The Black Death Reaches Europe at Messina
Messina, Sicily, Italy
ESTIMATED65% CONFIDENCEThe sources agree on the month, not the day: the plague ships are recorded as reaching Messina in October 1347, so the pin covers that month rather than claiming a date.[1]
Genoese galleys carrying plague from the Black Sea put in at Messina in Sicily, and the disease went ashore with them. Over the next seven years it killed perhaps a third of Europe - up to 50 million people - and took two centuries to be made good.
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