President Reagan’s bowl of shamrock and the 1,500-year wake

When Irish ambassador John J Hearne sent a small box of shamrock to the White House for US president Harry Truman on St Patrick’s Day, 1952, he started a trend. Truman was out of town that day, so the ambassador could not deliver it personally.
President Seán T O’Kelly actually pinned a sprig of shamrock on Truman’s successor, Dwight Eisenhower, in 1959.