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430
B.C.
During the second year of the Peloponnesian War, Thucydides writes about a disease that is believed to have been the Plague (some scholars believe it was smallpox). He says that it began in Ethiopa and passed through Egypt and Libya before devastating Greece. A third of the population of Athens dies. -
Period: 430 to
Spreading of Bubonic Disease
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540
A.D.
An outbreak of Plague occurs at Pelusium, Egypt -
542
A.D.
Plague reaches Constantinople. -
Jan 1, 1334
It Begins to Spread...
Plague occurs in Constantinople, then spreads throughout Europe. -
Jan 1, 1345
To Russia it Goes...
Plague occurs in the lower Volga River basin. -
Jan 1, 1347
Back Again...
Plague again reaches Constantinople. -
Oct 1, 1347
Fall of 1347
It reaches Alexandria, Cyprus, and Sicily. -
Dec 1, 1347
Winter of 1347
Reaches Italy. -
Jan 1, 1348
The January of 1348...
Reaches France and Germany -
Sep 1, 1348
Here We Go Again...
The Plague reaches London. -
Jan 1, 1349
Will It Ever End...?
The Plague reaches Scotland, Wales, and Ireland. -
May 1, 1349
Norway, Here They Come...
Reaches Norway. -
Jan 1, 1350
Eastern Europe
The plague reaches Eastern Europe. -
Jan 1, 1351
The Plague Reaches...
Reaches Russia. -
Jan 1, 1353
The Decameron
Giovanni Boccaccio finishes writing The Decameron, a fictional narrative that opens with a description of the 1348 outbreak of Black Death in Florence, Italy. -
Great Plague of London
The Great Plague of London begins, with 43 people dying of plague by May. -
6,137 Dead...
6,137 people die by June. -
Dead...
17,036 people die by July. -
31, 159 Dead...
31,159 people die by August. -
The Great Fire...
The Great Fire of London destroys most of the rats and fleas that carry the plague bacillus. -
Central Europe...
The plague devastates central Europe. There is a small outbreak in England - the last outbreak England will ever see. -
Austria...
Plague breaks out in Austria. -
Daniel Defoe...
Daniel Defoe publishes A Journal of the Plague Year, a fictional recounting of the great Plague of London in 1665. -
The Balkans...
The Balkans battle the Plague for two years. -
All Over the World...
A major pandemic, known as the Third Pandemic, begins in China and spreads throughout the world, with China and India affected the most. Overall, this pandemic brings death to more than 12 million people. -
Russia, China, India...
The pandemic flares up again in Russia, China, and India. -
An End Has Come...
The Third Pandemic finally comes to an end. -
Yersinia Pestis...
Working independently, bacteriologists Alexandre Yersin and Shibasaburo Kitasato both isolate the bacterium that causes bubonic Plague. Yersin discovers that rodents are the mode of infection. The bacterium is named Yersinia pestis after Yersin. -
It Has an End...
The pandemic in China and India is over. -
Portugal and Australia...
Outbreaks of Plague occur in Portugal and Australia. -
In Manchuria...
In Manchuria, 60,000 people die due to pneumonic Plague over the course of a year. -
Albert Camus...
Albert Camus publishes The Plague, a novel about a fictional outbreak of plague in Oran, Algeria. -
Summer of 1994...
5,000 cases of pneumonic Plague occur in Surat, India, killing approximately 100 people. -
In September...
Three mice infected with Bubonic Plague disappear from a laboratory at the Public Health Research Institute on the campus of the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey.
