After the Black Death, England had to outlaw pay rises.

1349 · 1351 · apart: 2 years

Workers were so scarce that the Statute of Labourers of 1351 ordered wages kept at pre-plague levels.

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The event

• Black Death1347–1351 · Messina. Genoese galleys from Caffa brought plague to Messina in Sicily, from where it swept across Europe. Within a few years the Black Death killed an estimated third to half of the continent's population, reshaping its economy and society.

14th century

More amazing facts

• 1344 · 1368 The founder of the Ming dynasty had been a beggar.
• 1347 · 1348 Ibn Battuta witnessed the Black Death: in 1348 he was in Damascus, where, he wrote, thousands were dying each day.
• 1347 · 1619 The beaked plague doctor is not from the Black Death.
• 1347 · 1881 "Ring a Ring o' Roses" is not about the plague.
• 1351 "Drink your blood, Beaumanoir, and your thirst will pass!" So, says the chronicle, a comrade answered the wounded Breton leader who asked for water during the Combat of the Thirty in 1351.
• 1353 The first Lao kingdom was called "A Million Elephants". Lan Xang, founded in 1353, took the name as a boast of military might: elephants were the heavy force of Southeast Asian armies.

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