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Global Catastrophe, Even Human Extinction, Isn't All That Unlikely

Edit Slashdot 02 May 2016
HughPickens.com writes. Robinson Meyer writes in The Atlantic that in its annual report on "global catastrophic risk," the Global Challenges Foundation estimates the risk of human extinction due to climate change -- or an accidental nuclear war at 0.1 percent every year ... The closest may have been on September 26, 1983, when a bug in the U.S.S.R ... The Black Death of the 1340s felled more than 10 percent of the world population ... ....

A new report argues you're more likely to die in a mass extinction than a car crash

Edit Business Insider 01 May 2016
The Black Death of the 1340s felled more than 10 percent of the world population. Eight centuries prior, another epidemic of the Yersinia pestis bacterium—the “Great Plague of Justinian” in 541 and 542—killed between 25 and 33 million people, or between 13 and 17 percent of the global population at that time. No event approached these totals in the 20th century. The twin wars did not come close ... It ... Copyright 2016 ... ....

Human Extinction Isn't That Unlikely

Edit The Atlantic 29 Apr 2016
The sun rises as a dinghy carrying refugees and migrants approaches the shores of the Greek island of Lesbos. Alkis Konstantinidis / Reuters. Nuclear war. Climate change. Pandemics that kill tens of millions. These are the most viable threats to globally organized civilization ... But that chance compounds over the course of a lifetime ... The Stern Review, the U.K ... The Black Death of the 1340s felled more than 10 percent of the world population ... ....

Agincourt in literature – the list

Edit The Guardian 24 Oct 2015
The 600th anniversary of the battle will provide a cue for screenings of Henry V ... Henry V (1599) by William Shakespeare ... Twitter ... Twitter ... About jousting rather than real conflict, but the early part of the war is its backdrop and the characters include the Black Prince, who inflicted defeats on the French at Crecy and Poitiers in the 1340s and 50s, and Geoffrey Chaucer, who fought and was captured in the siege of Rheims in 1360 ... Twitter....

Michigan plague case diagnosed: 14 bubonic plague victims in 2015 outbreak

Edit The Examiner 15 Sep 2015
A Michigan plague case has been diagnosed, reported the Denver Post on September 15. That brings the number to 14 bubonic plague victims in the 2015 outbreak ... The victim is being treated and health officials assure that there has been no human-to-human transmission in this case ... The Bubonic Plague is a life-threatening virus--known as the Black Death--that wiped out roughly half of Europe and Asia in the 1340s ... ....

Medieval mass grave, under a Paris supermarket, shines a light on city's past

Edit Tampabay.com 12 May 2015
NY Times Syndication. Tuesday, May 12, 2015 1.34am. PARIS — Past the racks of hair accessories on the ground floor of the Monoprix supermarket on the corner of the Rue Réaumur and the Boulevard de Sébastopol in the Second Arrondissement, there is a door marked staff-only ... Bove, the historian, said Paris was struck by the plague, like much of the rest of Europe, during the great epidemic of the late 1340s ... Photo reprints ... ....

Asteroid Impact Triggered Black Death, And ‘It Could Happen Again,’ Scientist Warns

Edit The Inquisitr 25 Mar 2015
In his book “New Light On The Black Death ... It was brought to Europe in 1343 by flea infested rats through the Silk Road ... Baillie’s theory that the Black Death was the deadly environmental aftermath of an asteroid impact that occurred in the 1340s was based on his observations as a dendrochronologist of distinctive tree ring patterns coinciding with known periods of environmental catastrophe in the past 1,500 years ... [Images ... ....

Review – The Poet’s Tale: Chaucer and the Year that Made the Canterbury Tales

Edit The Irish Times 08 Mar 2015
We know a great deal more about Geoffrey Chaucer than we do about any other early writer in English, because he was a civil servant who played an active and responsible part in public affairs for most of his life. The collection amassed in Chaucer’s Life-Records amounts to 493 items. We can calculate that he was born in the early 1340s, and we know that he died in October 1400 ... A Critical Biography (1992) ... A good year ... A new kind of tale....

Rats exonerated over Black Death

Edit The Australian 24 Feb 2015
Rather than “a single introduction at the time of the Black Death” — the catastrophic 1340s outbreak that wiped out around a third of Europe’s population — the pandemic was repeatedly triggered by “a climate-driven intermittent pulse of new strains arriving from Asia”, the paper says ... None of these coincided with climate fluctuations in Europe ... ....

10 Good Things We Owe To The Black Death

Edit ListVerse 28 Jan 2015
Yersinia pestis. Who would think that such a microscopic organism in the gut of an infected flea could create an upheaval in human society? The most terrible pestilence humanity has witnessed, the Black Death of the 1340s killed an estimated 75–200 million people. To many, it seemed that the end of the world had come. […]. The post 10 Good Things We Owe To The Black Death appeared first on Listverse. ....

Dictionary reaches final definition after century

Edit BBC News 31 Aug 2014
A dictionary has finally been completed after more than a century of accumulating entries. The 17-volume dictionary of medieval Latin, launched in 1913, has reached its final definition, "zythum", a type of fermented malt drink ... Amateur historians ... The word for chimney - "caminus" - was sourced from a description of an earthquake which hit England in the 1340s which toppled chimneys ... Technology ... Share this page....

10 Blunderful Moments In French Military History

Edit ListVerse 12 Mar 2014
J. Wisniewski March 12, 2014. Fans of stereotypes enjoy pointing out that the English word “surrender” comes from the French word surrendre ... As Kipling said of the French, “Their business is war, and they do their business.” ... At the outset of the 14th century, Flanders was a county divided ... 9 Crecy, 1346 ... By the 1340s, the English and French were arguing about control over Flanders and the French throne, among other things ... J ... ....

What Is Foodish and Why Do I Resist It?

Edit Huffington Post 15 Jan 2014
I panic in restaurants sometimes. Is it the prices? Or the presence of employees paid to brush the breadcrumbs off my table between courses? ("You don't need to do that," I say. "Yes, I do," they say.) But no. It happens when I read the menus ... Shaved bottarga. Ponzu buerre blanc ... Just as previous decades were all about deadly plagues (helllloooo, 1340s!) and space exploration (1960s, I'm looking at you), this one's about eating ... e.g ... But no....
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