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0 Fascinating Facts About Pawn Shops
by Mike Devlin
fact checked by Jamie Frater
For years, pawnshops have held an ugly stigma as the last refuge of the impoverished, taking advantage of people at their most desperate. But after the economic collapse of 2008, the traffic into pawnshops has increased considerably, with middle class and even wealthy folks being forced to trade in their valuables for loans. The following year, the History Channel debuted Pawn Stars, a reality-style TV show detailing the misadventures of a shop in Las Vegas. It quickly became the network’s biggest hit and spawned a host of imitators. Today, the industry is thriving, albeit often misunderstood.
10
Stolen Items140048578
One of the biggest risk a pawnbroker takes upon buying or pawning an item is that it is actually stolen property. There’s no way to determine whether a watch or a television is stolen by appearance alone, and that is why a pawnbroker must make a careful record of his purchases, requiring customers to provide identification (and even fingerprints in some cases) to prevent “fencing.”The pawnshop frequently turns in a list of the merchandise and its attendant serial numbers to police, who check it against reports of stolen goods. The pawnbroker is required to keep all merchandise for a set period of days (typically two or three months) before selling it, not only to give the person who pawned his valuables a good faith chance to purchase them back, but for police to investigate any shady transactions.
9
Queen Isabella And Christopher Columbus134101164For many years, history books reported that Christopher Columbus’s first journey to the New World in 1492 was funded by Queen Isabella of Spain, who allegedly pawned her crown jewels to raise the capital. That notion has since been debunked; by the time Columbus was ready to set sail, Isabella had already pawned most of her jewels, including a pearl and ruby necklace that had been given to her by King Ferdinand as a wedding gift and the crown of Castile. She gave them to the merchants of Valenica and Barcelona to pay for the campaign against the Moors and to fund the Spanish Inquisition.
It’s believed that Isabella may have pledged some of her smaller pieces to Columbus and that this endorsement actually brought other investors calling, such as the Santa Hermandad police organization, which provided most of the funding for the Nina, the Pinta, and the Santa María to cross the Atlantic.
8
Pawn Stars
178878114History Channel’s Pawn Stars is probably the best thing that ever happened to the pawn industry. The show, which features three generations of the Harrison family (along with bumbling sidekick Chumlee) operating Las Vegas’s Gold & Silver Pawn Shop, is an appealing melange of humor and traffic in bizarre, exorbitant merchandise. Episodes have shown owners trying to sell or pawn cannons, a Batmobile replica, and even a cigar box that belonged to John F. Kennedy (the most expensive item for sale in the shop at $125,000).Like most reality shows, much of Pawn Stars is staged and scripted for dramatic effect. Breaks from real-life include guest stars “randomly” appearing to make purchases, the frequent calls to experts, and even the presence of the main cast members, who can no longer work the counters due to privacy laws (their fame is such that people are constantly taking pictures of them, compromising the discretion of customers).
7
The Patron Saint Of Pawnbrokers156868882While pawnshops might be seen by some as a symbol of mankind’s greed, the patron saint of pawnbrokers maintains a legacy as one of the most generous human beings to have ever walked the earth. Saint Nicholas was known for his benevolence. In one instance, he rescued the three daughters of a poor man from becoming prostitutes by giving him three bags of gold to provide dowry for them to be married, hurling the sacks through a window at night.Some versions indicate that Nicholas dropped the bags off one at a time over three consecutive nights. On the third night, the man attempted to discover the identity of his mysterious benefactor, but Nicholas was shrewd and dropped the bag down the chimney. This story was modified a bit (throwing in reindeer and swapping the gold for toys) to create the beloved legend of Santa Claus. Others who fall under Saint Nicholas’s patronage include repentant thieves, the falsely accused, children, and pharmacists.
6
High-End Pawnshops122414307Most pawnshops cater to people who trade in a necklace or ring for a few bucks to pay a bill or make rent, but in recent years, a new trend has emerged. Collateral lenders (a fancy euphemism for high-end pawnshops) cater to typically wealthy, cash-poor clientele who need a quick influx of capital. Often, the money is needed to open up a new business or make payroll during a lean month. Loans can range into the tens of thousands or up to a million dollars, and collateral can include things like exotic sports cars, priceless artwork, and the kind of jewelry normal people might only see behind glass at a museum. Interest rates for loans of this caliber are often insane—in the state of Texas, collateral lenders are legally allowed to charge 240 percent a year.
5
The Wes Welker Butterfingers Incident78457163When the New York Giants met the New England Patriots in Super Bowl XLVI, no one gave the underdog Giants much of a chance. The Giants had beaten the Patriots in a Super Bowl four years previously, but many considered it a fluke; the Patriots were out for revenge. But late in the fourth quarter, with a chance to put the game out of reach, the Patriots’ wide receiver (Wes Welker) missed an easy catch. The Giants would go on to win. Welker was devastated by the incident, appearing near tears in the post-game interview.Smelling the kind of marketing opportunity born of controversy, Pawngo.com, the US’s first online pawnshop, went to Copley Square in Boston and dumped 400 kilograms (900 lbs) of Butterfinger bars on the ground. Over the pile of candy bars, the company left a placard that read “Thank You Wes Welker.” Unsurprisingly, this stunt didn’t go over well, and Pawngo’s CEO was forced to backpedal and issue an apology. The company was also slapped with a fine for violating Boston’s commercial dumping ordinances.
4
The Item Most Often Pawned111912121Most pawnshops will take anything of value (though some operate on a specialty basis, doing trade only in musical instruments, tools, or firearms). Electronics like televisions, video games, and latops are popular items to hock, but customers are often dismayed by the low returns they get. Simply put, gadgets are constantly evolving, and last year’s toy is worth pennies on the dollar you paid for it. Knowledgeable customers will also typically bypass items like used computers, which may come with problems that are not initially apparent.The majority of items pawned are jewelry. Gold, silver, and precious gems have intrinsic value by virtue of weight and quality. A pawnbroker will always be conscious of their fluctuating values. Moreover, pieces of jewelry often have sentimental value, ensuring that the customer will come back to retrieve them and make his interest payments.
3
The Pawn Symbol123347823The international pawn symbol is that of three gold spheres hanging from a bar. There are several competing theories on the origin of this symbol. Some tie it to the infamous Medici dynasty, a family of monarchs, bankers, and even Popes. The legend was that an early member of the clan killed a giant with three bags of rocks, hence the spheres. Merchants attributed this symbol with prosperity and adopted it as their own, hanging it outside their shops. Others claim the three spheres are symbolic of the aforementioned story of Saint Nicholas and his three sacks of gold. Today, those in the industry joke that the three spheres mean “Two to one, you won’t get your stuff back.”
2
Reclaiming Merchandise166181553While it would seem that those desperate enough to pawn something as dear to them as an engagement ring are probably unlikely to ever recover it, but according to the National Pawn Brokers Association, an average of 80 percent of goods are eventually reclaimed. The majority of transactions in pawnshops are conducted by repeat customers, frequently pawning and reclaiming the same item over and over again. This is good business for the pawnbroker, who can reap continual interest payments with a greater confidence the customer will make good on them. However, in some economically disadvantaged areas, the reclaim rate has fallen to as little as 50 percent.
1
Pop Goes The Weasel77746991“Pop Goes The Weasel” is a melody dating as far back as the mid-19th century—if not older. It’s one of the most popular songs played by jack-in-the-box toys. There are dozens of different lyrics to the song, all of them united by the final line “Pop! goes the weasel.” No one seems to know exactly what the phrase means, though one verse in a British version of the song seems to indicate that it may be tied to pawn:Up and down the City Road
In and out the Eagle
That’s the way the money goes
Pop! goes the weasel.Dissecting this verse, “The Eagle” means London’s historic Eagle Pub and subsequently blowing through all of one’s money there. The “weasel” has been assumed to be Cockney slang for a coat, thus the song refers to having to pawn one’s coat after spending too much on alcohol.Mike Devlin is an aspiring novelist.
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0 Fascinating Facts About Pawn Shops
by Mike Devlin
fact checked by Jamie Frater
For years, pawnshops have held an ugly stigma as the last refuge of the impoverished, taking advantage of people at their most desperate. But after the economic collapse of 2008, the traffic into pawnshops has increased considerably, with middle class and even wealthy folks being forced to trade in their valuables for loans. The following year, the History Channel debuted Pawn Stars, a reality-style TV show detailing the misadventures of a shop in Las Vegas. It quickly became the network’s biggest hit and spawned a host of imitators. Today, the industry is thriving, albeit often misunderstood.
