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541 BCE
Plague of Justinian
The Plague of Justinian (541-549 AD) was an epidemic that afflicted the entire Mediterranean Basin, Europe, and the Near East. The disease is named by Byzantine Emperor Justinian I, who contracted the diseases and recovered in 542. The epidemic killed about a fifth of the population in the imperial capital. The contagion arrived in Roman Egypt in 541, spread around the Mediterranean Sea until 544, and persisted in Northern Europe and the Near East and impacted on Eastern Roman society. -
Period: 1347 to 1351
Black Death
The Black Death was a global epidemic of plaque that struck Europe and Asia in 1347 when 12 ships from the Black Sea docked at the Sicilian port of Messina. Most sailors on the ships were dead or alive but ill and covered in black boils that oozed blood and pus. The next five years this plague would kill more than 20 million people in Europe- almost one-third of the continents population. The spread of this disease was transmitted from rodents like rats to humans by the biting of infected fleas. -
Period: 1348 to
Plague of London
After the Black Death there was a new epidemic, 20% of men, women, and children living in the British capital were dead.By early 1500s, England imposed the first laws to isolate the sick and homes that were stricken by the plague were marked with a bale of hay. The Great Plague of 1665 being the worst outbreaks, killing 100,000 Londoners in just 7 months. Public entertainment was banned and victims were forcibly shut into their homes to prevent the spread of the disease. -
1350
Smallpox
Smallpox was around for centuries and was a persistent menace that killed three out of the ten people it infected and left the rest with pockmarked scars. The people in Mexico and the US has zero immunity to smallpox and the virus cut them down by the tens of millions. There hasn't been a kill off in human history to match what happened in the Americas as 90-05 percent on the indigenous population wiped out over a century. Mexico went from 11 million people to 1 million. -
Asian Flu
Starting in Hong Kong and spreading throughout China and then to the US, the Asian flu became widespread in England and in over six months, 14,00 people have died. A second wave followed in early 1958, causing an estimated total of about 1.1 million deaths globally, with 116,00 deaths in the US alone. A vaccine was developed effectively containing the pandemic. -
Cholera
Cholera tore through England and killed tens of thousands. The theory of the disease was spread by foul air known as a "miasma". But the disease was spread and lurked in London's drinking water, a 10 day period chart showed 500 fatal infections surrounding a popular city that was well for drinking water. The removal of a pump handle dried up the infections and improved urban sanitation and protected drinking water. Cholera has been large eradicated but persistent in 4rd world countries -
HIV/AIDS
AIDS destroys a person's immune system and results in eventual death by diseases that the body would usually fight off. Those affected by the HIV virus encounter fever, headache, and enlarged lymph nodes upon infection. This disease is highly infectious to blood and genital fluid, and destroys t-cells. It developed from a chimpanzee virus from West Africa in the 1920s and spread from there to US. 35 million people worldwide have died of AIDS since the discovery. A cure is yet to be found. -
COVID-19 (Coronavirus)
On March 11, 2020, the World Health Organization announced that the COVID-19 virus was officially a pandemic after barreling through 114 countries in three months and infecting over 118,000 people. And the spread wasn’t anywhere near finished. The virus spread beyond Chinese borders to nearly every country in the world. By December 2020, it had infected more than 75 million people and led to more than 1.6 million deaths worldwide. The virus continues to rise a variants of it emerged.