General Background
This trade route between Asia and Europe helped spread the plague.
What is the Silk Road?
This insect spread the plague by biting people. (Triple points if you can give me the scientific name for it!!)
What is the flea (specifically the Oriental rat flea, Xenopsylla cheopis)
Animal has most been WRONGLY blamed for spreading the plague.
What are rats?
This famous playwright referred to the plague several times in Romeo and Juliet. One famous line is "A plague o' both your houses!"
Who is Shakespeare?
Europe’s population dropped by this fraction during the Black Death.
This huge empire created by Genghis Khan accidentally helped the plague spread.
What is the Mongol Empire?
Plague bacteria today can be treated with this class of modern drugs.
What are antibiotics?
Many believe this nursery rhyme is about the plague. (It is probably NOT)
What is Ring Around the Rosie?
These commonly appeared in artwork, sometimes dancing, as a powerful symbol to remind viewers of their mortality and the inevitability of death.
What are skeletons?
This long war between England and France was happening at the same time as the plague.
What is the Hundred Years’ War?
This bacterium is the pathogen responsible for the Black Death.
What is yersinia pestis?
Religious group blamed for spreading the plague.
What are Jews?
Sufferers would pray to these "plague saints" and they appeared in many works of art made during this time period.
Who are Saint Sebastian and Saint Roch/Rocco? (Double points if you have both names)
The siege of this Black Sea trading port in 1346 is often cited as a key spread event.
What is Kaffa (or Caffa)?
The bacterium multiplies inside this part of a flea’s body, causing blockage and regurgitation.
What is the gut or digestive tract?
What is vinegar?
This phrase means "remember that you have to die".
What is memento mori?
The plague reached Northern Europe after merchants followed rivers leading to this sea.
What is the Baltic Sea?
This form of plague spreads through droplets and can kill within 24 hours.
What is pneumonic plague?
Some cures involved applying these living animals to an infected person's swollen lymph nodes (buboes).
What are chickens?
Name given to the theme in artwork that shows skeletons or corpses leading living people from all walks of life in a procession toward death.
What is the Danse Macabre?