[XPEHOTPOH]

Why They Dye the Chicago River:
The history of this tradition has quite a bit of blarney in it, but according to organizers, here's roughly how it unfolded.

In 1961 Stephen Bailey was Business Manager of Chicago's Journeymen Plumbers Local Union #110. The union had sponsored Chicago's St. Patrick's Day Parade since 1957.

As the story goes, this was around the time that water pollution controls were first being put into place. One day Bailey ran into a plumber who was using a shamrock green dye to track waste leakage into the river when Bailey had what Oprah might call "an a-ha moment." The river has been dyed ever since.