1. Black Death
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“What shall I say? How shall I begin? Whither shall I turn? On all sides is sorrow; everywhere is fear. I would, my brother, that I had never been born, or, at least, had died before these times.” Francesco Petrarch, poet/humanist He lost his Laura (d. 1348), his son, Giovanni (d. 1361), and grandson, Francesco (d. 1368), to the bubonic plague
n europe, 1816 is known as ‘The Year There was No Summer’ and in New England it is remembered as ‘Eighteen Hundred and Froze to Death.’ Snow fell on Quebec City in the colony of Lower Canada, today the province of Quebec, in June. That same month, the Romantic poet Byron was hosting guests at Villa Diodati on Lake Geneva. Prevented by cold, wet, windy weather from enjoying the planned outdoor pursuits and trapped indoors the group was, unintentionally, socially isolating. To relieve the boredom, Byron challenged his guests to compose gothic tales of horror. Days later, on the night of June 16-17 [astronomers have confirmed the date based on a diary entry and the phases of the moon], one of his guests had the germ of an idea for a story entitled, ‘The Modern 20
