12th July: Northern Ireland

Today is Orangeman's day, a Northern Ireland public holiday. Here are 10 things you may not know about Northern Ireland:

1. Northern Ireland consists of six historic counties: County Antrim, County Armagh, County Down, County Fermanagh, County Londonderry and County Tyrone. They are no longer officially used but the boundaries may still appear on maps.
2. Northern Ireland was created by an act of the British Parliament in 1921. Most of the population were unionists, who wanted to be part of the UK, but a sizeable minority were nationalists, who wanted to unite with the Republic of Ireland. This minority weren't going to take the decision to make Northern Ireland part of the UK lying down. Tensions between unionists and nationalists escalated, resulting in "the Troubles" - violence between the two sides which lasted thirty years and claimed over 3,500 lives. The Troubles finally ended with “Good Friday” Agreement of 1998.
3. The capital of Northern Ireland is Belfast. The the pneumatic tyre and Milk of Magnesia were both invented in Belfast, by John Wood Dunlop and James Murray respectively. The City is overlooked by Cavehill, a basaltic hill which is believed to have inspired Jonathan Swift’s sleeping giant in Gulliver’s Travels. The hill has an outcrop resembling Napoleon's nose, and you can see not only the whole of Belfast, but the Isle of Man and Scotland from the top on a clear day.
4. It's not the highest hill - that is Slieve Donard, 850-metre (2,790 ft). On the peak are two cairns, the bigger of which is believed, in Irish mythology, to be a door to the underworld.
5. Lough Neagh, at 151 square miles (391 km2) is the largest freshwater lake, not only in Northern Ireland, but in the whole of the UK.
6. Belfast was once home to the biggest shipyard in the world. It belonged to Harland and Wolff, and the Titanic was built there.
7. The second largest city in Northern Ireland is Londonderry. Londonderry is the official name, but there has been an ongoing dispute between unionists and nationalists over what the city should be called. The nationalists think it should be called simply "Derry". The first name for the settlement there was Daire Calgaich, Old Irish for "oak wood of Calgach", eventually shortened to Doire and anglicised to Derry. A new, fortified city on the site was financed by the Irish Society, a consortium of the livery companies of the City of London in 1613, and it was renamed Londonderry in recognition of that. Today, road signs in the Republic refer to it as "Derry" and across the border signs say "Londonderry" although they still get vandalised by nationalists spray painting "London" out and unionists adding it. What a person called this city was an indication as to whether they were a unionist or a nationalist.
8. A sight to see in Northern Ireland is the Giant's Causeway, a UNESCO World Heritage Site and nature reserve. It consists of interlocked columns which are mostly hexagonal and form stepping stones that lead from the cliff into the sea. The tallest are about 12 metres (39 ft) high. According to legend, it was built by Irish giant Fionn mac Cumhaill when he was challenged to a fight by a Scottish giant, Benandonner. It was intended to be the site of their battle. In one version of the story, when Fionn saw how much bigger Benandonner was than him, he chickened out of the fight and hid by getting his wife to disguise him as a baby and tuck him up in a cradle. Benandonner fell for the ruse, and figured that if the baby was that big, its father must be huge - and chickened out as well, fleeing back to Scotland and destroying the causeway behind him so Fionn couldn't follow. The scientific explanation is that the causeway was caused by an ancient volcanic eruption.
9. Northern Ireland accounts for 30% of the population of Ireland as a whole and 3% of the population of the UK. Famous people to come from there include Van Morrison, George Best, poet Seamus Heaney, actors Liam Neeson and Kenneth Branagh). Former president of Israel Chaim Herzog was born in Belfast in 1918. Errol Flynn, the Australian actor, went to school there.
10. There were once very stiff penalties in Northern Ireland for vandalising street lights - for this crime a person could get six months in prison, a public whipping, or even get transported for seven years. A couple of laws still in force, technically at least, are that anyone going to the cinema on a Sunday could be fined £50 and it is illegal to take Potatoes out of Northern Ireland.