Think before you act!
Please just think before you act because actions have consequences; everybody knows that. But the result of one’s doings, is not always what you would expect. That’s what the designer of the boomerang ( and Bill Clinton) learned the hard way…
Actions lead to results, but other actions have had unexpected results too. Share on X This is a tale of the unexpected…
After Columbus discovered America, he and other explorers brought home all these new products, the likes of which Europe had never seen before. Corn, tomatoes/tomato’s, peppers, tobacco, chocolate…you name it. And, of course, the inspiration for Mr. Potato head, the potato.
The story of the potato
Initially, the potato was met with scepsis. People believed they were poisonous and did not want to eat them. But famine occurred quite often in 19th Europe; populations exploded due to better sanitation, new medicines, and growing cities. So, a French nobleman played a trick; he put up a sign, telling people explicitly it was forbidden to eat his potatoes. And knowing man’s taste for all that is forbidden, the villagers, sure enough, broke the “law” before anyone could say quetzlicoatlquadruplicationideologylesson…
That paved the way for the shift from, oatmeal and wheat to potatoes as the main food staple in western Europe.
But in the age before the invention of pesticides, plant diseases (and thus bad harvests, and famine) lay lurking. Changing the diet to potatoes was therefore a disaster waiting to happen. And it did- in Ireland, 1845…
A potato disease resulted in fields of inedible, rotting bulbs. The Irish were starving, but the British government ( who had tons of food in-store) chose in their jolly mindset not to help- Ireland after all, was just a colony, and it was of little consequence to an English landlord when an Irishmen died. To the English, Irishmen were little more than cattle. You could buy a new one the next day…They rather sold their supplies to continental Europe than send them to their subjects. Let us say Live Aid was not a big thing in 1845…
Then this happened
As a result, at least one million Irish died of hunger, and another two million men and women left the green island for faraway coasts. Within five years, Irelands population almost dropped by half, from about 7 million to a mere 4 million.
Many, in fact, most of them, left for America, where they met with an equally indifferent, even dismissive local. It is a little ironic that an American food staple meant to sustain the population drove these people to America. But the real irony is that the Great Famine was commemorated with…a big rock festival in Millstreet, about 240 kilometers south of Dublin. In Ireland, Live Aid came 150 years too late for one million people…
Just another wonderful story. Very similar to “Authenticity!” Enjoy
