England's first permanent American colony nearly starved itself out of existence

Founded in 1607 by the Virginia Company, Jamestown became the first permanent English settlement in the Americas, but it almost didn't survive: disease, poor planning and conflict with the Powhatan nearly wiped out the colonists within its first few years, including a winter so desperate it's remembered as the 'Starving Time.' It outlasted the earlier failed Roanoke colony and set the template, for better and worse, for English colonization of North America.

— Wikipedia contributors, Jamestown, Virginia — Founded 1607