This is an IHeart podcast.

Guaranteed Human.

Welcome to Aaron Menke's Cabinet of Curiosity's, A Production of IHeart Radio and Grim and Mild.

Our world is full of the unexplainable.

And if history is an open book, all of these amazing tales are right there on display, just waiting for us to explore.

Welcome to the Cabinet of Curiosity's.

Long before it haunted medieval stories, the bacterium Yersenia Pestus emerged on the steps of Central Asia,

setting the stage for a catastrophe that would later be remembered across Europe as the Black Death.

In the 1300s, it was carried westward in caravans on the Silk Road, and in 1347, it made itself known to the population of Europe in horrifying fashion, in the port town

of Messina, when 12 ships docked from the Black Sea.

Port workers and onlookers were horrified to discover that the bulk of the

sailors aboard each of the ships had died, covered in black boils. And in the many years to follow,

it would decimate nations and, in one case, may have actually been used as the first instance

of biological warfare. In the 14th century, Crimea was a hotspot for commerce, and the Republic of Genoa,

now northern Italy, had a trading outpost in Kaffa, where enslaved peoples, silk, and foodstuffs

were bought and sold.

But the Genoese town stood as an affront to the Golden Horde, an offshoot of the Mongolian

Empire under the rule of Khan-Jani

Beg. Due to religious differences and trade disagreements, the Khan found the Genoese

troublesome, and after a massive brawl between Muslims and Christians in the city of Tana,

they laid siege to that city. The Genoese escaped to Kha, another trading post long allowed by the Golden Horde, and continued their business there. But the Knois escaped to Kaffa, another trading post long allowed by the Golden Horde,

and continued their business there. But the Khan had grown tired of the Genoese.

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