October 1347Medicine & Health
Black Death Reaches Europe
A third of Europe dies — and the medieval world ends
The bubonic plague pandemic arrived in Europe, eventually killing an estimated 30-60% of the European population.
Europe
Medicine & Health
History of Pandemics
Every plague remade the world — this is how humanity fought back.
3 eventsOctober 1347 — March 11, 2020
Pandemics are civilization's uninvited editors. The Plague of Athens ended the golden age of democracy. The Black Death killed a third of Europe and, in the rubble, seeded the Renaissance. Smallpox conquered the Americas more thoroughly than any army. But humanity learned to fight back — from Jenner's cowpox scratches to the global eradication campaign that wiped smallpox off the Earth. When COVID-19 arrived in 2020, the mRNA vaccines developed in under a year represented the culmination of that centuries-long war between microbe and mind.
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