• The the French tricolor was unfurled on top of the Eiffel Tower by Alexandre Gustave Eiffel to mark its completion on the 31st of March 1889.
• It was built in two years by 132 workers and 50 engineers
• The Eiffel tower is 320 metres high and it weighs 7000 tons
• It has 1710 steps!
• It was was to be demolished in 1909 but its use as a telecommunication tower saved it
• It attracts 5.5 millions visitors every year

Some famous birthdays include:

• Arthur Griffith - Irish journalist and one of the founders of Sinn Féin was born in 1872

• Rene Descartes - French mathematician, scientist and philosopher was born in 1596

Happy birthday to:

• Christopher Walken - Actor - 65 today
• Richard Chamberlain - Actor - 74 today (wow - thought he was younger)
• Rhea Perlman - Actress (”Cheers” & Danny De Vito’s other half) - 60 today
• Ed Marinaro - Actor (”Hill Street Blues”) - 58 today

Have a good day ….. and thanks for the entertainment!

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It amazes me how little we know about our national flag.

Some facts about our national flag:

• Our flag is a tricolour of green, white and orange
• It’s twice as wide as it is high
• The three colours are of equal size and the green goes next to the flagstaff
• The flag was first introduced by Thomas Francis Meagher in 1848
• He based it on the French tricolour
• The green colour stands for the older Gaelic tradition and the orange stands for the supporters of William of Orange
• The white in the centre stands for a lasting truce between the ‘Orange’ and the ‘Green’
• It was raised above the General Post Office in Dublin during the Easter Rising of 1916
• The tricolour became our national flag after the Rising
• It is now enshrined in the Constitution of Ireland

Which do you see?

Seán O’Casey

“All the world’s a stage and most of us are desperately unrehearsed.”

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Grannymar tagged me to write my own 6 word memoir. She got it from My Wintersong who got it from Colleen.

I’m going to take inspiration from Samuel Beckett’s ‘Birth was the death of him’ and turn it into my epitaph/memoir …..

‘Teaching was the death of him’

Teaching has been both a pleasure and a cross in my life.

Teaching used to be fun. Now it’s teaching and lots of paperwork. All the time. It’s not fun anymore.

I don’t have any close blogging friends that I can ask to continue this tag ….. sorry Grannymar.

Christy Cowen, the brother of our Minister for Finance, Brian Cowen, has been outed as a tax defaulter by the Revenue Commissioners!

He has made a settlement of almost €100,000 with the tax man for under-declaration of his income tax.

What a country we live in when the Minister for Finance’s own family are cheating the state.

He must have got tips from Charlie, Bertie and the rest of his cronies in the Fianna Fáil Grab All party.

Mary Pickford (1893-1979) delighted filmgoers from 1909 to 1933. She had beautiful blonde curls and she was the most beloved and famous female movie star of the silent era. Crowds mobbed her wherever she went.

Mary was born in Toronto, Canada on the 8^th of April 1893. She became a child actress at the age of five.

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The I.N.T.O. and the A.S.T.I. are on the warpath ….. there are talks of strike.

The issue in the primary sector relates to the broken promise of reducing class sizes, while the issue in second level schools relate to discipline problems.

Sheriff Mary has warned us that strike action could hit us financilly. The national pay deal, ‘Towards 2016′, committed us to a no-strike clause and breaking it would result in the Government refusing to pay the next salary rise.

I can’t see how we can be expected to remain committed to the National Pay Deal when the Minister and her department have broken all promises made.

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