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 eight weeks, Allen and Gates were able to demonstrate their program to MITS, who agreed to distribute and market the product under the name of Altair BASIC. The Altair deal inspired Gates and Allen to form their own software company. Microsoft was started on April 4, 1975, with Bill Gates as the first CEO. On July 29, 1975, Bill Gates used the name Micro-soft in a letter to Paul Allen to refer to their partnership.