10
Stolen Items140048578
One of the biggest risk a pawnbroker takes upon buying or pawning an item is that it is actually stolen property. There’s no way to determine whether a watch or a television is stolen by appearance alone, and that is why a pawnbroker must make a careful record of his purchases, requiring customers to provide identification (and even fingerprints in some cases) to prevent “fencing.”The pawnshop frequently turns in a list of the merchandise and its attendant serial numbers to police, who check it against reports of stolen goods. The pawnbroker is required to keep all merchandise for a set period of days (typically two or three months) before selling it, not only to give the person who pawned his valuables a good faith chance to purchase them back, but for police to investigate any shady transactions.
9
Queen Isabella And Christopher Columbus134101164For many years, history books reported that Christopher Columbus’s first journey to the New World in 1492 was funded by Queen Isabella of Spain, who allegedly pawned her crown jewels to raise the capital. That notion has since been debunked; by the time Columbus was ready to set sail, Isabella had already pawned most of her jewels, including a pearl and ruby necklace that had been given to her by King Ferdinand as a wedding gift and the crown of Castile. She gave them to the merchants of Valenica and Barcelona to pay for the campaign against the Moors and to fund the Spanish Inquisition.
It’s believed that Isabella may have pledged some of her smaller pieces to Columbus and that this endorsement actually brought other investors calling, such as the Santa Hermandad police organization, which provided most of the funding for the Nina, the Pinta, and the Santa María to cross the Atlantic.
8
Pawn Stars
178878114History Channel’s Pawn Stars is probably the best thing that ever happened to the pawn industry. The show, which features three generations of the Harrison family (along with bumbling sidekick Chumlee) operating Las Vegas’s Gold & Silver Pawn Shop, is an appealing melange of humor and traffic in bizarre, exorbitant merchandise. Episodes have shown owners trying to sell or pawn cannons, a Batmobile replica, and even a cigar box that belonged to John F. Kennedy (the most expensive item for sale in the shop at $125,000).Like most reality shows, much of Pawn Stars is staged and scripted for dramatic effect. Breaks from real-life include guest stars “randomly” appearing to make purchases, the frequent calls to experts, and even the presence of the main cast members, who can no longer work the counters due to privacy laws (their fame is such that people are constantly taking pictures of them, compromising the discretion of customers).
7
The Patron Saint Of Pawnbrokers156868882While pawnshops might be seen by some as a symbol of mankind’s greed, the patron saint of pawnbrokers maintains a legacy as one of the most generous human beings to have ever walked the earth. Saint Nicholas was known for his benevolence. In one instance, he rescued the three daughters of a poor man from becoming prostitutes by giving him three bags of gold to provide dowry for them to be married, hurling the sacks through a window at night.Some versions indicate that Nicholas dropped the bags off one at a time over three consecutive nights. On the third night, the man attempted to discover the identity of his mysterious benefactor, but Nicholas was shrewd and dropped the bag down the chimney. This story was modified a bit (throwing in reindeer and swapping the gold for toys) to create the beloved legend of Santa Claus. Others who fall under Saint Nicholas’s patronage include repentant thieves, the falsely accused, children, and pharmacists.
6
High-End Pawnshops122414307Most pawnshops cater to people who trade in a necklace or ring for a few bucks to pay a bill or make rent, but in recent years, a new trend has emerged. Collateral lenders (a fancy euphemism for high-end pawnshops) cater to typically wealthy, cash-poor clientele who need a quick influx of capital. Often, the money is needed to open up a new business or make payroll during a lean month. Loans can range into the tens of thousands or up to a million dollars, and collateral can include things like exotic sports cars, priceless artwork, and the kind of jewelry normal people might only see behind glass at a museum. Interest rates for loans of this caliber are often insane—in the state of Texas, collateral lenders are legally allowed to charge 240 percent a year.
5
The Wes Welker Butterfingers Incident78457163When the New York Giants met the New England Patriots in Super Bowl XLVI, no one gave the underdog Giants much of a chance. The Giants had beaten the Patriots in a Super Bowl four years previously, but many considered it a fluke; the Patriots were out for revenge. But late in the fourth quarter, with a chance to put the game out of reach, the Patriots’ wide receiver (Wes Welker) missed an easy catch. The Giants would go on to win. Welker was devastated by the incident, appearing near tears in the post-game interview.Smelling the kind of marketing opportunity born of controversy, Pawngo.com, the US’s first online pawnshop, went to Copley Square in Boston and dumped 400 kilograms (900 lbs) of Butterfinger bars on the ground. Over the pile of candy bars, the company left a placard that read “Thank You Wes Welker.” Unsurprisingly, this stunt didn’t go over well, and Pawngo’s CEO was forced to backpedal and issue an apology. The company was also slapped with a fine for violating Boston’s commercial dumping ordinances.
4
The Item Most Often Pawned111912121Most pawnshops will take anything of value (though some operate on a specialty basis, doing trade only in musical instruments, tools, or firearms). Electronics like televisions, video games, and latops are popular items to hock, but customers are often dismayed by the low returns they get. Simply put, gadgets are constantly evolving, and last year’s toy is worth pennies on the dollar you paid for it. Knowledgeable customers will also typically bypass items like used computers, which may come with problems that are not initially apparent.The majority of items pawned are jewelry. Gold, silver, and precious gems have intrinsic value by virtue of weight and quality. A pawnbroker will always be conscious of their fluctuating values. Moreover, pieces of jewelry often have sentimental value, ensuring that the customer will come back to retrieve them and make his interest payments.
3
The Pawn Symbol123347823The international pawn symbol is that of three gold spheres hanging from a bar. There are several competing theories on the origin of this symbol. Some tie it to the infamous Medici dynasty, a family of monarchs, bankers, and even Popes. The legend was that an early member of the clan killed a giant with three bags of rocks, hence the spheres. Merchants attributed this symbol with prosperity and adopted it as their own, hanging it outside their shops. Others claim the three spheres are symbolic of the aforementioned story of Saint Nicholas and his three sacks of gold. Today, those in the industry joke that the three spheres mean “Two to one, you won’t get your stuff back.”
2
Reclaiming Merchandise166181553While it would seem that those desperate enough to pawn something as dear to them as an engagement ring are probably unlikely to ever recover it, but according to the National Pawn Brokers Association, an average of 80 percent of goods are eventually reclaimed. The majority of transactions in pawnshops are conducted by repeat customers, frequently pawning and reclaiming the same item over and over again. This is good business for the pawnbroker, who can reap continual interest payments with a greater confidence the customer will make good on them. However, in some economically disadvantaged areas, the reclaim rate has fallen to as little as 50 percent.
1
Pop Goes The Weasel77746991“Pop Goes The Weasel” is a melody dating as far back as the mid-19th century—if not older. It’s one of the most popular songs played by jack-in-the-box toys. There are dozens of different lyrics to the song, all of them united by the final line “Pop! goes the weasel.” No one seems to know exactly what the phrase means, though one verse in a British version of the song seems to indicate that it may be tied to pawn:Up and down the City Road
In and out the Eagle
That’s the way the money goes
Pop! goes the weasel.Dissecting this verse, “The Eagle” means London’s historic Eagle Pub and subsequently blowing through all of one’s money there. The “weasel” has been assumed to be Cockney slang for a coat, thus the song refers to having to pawn one’s coat after spending too much on alcohol.Mike Devlin is an aspiring novelist.
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0 Fascinating Facts About Pawn Shops
by Mike Devlin
fact checked by Jamie Frater
For years, pawnshops have held an ugly stigma as the last refuge of the impoverished, taking advantage of people at their most desperate. But after the economic collapse of 2008, the traffic into pawnshops has increased considerably, with middle class and even wealthy folks being forced to trade in their valuables for loans. The following year, the History Channel debuted Pawn Stars, a reality-style TV show detailing the misadventures of a shop in Las Vegas. It quickly became the network’s biggest hit and spawned a host of imitators. Today, the industry is thriving, albeit often misunderstood.
10
Stolen Items140048578
One of the biggest risk a pawnbroker takes upon buying or pawning an item is that it is actually stolen property. There’s no way to determine whether a watch or a television is stolen by appearance alone, and that is why a pawnbroker must make a careful record of his purchases, requiring customers to provide identification (and even fingerprints in some cases) to prevent “fencing.”The pawnshop frequently turns in a list of the merchandise and its attendant serial numbers to police, who check it against reports of stolen goods. The pawnbroker is required to keep all merchandise for a set period of days (typically two or three months) before selling it, not only to give the person who pawned his valuables a good faith chance to purchase them back, but for police to investigate any shady transactions.
