the Great Calamity, the Great Hunger, the Great Starvation, the Irish Famine - a famine in Ireland resulting from a potato blight; between 1846 and 1851 a million people starved to death and 1.6 million emigrated (most to America)
As of 2011, it was the world's largest software maker by revenue, and one of the world's most valuable companies. Microsoft was founded by Paul Allen and Bill Gates on April 4, 1975, to develop and sell BASIC interpreters for the Altair 8800. It rose to dominate the personal computer operating system market with MS-DOS in the mid-1980s, followed by Microsoft Windows.
In August 1977, the company opened their first international office in Japan, called ASCII Microsoft. In 1981, the company incorporated in the state of Washington and became Microsoft Inc. Bill Gates was the President of the Company and the Chairman of the Board, and Paul Allen was the Executive VP.