14/ William was the third child to be born to John Shakespeare and his wife Mary Arden, but the first to live beyond childhood. He was three months old when a plague epidemic began in 1564 and was lucky to avoid infection and to survive infancy. His mother may have fled to her family home at Wilmcote about three miles (5 kilometres) away, which was still occupied by her widowed stepmother. Otherwise, the writings of a genius might have been lost to us. (Editor's Note: Considering how many people were killed in the various plagues down the years it is interesting to mull on how many potential Shakespeares were lost to the world)

15/ A law was passed in the Elizabethan period that required the vicar or the clerk to record any plague burials in the parish register.

16/ One gruesome story the dramatist Thomas Dekker told of the plague epidemic of 1603 was of a poor wretch in the Southwark parish of St Mary Overy, who was thrown for dead on a heap of plague bodies in the morning, and in the afternoon was found gasping for life.

17/ The black death appeared in 1347. But then disappeared in 1670. It had been the scourge of Europe for 323 years. (This is distinct from Bubonic Plague - so named because of the swellings of the lymph glands (called buboes) which appear -which is still with us today. The authors of 'Return of the Black Plague' contend that Bubonic Plague and the Black Death 'haemorrhagic plagues' - so named because extensive haemorraging is an important symptom - are unrelated to each other)

18/ The average time from the point of infection to death was 37 days. Of this the first 10 to 12 days was a latent period. The next 20 to 22 days was an infectious period before the appearance of symptoms. Therefore, 32 days was an incubation period. Physical Plague Symptoms would show for five days and then the sufferer would die. The total infectious period where the disease could be transmitted was 27 days (22 + 5). This long infectious period without showing symptoms helps to account for its spread.

19/ The disease struggled to survive the winter months in England, particlularly during the Little Ice Age. Even in Southern France, the virulence of the plague was demonstrably reduced during the colder months. It was generally appreciated by the seventeenth century that it was much less infectious in cold weather.

20/ Prior to 1670, the regions afflicted by haemorrhagic and bubonic plague overlapped only on the Mediterranean coast. The former became established in Europe, with occasional forays into North Africa and the Eastern Mediterranean, while the latter had its stronghold in Asia and the north African coastlands, with rare outbreaks in Italy, Southern France and Barcelona that did not persist.

For more information:

Read, The History of the Black Death to take up the story! 

for more on pandemics download the TV Documentary 'The Flu Time Bomb'
http://www.firstscience.com/home/firstscience.tv/flu-time-bomb_5.html