9
Queen Isabella And Christopher Columbus134101164For many years, history books reported that Christopher Columbus’s first journey to the New World in 1492 was funded by Queen Isabella of Spain, who allegedly pawned her crown jewels to raise the capital. That notion has since been debunked; by the time Columbus was ready to set sail, Isabella had already pawned most of her jewels, including a pearl and ruby necklace that had been given to her by King Ferdinand as a wedding gift and the crown of Castile. She gave them to the merchants of Valenica and Barcelona to pay for the campaign against the Moors and to fund the Spanish Inquisition.
It’s believed that Isabella may have pledged some of her smaller pieces to Columbus and that this endorsement actually brought other investors calling, such as the Santa Hermandad police organization, which provided most of the funding for the Nina, the Pinta, and the Santa María to cross the Atlantic.
8
Pawn Stars
178878114History Channel’s Pawn Stars is probably the best thing that ever happened to the pawn industry. The show, which features three generations of the Harrison family (along with bumbling sidekick Chumlee) operating Las Vegas’s Gold & Silver Pawn Shop, is an appealing melange of humor and traffic in bizarre, exorbitant merchandise. Episodes have shown owners trying to sell or pawn cannons, a Batmobile replica, and even a cigar box that belonged to John F. Kennedy (the most expensive item for sale in the shop at $125,000).Like most reality shows, much of Pawn Stars is staged and scripted for dramatic effect. Breaks from real-life include guest stars “randomly” appearing to make purchases, the frequent calls to experts, and even the presence of the main cast members, who can no longer work the counters due to privacy laws (their fame is such that people are constantly taking pictures of them, compromising the discretion of customers).
7
The Patron Saint Of Pawnbrokers156868882While pawnshops might be seen by some as a symbol of mankind’s greed, the patron saint of pawnbrokers maintains a legacy as one of the most generous human beings to have ever walked the earth. Saint Nicholas was known for his benevolence. In one instance, he rescued the three daughters of a poor man from becoming prostitutes by giving him three bags of gold to provide dowry for them to be married, hurling the sacks through a window at night.Some versions indicate that Nicholas dropped the bags off one at a time over three consecutive nights. On the third night, the man attempted to discover the identity of his mysterious benefactor, but Nicholas was shrewd and dropped the bag down the chimney. This story was modified a bit (throwing in reindeer and swapping the gold for toys) to create the beloved legend of Santa Claus. Others who fall under Saint Nicholas’s patronage include repentant thieves, the falsely accused, children, and pharmacists.
6
High-End Pawnshops122414307Most pawnshops cater to people who trade in a necklace or ring for a few bucks to pay a bill or make rent, but in recent years, a new trend has emerged. Collateral lenders (a fancy euphemism for high-end pawnshops) cater to typically wealthy, cash-poor clientele who need a quick influx of capital. Often, the money is needed to open up a new business or make payroll during a lean month. Loans can range into the tens of thousands or up to a million dollars, and collateral can include things like exotic sports cars, priceless artwork, and the kind of jewelry normal people might only see behind glass at a museum. Interest rates for loans of this caliber are often insane—in the state of Texas, collateral lenders are legally allowed to charge 240 percent a year.
5
The Wes Welker Butterfingers Incident78457163When the New York Giants met the New England Patriots in Super Bowl XLVI, no one gave the underdog Giants much of a chance. The Giants had beaten the Patriots in a Super Bowl four years previously, but many considered it a fluke; the Patriots were out for revenge. But late in the fourth quarter, with a chance to put the game out of reach, the Patriots’ wide receiver (Wes Welker) missed an easy catch. The Giants would go on to win. Welker was devastated by the incident, appearing near tears in the post-game interview.Smelling the kind of marketing opportunity born of controversy, Pawngo.com, the US’s first online pawnshop, went to Copley Square in Boston and dumped 400 kilograms (900 lbs) of Butterfinger bars on the ground. Over the pile of candy bars, the company left a placard that read “Thank You Wes Welker.” Unsurprisingly, this stunt didn’t go over well, and Pawngo’s CEO was forced to backpedal and issue an apology. The company was also slapped with a fine for violating Boston’s commercial dumping ordinances.
4
The Item Most Often Pawned111912121Most pawnshops will take anything of value (though some operate on a specialty basis, doing trade only in musical instruments, tools, or firearms). Electronics like televisions, video games, and latops are popular items to hock, but customers are often dismayed by the low returns they get. Simply put, gadgets are constantly evolving, and last year’s toy is worth pennies on the dollar you paid for it. Knowledgeable customers will also typically bypass items like used computers, which may come with problems that are not initially apparent.The majority of items pawned are jewelry. Gold, silver, and precious gems have intrinsic value by virtue of weight and quality. A pawnbroker will always be conscious of their fluctuating values. Moreover, pieces of jewelry often have sentimental value, ensuring that the customer will come back to retrieve them and make his interest payments.
3
The Pawn Symbol123347823The international pawn symbol is that of three gold spheres hanging from a bar. There are several competing theories on the origin of this symbol. Some tie it to the infamous Medici dynasty, a family of monarchs, bankers, and even Popes. The legend was that an early member of the clan killed a giant with three bags of rocks, hence the spheres. Merchants attributed this symbol with prosperity and adopted it as their own, hanging it outside their shops. Others claim the three spheres are symbolic of the aforementioned story of Saint Nicholas and his three sacks of gold. Today, those in the industry joke that the three spheres mean “Two to one, you won’t get your stuff back.”
2
Reclaiming Merchandise166181553While it would seem that those desperate enough to pawn something as dear to them as an engagement ring are probably unlikely to ever recover it, but according to the National Pawn Brokers Association, an average of 80 percent of goods are eventually reclaimed. The majority of transactions in pawnshops are conducted by repeat customers, frequently pawning and reclaiming the same item over and over again. This is good business for the pawnbroker, who can reap continual interest payments with a greater confidence the customer will make good on them. However, in some economically disadvantaged areas, the reclaim rate has fallen to as little as 50 percent.
1
Pop Goes The Weasel77746991“Pop Goes The Weasel” is a melody dating as far back as the mid-19th century—if not older. It’s one of the most popular songs played by jack-in-the-box toys. There are dozens of different lyrics to the song, all of them united by the final line “Pop! goes the weasel.” No one seems to know exactly what the phrase means, though one verse in a British version of the song seems to indicate that it may be tied to pawn:Up and down the City Road
In and out the Eagle
That’s the way the money goes
Pop! goes the weasel.Dissecting this verse, “The Eagle” means London’s historic Eagle Pub and subsequently blowing through all of one’s money there. The “weasel” has been assumed to be Cockney slang for a coat, thus the song refers to having to pawn one’s coat after spending too much on alcohol.Mike Devlin is an aspiring novelist.
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ISTORY | DECEMBER 13, 2018
10 Of Human History’s Most Atrocious Plagues
by Joe Duncan
fact checked by Jamie Frater
The entire span of human history has been an arms race of survival adaptations against diseases which seem to be out to completely destroy us, both as individual organisms and as a collective species. Every time we come up with a new technique to combat various communicable diseases, the pathogens responsible change and mutate, becoming better-adapted to our weapons against them. Such is the way of all of life. Theorists are even now drawing comparisons to this dynamic to describe crime, wherein criminals adopt new methods of lawbreaking, only to again be outdone by advances in law enforcement.[1]Life is constantly striving to outdo and overcome itself. With this in mind, there have been some pretty brutal plagues which have threatened entire civilizations on many occasions. The term “plague” is used generally here to mean any sort of pathogen which devastated a large portion of a human population, though many of the following entries, in fact, involve the plague you’re thinking of. Here are ten of the most atrocious plagues in human history, what they were, and what happened.
10
Prehistoric Plague

A great plague was believed to have happened around 100,000 years ago, during the Paleolithic period, and is thought to have reduced the numbers of humans drastically, specifically killing the very young. It’s believed that this epidemic dropped the human population Africa to less than 10,000 people, which, in a short, brutal, prehistoric world, isn’t very many.Researchers reached this conclusion by isolating two specific genes which make apes less susceptible to some pretty brutal illnesses. In humans, one gene is gone, and the other is now nonfunctional.[2] After the end of the pandemic, Homo sapiens thrived and spread rapidly, and this genetic change may have helped by lowering their susceptibility to certain diseases.
