THE BLACK DEATH: PATIENT ZERO AND THE CATAPULTED CORPSES

Episode 154 | Historical Events

In this History episode we focus on where the Black Death actually came from — following Yersinia pestis from the grasslands of Central Asia along the Silk Road to Caffa in Crimea, where Mongol forces may have committed the first documented act of biological warfare by catapulting plague-infected bodies over the city walls, and onto the Genoese ships that carried it to Sicily in 1347.

A flea. On a rat. On a ship. Sailing west.

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