On the 175th anniversary of the start of the Great Hunger, also sometimes referred to as “the Irish Famine,” the Ancient Order of Hibernians (AOH), the largest and oldest Irish Catholic organization in the US, has released a video commemorating this sad event and noting it’s particular relevance against the backdrop of today’s COVID-19 crisis.
As Neil Cosgrove reports in Irish Central, on September 13, 1845, the British publication “The Gardner’s Journal” announced: “We stop the Press with very great regret to announce that the potato murrain [blight] has unequivocally declared itself in Ireland.”
That date is considered the precursor of An Gorta Mor, the “Great Hunger.” Over the next five years, Ireland would lose a quarter of its population, over two million people, to death and starvation.
2020 marks the 175th anniversary of the start of the great hunger.
Read the full report by Neil Cogrove here. The AOH video below can also be watched on YouTube here.
Cover photo: Statues that commemorate Ireland’s Great Hunger in Dublin |