9
Sweden
Photo credit: Karl-Goran Sjogren/University of Gothenburg
Extremely recent studies of mass grave sites in caves in Sweden have uncovered many bodies but have also unearthed something quite terrifying: the oldest-known strain of the plague—as in the actual Black Plague, Yersinia pestis, the bacteria which wiped out much of medieval Europe in several waves. It is thought to have struck long before the historical plagues we know of, and finding it on 5,000-year-old bodies in Sweden gives that idea some serious credibility.While the first known massive Y. pestis outbreak was the Justinian Plague, which brought the Byzantine Empire to its knees in AD 541 and continued to strike relentlessly for 200 more years, killing over 25 million people, we know it was around disrupting human societies long, long before that. Around 5,000 to 6,000 years ago, we know that human populations took a sharp decline for some reason.[3] Researchers are now beginning to think they have the culprit—the very first Black Plague.
The bacteria is still around today—so why isn’t it anywhere near as deadly as the one that practically wiped out the remainder of the Roman Empire, or the 14th-century plague that killed as much as 60 percent of the population of Europe? Adaptation. Humans have adapted ways to fight it off since. Right now, the discovery in Sweden is the oldest strain of Y. pestis we’ve found; there might be more out there, resting in the earth.
8
Athens
Photo credit: Michiel Sweerts
Athens was struck hard by a mysterious pathogen between the years of 430 and 427 BC. Known as the Plague of Athens, the epidemic greatly disrupted their efforts in the Peloponnesian War.[4] This plague is detailed in the famous work, the History of the Peloponnesian War, which tells of the disease wiping out more than one third of the Athenian population at the time. Thucydides, the author, described the symptoms of this brutal plague in great detail, with violent coughing, retching, and convulsions being some of the items on the list.Researchers still aren’t exactly sure what the Plague of Athens was, but scholars in the various sciences have speculated it was possibly measles, smallpox, or a few other diseases. While we may not know the exact strain of pathogen that struck, we definitely know it did a considerable, horrifying amount of damage to the Athenian population. Though it’s surrounded in ambiguity, whatever this mean bug was is thought to have contributed greatly to the downfall of classical Greece.
7
The Antonine Plague
Starting in AD 165, the Roman Empire was rocked by a viciously brutal plague that was a dark, ominous cloud, foreshadowing things to come. Many scholars believe this outbreak to have been a case of smallpox. Whatever it was, it definitely rocked the sturdy empire at its foundations and ultimately altered the course of history. The Antonine Plague was so bad that at its height, it was killing up to 2,000 people per day in the ancient empire, and anywhere from seven to ten percent of the Roman population did not survive.The outstretched Roman army, who lived in close quarters as they marched across Europe, was hit particularly hard, affecting Rome’s military might and ultimately contributing to a later scaling back of the empire. This also altered the tightness of the people, as they grew distant and apart, much like later plagues would also cause in various societies, especially medieval Europe. This epidemic paved the way for the Germanic cultures to take a foothold and ultimately would lead to the inevitable decline of the Roman Empire. In failing physical and economic health, Rome was in serious trouble, all thanks to a plague that ravaged its population.[5]
6
The Byzantine Empire
Photo credit: Medievalists.net
Remember that first surfacing of the bubonic plague we mentioned earlier that brought the Byzantine Empire to its knees? It was brutal. It was very brutal. The Byzantine Empire is actually just really another name for the Eastern Roman Empire at the time period, and the Byzantines, while they spoke Greek and were based out of Constantinople, were still very much the Roman Empire and referred to themselves as such.Often referred to as the Plague of Justinian for its taking place during the reign of Emperor Justinian I, this plague hit Constantinople, the heart of the empire, in 541 and then spread outward over the course of the next year to reach the full outskirts of the Roman Empire.[5] At this time, Justinian was really starting to rebuild the Roman Empire and was making headway in military campaigns in the West in attempts to reclaim the glory of Rome. This plague stopped those efforts dead in their tracks.In an ominous foreshadowing of what was to hit Europe centuries later, this plague, too, was brought through trade, mainly being carried and transmitted by fleas on rats. But it didn’t stop there and wasn’t limited to only the Eastern Roman Empire. The plague soon spread further to the various feudal states which had taken a foothold in Europe after the collapse of the western half of the Roman Empire. This plague ravaged Europe entirely and killed at least 25 million people. That’s a powerful pathogen.One thing was for certain at this point of human history: Expanding trade routes and greater transportation technologies had their downfalls and brought with them millions upon millions of deaths. They would bring many more.
5
Medieval Europe
Photo credit: Pierart dou Tielt
Then came the Black Death, the Great Plague. This plague began in China in 1334, and like the Plague of Justinian, it spread to Europe through trade routes. This plague was out for death, and no one could stop it. The ravaging bubonic death toll would reach peak heights in 1348 in Europe, after having traveled yet again through the Byzantine Empire, up the trade routes, and into the bloodstreams of Europe. This plague was so brutal and unrelenting that it would go on to wipe out up to 60 percent of all of Europe at the time.[7]This changed the European outlook greatly. Fewer and fewer people relied on prayer and began opening their minds to other things. The culture greatly adapted, and much of our great art came from the period which followed.
4
America
Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons
Then came the disease epidemics of the Americas. Smallpox first arrived in the colonies of Florida, Carolina, and Virginia in 1519 and devastated the native population after being brought by the colonizing Europeans.[8] It reached Massachusetts in 1633. Due to the fact that the so-called New and Old Worlds were so far removed, the Native Americans had little, if any, immune resistance to the viruses of Europe, like measles, plague, and especially smallpox.Smallpox was particularly brutal and spread to Central and South America as well, greatly infecting the Aztec Empire. In just 100 years, half the time of the Plague of Justinian, it wiped out 90 percent of the Aztec population, a drop from 17 million people to only 1.3 million. These diseases killed so many that only an estimated 530,000 Native Americans were left alive by 1900. This makes the American plagues some of the worst of recorded human history.
3
The Modern Plague
Photo credit: CDC/Larry Stauffer, Oregon State Public Health Laboratory
The so-called Modern Plague occurred in China, beginning in or around 1860, and was yet again another brutal epidemic that you don’t hear about much in history books. It hit Hong Kong in 1894. This plague would strike for still another 20 years, killing around ten million people.[9] This brutal outbreak would spread to India as well.During this latest plague, however, science isolated the cause, namely the fleas that traveled on rats, usually from ships or trade, which would bite and transfer the bacteria. It became possible to treat the disease and even prevent future outbreaks.
2
Polio
Photo credit: CDC/Charles Farmer
Polio hit, and polio hit hard, and there are still people alive today who remember the epidemic. Poliomyelitis is caused by the poliovirus, which aggressively attacks the human nervous system, causing all sorts of horrifying results, and has killed a lot of people, especially striking children under the age of five years old.The epidemic hit its worst in the United States in 1952, as doctors sought every and any method to treat and cure the disease.[10] In 1933, there were 5,000 known cases of paralytic polio in the United States, and by 1952, that number had jumped to 59,000, well over tenfold. Polio was finally stopped by the development of two vaccines against it.
1
HIV
Photo credit: CDC/C. Goldsmith, P. Feorino, E.L. Palmer, W.R. McManus
HIV is seemingly the last massive epidemic to strike planet Earth, or it is for now, anyway. It hit hard and became widespread by the mid-1980s. As early as 1981, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) in the United States began publishing pieces and keeping an eye on a spreading virus that was taking lives.[11] This infection was opportunistic and struck the gay community particularly hard. By June 16, 1981, the stage was set as the first man with AIDS, a 35-year-old gay Caucasian, stepped into a doctor’s office for help and ended up being admitted to the Clinical Center at the National Institute of Health. This 35-year-old man would be dead by October 28. From here, the disease would spread, and by 1986, the CDC would declare that more people in 1985 were diagnosed with AIDS than all previous years combined. This was a rapidly spreading epidemic, in a digital age with radio and television as well as computers. The disease continued to ravage the world through the 1990s and 2000s.But humanity fought back against this worldwide bane and developed antiretroviral drugs and other treatments which at least managed to somewhat contain the virus, initially. Now, we have drugs that can do miraculous things. Two HIV-positive people can have an HIV-negative baby, and a positive partner can sleep with a negative partner and, through the help of drugs, not give the virus to the negative partner. Cures and vaccines are in the works, with diligent people working hard and creating medicine to combat this global epidemic on a daily basis. Billions of dollars have been donated to the cause. This gives us hope in our modern medicine, our ability to respond to an epidemic of this magnitude, spreading at this incredible rate, so uniformly and quickly, as we slowly trudge down the path to victory. It shows promise for the future of fighting pathogens which seek to take us out . . . but there will always be another one coming.I like to write about dark stuff, history, and weird things.
