"Ring a Ring o' Roses" is not about the plague.

1347 · 1881 · apart: 534 years

The rhyme was first printed in 1881, and the plague reading only appeared in the 20th century; folklorists reject it.

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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 · 19th century

More amazing facts

• 1343 The Moroccan traveller Ibn Battuta became chief judge of the Maldives.
• 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.
• 1349 · 1351 After the Black Death, England had to outlaw pay rises.
• 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.

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