told a silly joke about Irish being lubricated.

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