Read about more terrible outbreaks from history on 10 Horrors Of The Great Plague Of London and 10 Scary Facts About The Justinian Plague.
More Great Lists
Atrocious Murders Inspired By Movies
Atrocious Murders Inspired By Movies
Top 10 Historic Ways To Beat Plagues
Top 10 Historic Ways To Beat Plagues
10 Of History's Most Cartoonish Deaths
10 Of History's Most Cartoonish Deaths
10 Of History's Most Ambitious Grimoires
10 Of History's Most Ambitious Grimoires
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10 Of History's Most Evil Medical Murderers
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10 Strange Beauty Secrets Of History's Most Beautiful Women
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10 Most Hard-Core Events From Outlaw Biker History
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10 Of History's Most Scandalous Women
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10 Most Genocidal Wars In Chinese History
fact checked by Jamie Frater
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ISTORY | DECEMBER 13, 2018
10 Of Human History’s Most Atrocious Plagues
by Joe Duncan
fact checked by Jamie Frater
The entire span of human history has been an arms race of survival adaptations against diseases which seem to be out to completely destroy us, both as individual organisms and as a collective species. Every time we come up with a new technique to combat various communicable diseases, the pathogens responsible change and mutate, becoming better-adapted to our weapons against them. Such is the way of all of life. Theorists are even now drawing comparisons to this dynamic to describe crime, wherein criminals adopt new methods of lawbreaking, only to again be outdone by advances in law enforcement.[1]Life is constantly striving to outdo and overcome itself. With this in mind, there have been some pretty brutal plagues which have threatened entire civilizations on many occasions. The term “plague” is used generally here to mean any sort of pathogen which devastated a large portion of a human population, though many of the following entries, in fact, involve the plague you’re thinking of. Here are ten of the most atrocious plagues in human history, what they were, and what happened.
10
Prehistoric Plague

A great plague was believed to have happened around 100,000 years ago, during the Paleolithic period, and is thought to have reduced the numbers of humans drastically, specifically killing the very young. It’s believed that this epidemic dropped the human population Africa to less than 10,000 people, which, in a short, brutal, prehistoric world, isn’t very many.Researchers reached this conclusion by isolating two specific genes which make apes less susceptible to some pretty brutal illnesses. In humans, one gene is gone, and the other is now nonfunctional.[2] After the end of the pandemic, Homo sapiens thrived and spread rapidly, and this genetic change may have helped by lowering their susceptibility to certain diseases.
9
Sweden
Photo credit: Karl-Goran Sjogren/University of Gothenburg
Extremely recent studies of mass grave sites in caves in Sweden have uncovered many bodies but have also unearthed something quite terrifying: the oldest-known strain of the plague—as in the actual Black Plague, Yersinia pestis, the bacteria which wiped out much of medieval Europe in several waves. It is thought to have struck long before the historical plagues we know of, and finding it on 5,000-year-old bodies in Sweden gives that idea some serious credibility.While the first known massive Y. pestis outbreak was the Justinian Plague, which brought the Byzantine Empire to its knees in AD 541 and continued to strike relentlessly for 200 more years, killing over 25 million people, we know it was around disrupting human societies long, long before that. Around 5,000 to 6,000 years ago, we know that human populations took a sharp decline for some reason.[3] Researchers are now beginning to think they have the culprit—the very first Black Plague.
The bacteria is still around today—so why isn’t it anywhere near as deadly as the one that practically wiped out the remainder of the Roman Empire, or the 14th-century plague that killed as much as 60 percent of the population of Europe? Adaptation. Humans have adapted ways to fight it off since. Right now, the discovery in Sweden is the oldest strain of Y. pestis we’ve found; there might be more out there, resting in the earth.
8
Athens
Photo credit: Michiel Sweerts
Athens was struck hard by a mysterious pathogen between the years of 430 and 427 BC. Known as the Plague of Athens, the epidemic greatly disrupted their efforts in the Peloponnesian War.[4] This plague is detailed in the famous work, the History of the Peloponnesian War, which tells of the disease wiping out more than one third of the Athenian population at the time. Thucydides, the author, described the symptoms of this brutal plague in great detail, with violent coughing, retching, and convulsions being some of the items on the list.Researchers still aren’t exactly sure what the Plague of Athens was, but scholars in the various sciences have speculated it was possibly measles, smallpox, or a few other diseases. While we may not know the exact strain of pathogen that struck, we definitely know it did a considerable, horrifying amount of damage to the Athenian population. Though it’s surrounded in ambiguity, whatever this mean bug was is thought to have contributed greatly to the downfall of classical Greece.
7
The Antonine Plague
Starting in AD 165, the Roman Empire was rocked by a viciously brutal plague that was a dark, ominous cloud, foreshadowing things to come. Many scholars believe this outbreak to have been a case of smallpox. Whatever it was, it definitely rocked the sturdy empire at its foundations and ultimately altered the course of history. The Antonine Plague was so bad that at its height, it was killing up to 2,000 people per day in the ancient empire, and anywhere from seven to ten percent of the Roman population did not survive.The outstretched Roman army, who lived in close quarters as they marched across Europe, was hit particularly hard, affecting Rome’s military might and ultimately contributing to a later scaling back of the empire. This also altered the tightness of the people, as they grew distant and apart, much like later plagues would also cause in various societies, especially medieval Europe. This epidemic paved the way for the Germanic cultures to take a foothold and ultimately would lead to the inevitable decline of the Roman Empire. In failing physical and economic health, Rome was in serious trouble, all thanks to a plague that ravaged its population.[5]
6
The Byzantine Empire
Photo credit: Medievalists.net
Remember that first surfacing of the bubonic plague we mentioned earlier that brought the Byzantine Empire to its knees? It was brutal. It was very brutal. The Byzantine Empire is actually just really another name for the Eastern Roman Empire at the time period, and the Byzantines, while they spoke Greek and were based out of Constantinople, were still very much the Roman Empire and referred to themselves as such.Often referred to as the Plague of Justinian for its taking place during the reign of Emperor Justinian I, this plague hit Constantinople, the heart of the empire, in 541 and then spread outward over the course of the next year to reach the full outskirts of the Roman Empire.[5] At this time, Justinian was really starting to rebuild the Roman Empire and was making headway in military campaigns in the West in attempts to reclaim the glory of Rome. This plague stopped those efforts dead in their tracks.In an ominous foreshadowing of what was to hit Europe centuries later, this plague, too, was brought through trade, mainly being carried and transmitted by fleas on rats. But it didn’t stop there and wasn’t limited to only the Eastern Roman Empire. The plague soon spread further to the various feudal states which had taken a foothold in Europe after the collapse of the western half of the Roman Empire. This plague ravaged Europe entirely and killed at least 25 million people. That’s a powerful pathogen.One thing was for certain at this point of human history: Expanding trade routes and greater transportation technologies had their downfalls and brought with them millions upon millions of deaths. They would bring many more.
5
Medieval Europe
Photo credit: Pierart dou Tielt
Then came the Black Death, the Great Plague. This plague began in China in 1334, and like the Plague of Justinian, it spread to Europe through trade routes. This plague was out for death, and no one could stop it. The ravaging bubonic death toll would reach peak heights in 1348 in Europe, after having traveled yet again through the Byzantine Empire, up the trade routes, and into the bloodstreams of Europe. This plague was so brutal and unrelenting that it would go on to wipe out up to 60 percent of all of Europe at the time.[7]This changed the European outlook greatly. Fewer and fewer people relied on prayer and began opening their minds to other things. The culture greatly adapted, and much of our great art came from the period which followed.
4
America
Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons
Then came the disease epidemics of the Americas. Smallpox first arrived in the colonies of Florida, Carolina, and Virginia in 1519 and devastated the native population after being brought by the colonizing Europeans.[8] It reached Massachusetts in 1633. Due to the fact that the so-called New and Old Worlds were so far removed, the Native Americans had little, if any, immune resistance to the viruses of Europe, like measles, plague, and especially smallpox.Smallpox was particularly brutal and spread to Central and South America as well, greatly infecting the Aztec Empire. In just 100 years, half the time of the Plague of Justinian, it wiped out 90 percent of the Aztec population, a drop from 17 million people to only 1.3 million. These diseases killed so many that only an estimated 530,000 Native Americans were left alive by 1900. This makes the American plagues some of the worst of recorded human history.
