The History of the Potato in Ireland

The word potato was written down for the first time in English in 1565. The final vowel sound is rendered as O and not a, even in this first recorded use of the word in English. A fungus devastated the potato crops in Ireland in the mid-1800s, leading to what became known as the potato famine. Out of a total Irish population of around 8 million people, about a million starved, and about another million fled the country,. most of them going to North America.