Below is the full Quizmo quiz devoted to the theme "The Black Death": each question, its four options, the correct answer highlighted and, where available, its source. A chance to brush up on your general knowledge and then test what you know.
▶ Play today's quizThe Black Death that struck medieval Europe was what kind of disaster?
Source: The Black Death was history's deadliest pandemic, wiping out tens of millions across the medieval world.
Which animals were most blamed for spreading the plague through their fleas?
Source: Black rats carried the infected fleas that did the real biting, making rodents the era's most feared neighbors.
The nursery rhyme 'Ring a Ring o' Roses' is popularly believed to describe what?
Source: Generations have linked the cheerful rhyme to plague symptoms, though historians doubt the connection is real.
The bacteria reached humans mainly through the bite of which tiny creature?
Source: It wasn't the rats themselves but their fleas that jumped to humans and delivered the deadly bacteria.
About what fraction of Europe's population is thought to have died from the plague?
Source: Roughly one in three Europeans died - some regions lost half their people in just a few years.
Plague doctors famously wore protective masks shaped like what?
Source: The eerie beak was packed with herbs, since doctors blamed foul air rather than germs they couldn't see.
During which century did the Black Death sweep across Europe?
Source: It tore through Europe between 1347 and 1351 - the 1660s 'Great Plague' was a later, separate outbreak.
The plague chiefly entered Europe through ports on which sea?
Source: Plague-ridden ships from the east unloaded at Mediterranean ports, seeding the outbreak across Europe.
Which group was widely and wrongly persecuted, accused of causing the plague?
Source: Terrified communities scapegoated and massacred Jewish populations, falsely accusing them of poisoning wells.
The word 'quarantine' comes from a term meaning which number?
Source: Venice made ships wait 40 days - 'quaranta giorni' - before docking, giving us the word quarantine.
After the plague killed so many laborers, what happened to surviving peasants' wages?
Source: So many workers died that survivors could demand higher pay, helping crack Europe's rigid feudal order.
Many believed disease came from poisonous 'bad air'; what was this idea called?
Source: People blamed disease on poisonous 'bad air' for centuries, long before germs were understood.
Which roaming religious movement publicly punished their own bodies to atone for the plague?
Source: The Flagellants whipped themselves bloody in public, believing the plague was God's punishment.
Which deadliest form of plague spread directly between people through the air?
Source: Pneumonic plague spread person to person like a cough and killed almost everyone it infected.
Which famous collection of tales is set among Florentines fleeing the plague?
Source: Boccaccio framed The Decameron as young Florentines fleeing the plague and swapping 100 tales.
What did people at the time most commonly call the catastrophe we now name the Black Death?
Source: Survivors called it the 'Great Mortality' - the chilling name 'Black Death' caught on centuries later.
Which bacterium is responsible for the plague?
Source: The bacterium Yersinia pestis wasn't identified until 1894 - over 500 years after the Black Death struck.
Plague outbreaks kept returning to Europe until roughly which century?
Source: Plague kept resurfacing in Europe for 400 years, with major outbreaks into the 1700s.
Genetic evidence points to which region as the likely birthplace of the plague strain?
Source: DNA evidence points to Central Asia as the cradle of the strain that became the Black Death.
An Adriatic port in which modern country pioneered the first enforced ship quarantine?
Source: The Adriatic city of Ragusa, in today's Croatia, pioneered enforced quarantine back in 1377.