3
The Modern Plague
Photo credit: CDC/Larry Stauffer, Oregon State Public Health Laboratory
The so-called Modern Plague occurred in China, beginning in or around 1860, and was yet again another brutal epidemic that you don’t hear about much in history books. It hit Hong Kong in 1894. This plague would strike for still another 20 years, killing around ten million people.[9] This brutal outbreak would spread to India as well.During this latest plague, however, science isolated the cause, namely the fleas that traveled on rats, usually from ships or trade, which would bite and transfer the bacteria. It became possible to treat the disease and even prevent future outbreaks.
2
Polio
Photo credit: CDC/Charles Farmer
Polio hit, and polio hit hard, and there are still people alive today who remember the epidemic. Poliomyelitis is caused by the poliovirus, which aggressively attacks the human nervous system, causing all sorts of horrifying results, and has killed a lot of people, especially striking children under the age of five years old.The epidemic hit its worst in the United States in 1952, as doctors sought every and any method to treat and cure the disease.[10] In 1933, there were 5,000 known cases of paralytic polio in the United States, and by 1952, that number had jumped to 59,000, well over tenfold. Polio was finally stopped by the development of two vaccines against it.
1
HIV
Photo credit: CDC/C. Goldsmith, P. Feorino, E.L. Palmer, W.R. McManus
HIV is seemingly the last massive epidemic to strike planet Earth, or it is for now, anyway. It hit hard and became widespread by the mid-1980s. As early as 1981, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) in the United States began publishing pieces and keeping an eye on a spreading virus that was taking lives.[11] This infection was opportunistic and struck the gay community particularly hard. By June 16, 1981, the stage was set as the first man with AIDS, a 35-year-old gay Caucasian, stepped into a doctor’s office for help and ended up being admitted to the Clinical Center at the National Institute of Health. This 35-year-old man would be dead by October 28. From here, the disease would spread, and by 1986, the CDC would declare that more people in 1985 were diagnosed with AIDS than all previous years combined. This was a rapidly spreading epidemic, in a digital age with radio and television as well as computers. The disease continued to ravage the world through the 1990s and 2000s.But humanity fought back against this worldwide bane and developed antiretroviral drugs and other treatments which at least managed to somewhat contain the virus, initially. Now, we have drugs that can do miraculous things. Two HIV-positive people can have an HIV-negative baby, and a positive partner can sleep with a negative partner and, through the help of drugs, not give the virus to the negative partner. Cures and vaccines are in the works, with diligent people working hard and creating medicine to combat this global epidemic on a daily basis. Billions of dollars have been donated to the cause. This gives us hope in our modern medicine, our ability to respond to an epidemic of this magnitude, spreading at this incredible rate, so uniformly and quickly, as we slowly trudge down the path to victory. It shows promise for the future of fighting pathogens which seek to take us out . . . but there will always be another one coming.I like to write about dark stuff, history, and weird things.
Read about more terrible outbreaks from history on 10 Horrors Of The Great Plague Of London and 10 Scary Facts About The Justinian Plague.
More Great Lists
Atrocious Murders Inspired By Movies
Atrocious Murders Inspired By Movies
Top 10 Historic Ways To Beat Plagues
Top 10 Historic Ways To Beat Plagues
10 Of History's Most Cartoonish Deaths
10 Of History's Most Cartoonish Deaths
10 Of History's Most Ambitious Grimoires
10 Of History's Most Ambitious Grimoires
10 Of History's Most Evil Medical Murderers
10 Of History's Most Evil Medical Murderers
10 Strange Beauty Secrets Of History's Most Beautiful Women
10 Strange Beauty Secrets Of History's Most Beautiful Women
10 Most Hard-Core Events From Outlaw Biker History
10 Most Hard-Core Events From Outlaw Biker History
10 Of History's Most Scandalous Women
10 Of History's Most Scandalous Women
10 Most Genocidal Wars In Chinese History
10 Most Genocidal Wars In Chinese History
fact checked by Jamie Frater
Share
Tweet
WhatsApp
Pin
Share
Email
MORE GREAT LISTS
HISTORY
10 Craziest Things Done By Philosophers
HISTORY
10 Truly Disgusting Facts About Ancient Greek Life
HISTORY
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HISTORY
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ISTORY | DECEMBER 13, 2018
10 Of Human History’s Most Atrocious Plagues
by Joe Duncan
fact checked by Jamie Frater
The entire span of human history has been an arms race of survival adaptations against diseases which seem to be out to completely destroy us, both as individual organisms and as a collective species. Every time we come up with a new technique to combat various communicable diseases, the pathogens responsible change and mutate, becoming better-adapted to our weapons against them. Such is the way of all of life. Theorists are even now drawing comparisons to this dynamic to describe crime, wherein criminals adopt new methods of lawbreaking, only to again be outdone by advances in law enforcement.[1]Life is constantly striving to outdo and overcome itself. With this in mind, there have been some pretty brutal plagues which have threatened entire civilizations on many occasions. The term “plague” is used generally here to mean any sort of pathogen which devastated a large portion of a human population, though many of the following entries, in fact, involve the plague you’re thinking of. Here are ten of the most atrocious plagues in human history, what they were, and what happened.
10
Prehistoric Plague

A great plague was believed to have happened around 100,000 years ago, during the Paleolithic period, and is thought to have reduced the numbers of humans drastically, specifically killing the very young. It’s believed that this epidemic dropped the human population Africa to less than 10,000 people, which, in a short, brutal, prehistoric world, isn’t very many.Researchers reached this conclusion by isolating two specific genes which make apes less susceptible to some pretty brutal illnesses. In humans, one gene is gone, and the other is now nonfunctional.[2] After the end of the pandemic, Homo sapiens thrived and spread rapidly, and this genetic change may have helped by lowering their susceptibility to certain diseases.
9
Sweden
Photo credit: Karl-Goran Sjogren/University of Gothenburg
Extremely recent studies of mass grave sites in caves in Sweden have uncovered many bodies but have also unearthed something quite terrifying: the oldest-known strain of the plague—as in the actual Black Plague, Yersinia pestis, the bacteria which wiped out much of medieval Europe in several waves. It is thought to have struck long before the historical plagues we know of, and finding it on 5,000-year-old bodies in Sweden gives that idea some serious credibility.While the first known massive Y. pestis outbreak was the Justinian Plague, which brought the Byzantine Empire to its knees in AD 541 and continued to strike relentlessly for 200 more years, killing over 25 million people, we know it was around disrupting human societies long, long before that. Around 5,000 to 6,000 years ago, we know that human populations took a sharp decline for some reason.[3] Researchers are now beginning to think they have the culprit—the very first Black Plague.
The bacteria is still around today—so why isn’t it anywhere near as deadly as the one that practically wiped out the remainder of the Roman Empire, or the 14th-century plague that killed as much as 60 percent of the population of Europe? Adaptation. Humans have adapted ways to fight it off since. Right now, the discovery in Sweden is the oldest strain of Y. pestis we’ve found; there might be more out there, resting in the earth.
8
Athens
Photo credit: Michiel Sweerts
Athens was struck hard by a mysterious pathogen between the years of 430 and 427 BC. Known as the Plague of Athens, the epidemic greatly disrupted their efforts in the Peloponnesian War.[4] This plague is detailed in the famous work, the History of the Peloponnesian War, which tells of the disease wiping out more than one third of the Athenian population at the time. Thucydides, the author, described the symptoms of this brutal plague in great detail, with violent coughing, retching, and convulsions being some of the items on the list.Researchers still aren’t exactly sure what the Plague of Athens was, but scholars in the various sciences have speculated it was possibly measles, smallpox, or a few other diseases. While we may not know the exact strain of pathogen that struck, we definitely know it did a considerable, horrifying amount of damage to the Athenian population. Though it’s surrounded in ambiguity, whatever this mean bug was is thought to have contributed greatly to the downfall of classical Greece.
