Tuesday, May. 31, 2011
Rats
There is nothing appealing about rats. But what is usually just a gross, dirty, fairly harmless species became deadly in the 14th century, when it helped spread the Black Death throughout much of Europe and parts of Asia. The pandemic's most devastating moment was a four-year spell between 1347 and 1351 that, according to some estimates, wiped out as much as two-thirds of Europe's population. The plague would recur in subsequent decades and is believed to have killed roughly 100 million people worldwide in the space of some 200 years.