Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
The Black Death was a bubonic plague pandemic that occurred in Europe from 1346 to 1353. It was one of the most fatal pandemics in human history; as many as 50 million people [2] perished, perhaps 50% of Europe's 14th century population. [3] The disease is caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis and spread by fleas and through the air.
For years it was common for Europeans to assume that the Black Death originated in China. Charles Creighton, in his History of Epidemics in Britain (1891), summarizes the tendency to retrospectively describe the origins of the Black Death in China despite lack of evidence for it: "In that nebulous and unsatisfactory state the old tradition of the Black Death originating in China has remained ...
The Black Death reached Northern Germany in the early summer of 1350 when it arrived in Magdeburg, Halberstadt, Lübeck and Hamburg. The plague appears to have reached the Northern port cities in different time periods, likely because it was spread by sea rather than land: the inland cities of Northern Germany, significantly, were affected at a ...
the second plague pandemic from ~1331 to ~1855, spreading from Central Asia to the Mediterranean and Europe (starting with the Black Death), and probably also to China [3] the third plague pandemic from 1855 to 1960, spreading from China to various places around the world, notably India and the West Coast of the United States. [4]
The Black Death was present in Italy between 1347–1348. [1] Sicily and the Italian Peninsula was the first area in then Catholic Western Europe to be reached by the bubonic plague pandemic known as the Black Death, which reached the region by an Italian ship from the Crimea which landed in Messina in Sicily in October 1347. [1]
One of the worst plagues in history, the Black Death arrived on the shores of Europe in 1347. Five years later, around 25 to 50 million people were dead across the continent.
A plague doctor and his typical apparel during the 17th century. The second plague pandemic was a major series of epidemics of plague that started with the Black Death, which reached medieval Europe in 1346 and killed up to half of the population of Eurasia in the next four years.
Figures for the death toll vary widely by area and from source to source, and estimates are frequently revised as historical research brings new discoveries to light. Most scholars estimate that the Black Death killed up to 75 million people [5] in the 14th century, at a time when the entire world population was still less than 500 million.