7
The Antonine Plague
Starting in AD 165, the Roman Empire was rocked by a viciously brutal plague that was a dark, ominous cloud, foreshadowing things to come. Many scholars believe this outbreak to have been a case of smallpox. Whatever it was, it definitely rocked the sturdy empire at its foundations and ultimately altered the course of history. The Antonine Plague was so bad that at its height, it was killing up to 2,000 people per day in the ancient empire, and anywhere from seven to ten percent of the Roman population did not survive.The outstretched Roman army, who lived in close quarters as they marched across Europe, was hit particularly hard, affecting Rome’s military might and ultimately contributing to a later scaling back of the empire. This also altered the tightness of the people, as they grew distant and apart, much like later plagues would also cause in various societies, especially medieval Europe. This epidemic paved the way for the Germanic cultures to take a foothold and ultimately would lead to the inevitable decline of the Roman Empire. In failing physical and economic health, Rome was in serious trouble, all thanks to a plague that ravaged its population.[5]
6
The Byzantine Empire
Photo credit: Medievalists.net
Remember that first surfacing of the bubonic plague we mentioned earlier that brought the Byzantine Empire to its knees? It was brutal. It was very brutal. The Byzantine Empire is actually just really another name for the Eastern Roman Empire at the time period, and the Byzantines, while they spoke Greek and were based out of Constantinople, were still very much the Roman Empire and referred to themselves as such.Often referred to as the Plague of Justinian for its taking place during the reign of Emperor Justinian I, this plague hit Constantinople, the heart of the empire, in 541 and then spread outward over the course of the next year to reach the full outskirts of the Roman Empire.[5] At this time, Justinian was really starting to rebuild the Roman Empire and was making headway in military campaigns in the West in attempts to reclaim the glory of Rome. This plague stopped those efforts dead in their tracks.In an ominous foreshadowing of what was to hit Europe centuries later, this plague, too, was brought through trade, mainly being carried and transmitted by fleas on rats. But it didn’t stop there and wasn’t limited to only the Eastern Roman Empire. The plague soon spread further to the various feudal states which had taken a foothold in Europe after the collapse of the western half of the Roman Empire. This plague ravaged Europe entirely and killed at least 25 million people. That’s a powerful pathogen.One thing was for certain at this point of human history: Expanding trade routes and greater transportation technologies had their downfalls and brought with them millions upon millions of deaths. They would bring many more.
5
Medieval Europe
Photo credit: Pierart dou Tielt
Then came the Black Death, the Great Plague. This plague began in China in 1334, and like the Plague of Justinian, it spread to Europe through trade routes. This plague was out for death, and no one could stop it. The ravaging bubonic death toll would reach peak heights in 1348 in Europe, after having traveled yet again through the Byzantine Empire, up the trade routes, and into the bloodstreams of Europe. This plague was so brutal and unrelenting that it would go on to wipe out up to 60 percent of all of Europe at the time.[7]This changed the European outlook greatly. Fewer and fewer people relied on prayer and began opening their minds to other things. The culture greatly adapted, and much of our great art came from the period which followed.
4
America
Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons
Then came the disease epidemics of the Americas. Smallpox first arrived in the colonies of Florida, Carolina, and Virginia in 1519 and devastated the native population after being brought by the colonizing Europeans.[8] It reached Massachusetts in 1633. Due to the fact that the so-called New and Old Worlds were so far removed, the Native Americans had little, if any, immune resistance to the viruses of Europe, like measles, plague, and especially smallpox.Smallpox was particularly brutal and spread to Central and South America as well, greatly infecting the Aztec Empire. In just 100 years, half the time of the Plague of Justinian, it wiped out 90 percent of the Aztec population, a drop from 17 million people to only 1.3 million. These diseases killed so many that only an estimated 530,000 Native Americans were left alive by 1900. This makes the American plagues some of the worst of recorded human history.
3
The Modern Plague
Photo credit: CDC/Larry Stauffer, Oregon State Public Health Laboratory
The so-called Modern Plague occurred in China, beginning in or around 1860, and was yet again another brutal epidemic that you don’t hear about much in history books. It hit Hong Kong in 1894. This plague would strike for still another 20 years, killing around ten million people.[9] This brutal outbreak would spread to India as well.During this latest plague, however, science isolated the cause, namely the fleas that traveled on rats, usually from ships or trade, which would bite and transfer the bacteria. It became possible to treat the disease and even prevent future outbreaks.
2
Polio
Photo credit: CDC/Charles Farmer
Polio hit, and polio hit hard, and there are still people alive today who remember the epidemic. Poliomyelitis is caused by the poliovirus, which aggressively attacks the human nervous system, causing all sorts of horrifying results, and has killed a lot of people, especially striking children under the age of five years old.The epidemic hit its worst in the United States in 1952, as doctors sought every and any method to treat and cure the disease.[10] In 1933, there were 5,000 known cases of paralytic polio in the United States, and by 1952, that number had jumped to 59,000, well over tenfold. Polio was finally stopped by the development of two vaccines against it.
1
HIV
Photo credit: CDC/C. Goldsmith, P. Feorino, E.L. Palmer, W.R. McManus
HIV is seemingly the last massive epidemic to strike planet Earth, or it is for now, anyway. It hit hard and became widespread by the mid-1980s. As early as 1981, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) in the United States began publishing pieces and keeping an eye on a spreading virus that was taking lives.[11] This infection was opportunistic and struck the gay community particularly hard. By June 16, 1981, the stage was set as the first man with AIDS, a 35-year-old gay Caucasian, stepped into a doctor’s office for help and ended up being admitted to the Clinical Center at the National Institute of Health. This 35-year-old man would be dead by October 28. From here, the disease would spread, and by 1986, the CDC would declare that more people in 1985 were diagnosed with AIDS than all previous years combined. This was a rapidly spreading epidemic, in a digital age with radio and television as well as computers. The disease continued to ravage the world through the 1990s and 2000s.But humanity fought back against this worldwide bane and developed antiretroviral drugs and other treatments which at least managed to somewhat contain the virus, initially. Now, we have drugs that can do miraculous things. Two HIV-positive people can have an HIV-negative baby, and a positive partner can sleep with a negative partner and, through the help of drugs, not give the virus to the negative partner. Cures and vaccines are in the works, with diligent people working hard and creating medicine to combat this global epidemic on a daily basis. Billions of dollars have been donated to the cause. This gives us hope in our modern medicine, our ability to respond to an epidemic of this magnitude, spreading at this incredible rate, so uniformly and quickly, as we slowly trudge down the path to victory. It shows promise for the future of fighting pathogens which seek to take us out . . . but there will always be another one coming.I like to write about dark stuff, history, and weird things.
Read about more terrible outbreaks from history on 10 Horrors Of The Great Plague Of London and 10 Scary Facts About The Justinian Plague.
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ISTORY | DECEMBER 13, 2018
10 Of Human History’s Most Atrocious Plagues
by Joe Duncan
fact checked by Jamie Frater
The entire span of human history has been an arms race of survival adaptations against diseases which seem to be out to completely destroy us, both as individual organisms and as a collective species. Every time we come up with a new technique to combat various communicable diseases, the pathogens responsible change and mutate, becoming better-adapted to our weapons against them. Such is the way of all of life. Theorists are even now drawing comparisons to this dynamic to describe crime, wherein criminals adopt new methods of lawbreaking, only to again be outdone by advances in law enforcement.[1]Life is constantly striving to outdo and overcome itself. With this in mind, there have been some pretty brutal plagues which have threatened entire civilizations on many occasions. The term “plague” is used generally here to mean any sort of pathogen which devastated a large portion of a human population, though many of the following entries, in fact, involve the plague you’re thinking of. Here are ten of the most atrocious plagues in human history, what they were, and what happened.
10
Prehistoric Plague

A great plague was believed to have happened around 100,000 years ago, during the Paleolithic period, and is thought to have reduced the numbers of humans drastically, specifically killing the very young. It’s believed that this epidemic dropped the human population Africa to less than 10,000 people, which, in a short, brutal, prehistoric world, isn’t very many.Researchers reached this conclusion by isolating two specific genes which make apes less susceptible to some pretty brutal illnesses. In humans, one gene is gone, and the other is now nonfunctional.[2] After the end of the pandemic, Homo sapiens thrived and spread rapidly, and this genetic change may have helped by lowering their susceptibility to certain diseases.
9
Sweden
Photo credit: Karl-Goran Sjogren/University of Gothenburg
Extremely recent studies of mass grave sites in caves in Sweden have uncovered many bodies but have also unearthed something quite terrifying: the oldest-known strain of the plague—as in the actual Black Plague, Yersinia pestis, the bacteria which wiped out much of medieval Europe in several waves. It is thought to have struck long before the historical plagues we know of, and finding it on 5,000-year-old bodies in Sweden gives that idea some serious credibility.While the first known massive Y. pestis outbreak was the Justinian Plague, which brought the Byzantine Empire to its knees in AD 541 and continued to strike relentlessly for 200 more years, killing over 25 million people, we know it was around disrupting human societies long, long before that. Around 5,000 to 6,000 years ago, we know that human populations took a sharp decline for some reason.[3] Researchers are now beginning to think they have the culprit—the very first Black Plague.
