Black Plague
... But what about 650 years ago… When a terrible disease, known as the Black Death, threatened to kill one third of Europe’s population in less than three years. ... The Black Death killed people so fast, it has been said “people ate lunch with their friends and dinner with their ancestors in paradise”. In fact, the Black Death, also known as the bubonic plague, was one of the worst and most deadly diseases of the Middle Ages. There are many opinions about where the Black Death came from. But most historians believe that the Black Death started in China. In the early 1330s, an outbreak of deadly bubonic plague occurred in China. Plague mainly affects rodents, but fleas can transmit the disease to people. Since China was one of the busiest trading nations, it was only a matter of time before the outbreak of the plague in China spread to western Asia and Europe. In October 1347, several Italian merchant ships returned from a trip to the Black Sea, one of the key links in trade with China.