Synonyms for The Irish Famine (same or very similar meaning)
WordNet sense 1 (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)):
the Great Calamity, the Great Hunger, the Great StarvationFrom the ODE community, based on WordNetadd/edit