The bacteria is still around today—so why isn’t it anywhere near as deadly as the one that practically wiped out the remainder of the Roman Empire, or the 14th-century plague that killed as much as 60 percent of the population of Europe? Adaptation. Humans have adapted ways to fight it off since. Right now, the discovery in Sweden is the oldest strain of Y. pestis we’ve found; there might be more out there, resting in the earth.
8
Athens
Photo credit: Michiel Sweerts
Athens was struck hard by a mysterious pathogen between the years of 430 and 427 BC. Known as the Plague of Athens, the epidemic greatly disrupted their efforts in the Peloponnesian War.[4] This plague is detailed in the famous work, the History of the Peloponnesian War, which tells of the disease wiping out more than one third of the Athenian population at the time. Thucydides, the author, described the symptoms of this brutal plague in great detail, with violent coughing, retching, and convulsions being some of the items on the list.Researchers still aren’t exactly sure what the Plague of Athens was, but scholars in the various sciences have speculated it was possibly measles, smallpox, or a few other diseases. While we may not know the exact strain of pathogen that struck, we definitely know it did a considerable, horrifying amount of damage to the Athenian population. Though it’s surrounded in ambiguity, whatever this mean bug was is thought to have contributed greatly to the downfall of classical Greece.
7
The Antonine Plague
Starting in AD 165, the Roman Empire was rocked by a viciously brutal plague that was a dark, ominous cloud, foreshadowing things to come. Many scholars believe this outbreak to have been a case of smallpox. Whatever it was, it definitely rocked the sturdy empire at its foundations and ultimately altered the course of history. The Antonine Plague was so bad that at its height, it was killing up to 2,000 people per day in the ancient empire, and anywhere from seven to ten percent of the Roman population did not survive.The outstretched Roman army, who lived in close quarters as they marched across Europe, was hit particularly hard, affecting Rome’s military might and ultimately contributing to a later scaling back of the empire. This also altered the tightness of the people, as they grew distant and apart, much like later plagues would also cause in various societies, especially medieval Europe. This epidemic paved the way for the Germanic cultures to take a foothold and ultimately would lead to the inevitable decline of the Roman Empire. In failing physical and economic health, Rome was in serious trouble, all thanks to a plague that ravaged its population.[5]
6
The Byzantine Empire
Photo credit: Medievalists.net
Remember that first surfacing of the bubonic plague we mentioned earlier that brought the Byzantine Empire to its knees? It was brutal. It was very brutal. The Byzantine Empire is actually just really another name for the Eastern Roman Empire at the time period, and the Byzantines, while they spoke Greek and were based out of Constantinople, were still very much the Roman Empire and referred to themselves as such.Often referred to as the Plague of Justinian for its taking place during the reign of Emperor Justinian I, this plague hit Constantinople, the heart of the empire, in 541 and then spread outward over the course of the next year to reach the full outskirts of the Roman Empire.[5] At this time, Justinian was really starting to rebuild the Roman Empire and was making headway in military campaigns in the West in attempts to reclaim the glory of Rome. This plague stopped those efforts dead in their tracks.In an ominous foreshadowing of what was to hit Europe centuries later, this plague, too, was brought through trade, mainly being carried and transmitted by fleas on rats. But it didn’t stop there and wasn’t limited to only the Eastern Roman Empire. The plague soon spread further to the various feudal states which had taken a foothold in Europe after the collapse of the western half of the Roman Empire. This plague ravaged Europe entirely and killed at least 25 million people. That’s a powerful pathogen.One thing was for certain at this point of human history: Expanding trade routes and greater transportation technologies had their downfalls and brought with them millions upon millions of deaths. They would bring many more.
5
Medieval Europe
Photo credit: Pierart dou Tielt
Then came the Black Death, the Great Plague. This plague began in China in 1334, and like the Plague of Justinian, it spread to Europe through trade routes. This plague was out for death, and no one could stop it. The ravaging bubonic death toll would reach peak heights in 1348 in Europe, after having traveled yet again through the Byzantine Empire, up the trade routes, and into the bloodstreams of Europe. This plague was so brutal and unrelenting that it would go on to wipe out up to 60 percent of all of Europe at the time.[7]This changed the European outlook greatly. Fewer and fewer people relied on prayer and began opening their minds to other things. The culture greatly adapted, and much of our great art came from the period which followed.
4
America
Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons
Then came the disease epidemics of the Americas. Smallpox first arrived in the colonies of Florida, Carolina, and Virginia in 1519 and devastated the native population after being brought by the colonizing Europeans.[8] It reached Massachusetts in 1633. Due to the fact that the so-called New and Old Worlds were so far removed, the Native Americans had little, if any, immune resistance to the viruses of Europe, like measles, plague, and especially smallpox.Smallpox was particularly brutal and spread to Central and South America as well, greatly infecting the Aztec Empire. In just 100 years, half the time of the Plague of Justinian, it wiped out 90 percent of the Aztec population, a drop from 17 million people to only 1.3 million. These diseases killed so many that only an estimated 530,000 Native Americans were left alive by 1900. This makes the American plagues some of the worst of recorded human history.
3
The Modern Plague
Photo credit: CDC/Larry Stauffer, Oregon State Public Health Laboratory
The so-called Modern Plague occurred in China, beginning in or around 1860, and was yet again another brutal epidemic that you don’t hear about much in history books. It hit Hong Kong in 1894. This plague would strike for still another 20 years, killing around ten million people.[9] This brutal outbreak would spread to India as well.During this latest plague, however, science isolated the cause, namely the fleas that traveled on rats, usually from ships or trade, which would bite and transfer the bacteria. It became possible to treat the disease and even prevent future outbreaks.
2
Polio
Photo credit: CDC/Charles Farmer
Polio hit, and polio hit hard, and there are still people alive today who remember the epidemic. Poliomyelitis is caused by the poliovirus, which aggressively attacks the human nervous system, causing all sorts of horrifying results, and has killed a lot of people, especially striking children under the age of five years old.The epidemic hit its worst in the United States in 1952, as doctors sought every and any method to treat and cure the disease.[10] In 1933, there were 5,000 known cases of paralytic polio in the United States, and by 1952, that number had jumped to 59,000, well over tenfold. Polio was finally stopped by the development of two vaccines against it.
1
HIV
Photo credit: CDC/C. Goldsmith, P. Feorino, E.L. Palmer, W.R. McManus
HIV is seemingly the last massive epidemic to strike planet Earth, or it is for now, anyway. It hit hard and became widespread by the mid-1980s. As early as 1981, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) in the United States began publishing pieces and keeping an eye on a spreading virus that was taking lives.[11] This infection was opportunistic and struck the gay community particularly hard. By June 16, 1981, the stage was set as the first man with AIDS, a 35-year-old gay Caucasian, stepped into a doctor’s office for help and ended up being admitted to the Clinical Center at the National Institute of Health. This 35-year-old man would be dead by October 28. From here, the disease would spread, and by 1986, the CDC would declare that more people in 1985 were diagnosed with AIDS than all previous years combined. This was a rapidly spreading epidemic, in a digital age with radio and television as well as computers. The disease continued to ravage the world through the 1990s and 2000s.But humanity fought back against this worldwide bane and developed antiretroviral drugs and other treatments which at least managed to somewhat contain the virus, initially. Now, we have drugs that can do miraculous things. Two HIV-positive people can have an HIV-negative baby, and a positive partner can sleep with a negative partner and, through the help of drugs, not give the virus to the negative partner. Cures and vaccines are in the works, with diligent people working hard and creating medicine to combat this global epidemic on a daily basis. Billions of dollars have been donated to the cause. This gives us hope in our modern medicine, our ability to respond to an epidemic of this magnitude, spreading at this incredible rate, so uniformly and quickly, as we slowly trudge down the path to victory. It shows promise for the future of fighting pathogens which seek to take us out . . . but there will always be another one coming.I like to write about dark stuff, history, and weird things.
Read about more terrible outbreaks from history on 10 Horrors Of The Great Plague Of London and 10 Scary Facts About The Justinian Plague.
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Atrocious Murders Inspired By Movies
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Top 10 Historic Ways To Beat Plagues
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10 Of History's Most Cartoonish Deaths
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10 Strange Beauty Secrets Of History's Most Beautiful Women
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10 Most Hard-Core Events From Outlaw Biker History
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10 Of History's Most Scandalous Women
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10 Most Genocidal Wars In Chinese History
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fact checked by Jamie Frater
Share
Tweet
WhatsApp
Pin
Share
Email
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