Today in History: Potatoes first introduced to England
There were other somewhat important things that happened today such as the official end of the Cold War being announced by Gorbechev and Bush and the first human heart transplant but I think we can all agree that potatoes are probably a bigger part of our daily lives.
The year was 1586
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It's hard to imagine this being the case, but England, and the rest of Europe either didn't have potatoes at all or were unaware they were growing under their feet. I'm pretty sure it was the first thing.
They were brought back to England by an astronomer, mathematician, translator, and all around scholar named Sir Thomas Harriot. Just to show that not much has changed about how humans attribute celebrity he was a pioneer in all of those fields and made tremendous advancements in the world of academe... He was also the first person to ever make a somewhat accurate drawing of the moon months before Galileo... so what do we remember him for? Potatoes!
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he wouldn't be known as "Bron" until G.O.T. was released many years later
It's a little embarrassing for the English that Spain had "discovered" the potato nearly 50 years prior and England wasn't even aware of the fact that this had happened. This could have a lot to do with the fact the when the potato first arrived in Spain it was first declared poisonous and later the church was against its consumption (they were pretty religiously sensitive back in 16th century Spain.)
One would presume that something as ubiquitous as the potato is at British dinner-tables would dictate that the kids would at least get a day off school to shoot off some fireworks (or potato canons!) but believe it or not, there are almost no mentions of this achievement at all. It's a bit insulting if you ask me. Dude goes to all that work to bring potatoes all the way back from Colombia, it immediately takes off as a major part of pretty much everyone's diet, and they are just like, "yeah thanks whatever... why don't you go draw some moon pictures or something..."
To be fair there is a lot of grey area about who should really be attributed with introducing the potato to England and some potato history nerds (and yes there really are potato historical societies out there) will argue that it was actually a number of other people but for me anyway, it doesn't really matter - I'm just happy the potato exists and will grow in pretty much any environment.
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Happy potato day to all my friends in the U.K., now let's go get some french fries!
ij scared of this potatoe guy
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I bet early farmers already ate potatoes but hadn't given it a name until the Game of thrones guy finally did. Come to think about it, did the potato asociation speculate who gave it the name? And then we have to find out when tomato came to existence and flag one of them for plagiarism 😑
the suggestion is that it didn't exist in Europe until brought over by Europeans who were flocking to the "new world" .. Tomato must have been in Italy for millions of years or something :P
I pronounced it with my best Italian accent lol
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Than all along... I got that one wrong, I thought is was the Irish LOL....
Potato guns, we had awesome little toys when we were young, jamming a potato into the exhaust of a car (yup when we were young) fun memories, thanks for interesting read @gooddream and Happy Potato Day!
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Oh yeah, that's Bron.
French Fries?? It's chips I'll have you know m'lad here!
i know, i was trying to rope you in.... mission accomplished! :P
LOL :)
Happy Potato Day!
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Mmmm I'll have an order of those fries!
I think the Spanish Inquisition was still a thing in the 16th century, so their religious negativity for the potato and Spain's declaring it poisonous "fits." Was it the church that also declared tomatoes to be poisonous? Someone did.
i don't know but i do know that when one of Chris Columbus' people came back with tobacco that he was imprisoned because of something along the lines of "only the devil could make a man breathe out smoke"... they kept him in jail for 15 years or so too, well after tobacco was already in widespread use.
LOL, that sounds so typical of the people in those times. It must have been horrible, trying to survive under all those ridiculous offenses they made up out of thin air!