The potato famine was the worst catastrophe to befall Europe since the Black Death of 1348. Ireland’s population was literally decimated: one in every eight Irishmen—a million people—died of starvation in three years; thousands of others went blind or insane for lack of the vitamins potatoes had supplied. Because the poor laws made anyone who owned more than a quarter acre of land ineligible for aid, millions of Irish were forced to give up their farms in order to eat; uprooted and desperate, the ones with the energy and wherewithal emigrated to America. Within a decade, Ireland’s population
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