France banned growing potatoes in 1748, believing they caused leprosy.

1748 · 1772 · apart: 24 years

The Paris Faculty of Medicine declared them edible only in 1772, after Parmentier’s campaign.

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The event

• Parmentier’s potato field1786 · Les Sablons, near Paris. Parmentier came to love potatoes as a prisoner in Prussia and promoted them ever after. Louis XVI gave him a field near Paris; legend says soldiers guarded it by day and left at night so the curious could steal the tubers.

18th century

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