OK, since I have some Irish ancestry I am gonna up the ante. So ...
Potato famine on an Island surrounded by fish and the people starved. . .
dafuq?
Discussion
#truth lol
But I'm more stunned potatoes aren't native to Ireland??? M???? M I CAN'T get over that
https://www.irishstar.com/culture/nostalgia/let-eat-fish-irish-famines-29948764.amp
There was another famine about 100 years before which killed more people percentage wise - the great frost
100 years before the great frost, Cromwell seriously fucked us up:
Total excess deaths for the entire period of the Wars of the Three Kingdoms in Ireland was estimated by Sir William Petty, the 17th century economist, to be 600,000 out of a total Irish population of 1,400,000 in 1641.
Cromwell still reviled in Ireland today
Look up the "Rape of Wexford" , Cromwell and his ilk treated us like animals .
My grandmother, The late great Blanche Hislop, had a lot to say about cromwell and his band of ravagers. Some angry words for the Church of England and their shenanigans too lol
Cromwell is a folk hero in the UK , the victor of the civil war.
Pyrrhic victory at best but in better taste than spotted dick. . . barely
The Rape of Wexford
“Before God's altar fell sacred victims, holy priests of the Lord. Of those who were seized outside the church some were scourged, some thrown into chains and imprisoned, while oth ers were hanged or put to death by cruel tortures. The blood of our noblest citizens was shed so that it inundated the streets. There was hardly a house that was not defiled with carnage and filled with wailing "
- Dr Nicholas French, Bishop of Ferns, writing to the papal nuncio (January 1673)
Cromwell’s soldiers again ran amok in Wexford and their officers seemed incapable of restraining them. Cromwell needed the town for winter quarters, but the sol diers did so much damage to property that the town became uninhabitable. They killed indiscriminately, defenders and civilians alike; priests, monks and nuns were again especially singled out and tortured before being killed. This is borne out in a letter to the papal nuncio writ ten by Dr Nicholas French, the Bishop of Ferns, who was lying ill in a neighbouring town and thus escaped the slaughter: “On that fatal day, October 11th, 1649,1 lost everything I had. Wexford, my native town, then abound ing in merchandise, ships, and wealth, was taken at the sword’s point by that plague of England, Cromwell, and sacked by an infuriated soldiery.”
So basically they shudda ate the rich and took the fish. Am I missing something?
Fishing communities did fare better in the famine for sure, that's well documented, but to feed the entire country would be too industrious a task for that period, quite simply not possible.