1. Nearly a third of the population died in the Great Plague.

2. In 1665, Charles was faced with a great health crisis: the Great Plague of London.

3. Local legend attributes its origins to commemoration of the village's deliverance from the Great Plague in 16

4. In fact, the Ancients learned to ascend to a higher plane of existence when a great plague swept across the Milky Way Galaxy.

5. When the coronavirus broke out in Northern Italy in February, commentators reached immediately for the great historical novel, The Betrothed (1842), by Alessandro Manzoni, to describe the sense of panic gripping the country.The story culminates in the great plague of 1628-30, which ultimately took the lives of a quarter of the population of Northern Italy at the time.