14. History’s Most Tragic Plague
Deadly as history’s worst floods were, their death toll pales in comparison to the lethality of plagues. Ask most people to name a plague, and the first one that usually comes to mind is the Black Death, history’s most tragic and famous pandemic. Also known by a variety of other names, such as the Great Mortality, the Great Bubonic Plague, the Great Plague, or just plain The Plague, the Black Death ravaged Eurasia in the mid-fourteenth century.
The Black Death peaked in Europe from 1347 to 1351 and killed one-third to two-thirds of Europeans. It took 200 years for the continent’s population to bounce back to pre-plague levels. In some parts of Europe, such as Florence, it took 500 years for the population to return to what it had been before the Black Death. In Eurasia, an estimated 75 million to 250 million people perished in the plague, making the Black Death history’s deadliest pandemic.