When I read the headline I thought this article might be about domestic terrorism in the US. When I clicked on the article I saw it it was in fact about COVID-19.
This is how I test my assumptions.
Think of all commercial food products that contain potatoes that could no longer be produced for a time. Potatoes are a significant source of cattle feed. Potato starch has many non-food industrial applications.
Perhaps we wouldn't have millions of deaths, but a year without potatoes would be an historic catastrophe that Americans would remember for decades.
Much better than a historic catastrophe from which Ireland never repopulated.
To be fair unless you're somehow intune with Europe at that time an average American will not really know how really bad it is (they might have an idea that something bad is happening - but they might described it as mostly targeted attacks to leaders, not knowing about the civilian killings).
Next you'll tell me the average American is unaware of the 7 July bombs on the London Underground, the ETA bombs in Spain, Breivik in Norway or the sarin gas attacks in Tokyo.
Edit: definitely not the Australian city of Docklands (and not any city named Manchester ouside England!)
In the Atlantic parts, sure. But someone saying that others knows the history of Ireland because they knew a drink is a stretch at this point.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/0...
Through the 70’s and 80’s much of the money and many of the guns came directly from the US.
Thatcher, Reagan and to some extent Tom Clancy ended that.
That's part of why I read the BBC for world news.
If you were born after 1990 in America, I am doubtful you have much knowledge of that era at all.
Context is the hard problem in NLP, I guess.