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1347 Oct

Sailors carrying plague from Genoa arrived in Messina, Sicily.

Source:(SFEM, 10/12/97, p.31)(HNQ, 1/20/01)(SSFC, 3/6/05, p.B4)

Plague had broken out earlier among the troops of the Kipchak Khan, who was besieging the Black Sea port of Kaffa. He catapulted dead bodies over the city walls. When Italian trading vessels in the harbor returned to Genoa, the carried the plague to Europe. The plague, an infectious fever caused by the bacillus Yersinia pestis, appears in several varieties: bubonic (which involves swelling of the lymph glands), pneumonic (which involves the lungs) and septicemia (which involves severe infection in the bloodstream).