AFTER every great disaster – Vesuvius, the Boris Johnson administration, Chelsea signing Winston Bogarde – come questions. But does history get the answers right?

The official enquiry into the Black Death, the plague that killed close to half of Europe in 1346 to 1353, suggests otherwise. For it concluded that it was caused not by the Yersina pestis bacterium but by Saturn, Jupiter and Mars being in Aquarius.

A contemporary source reads: “There are those, misguided and far from God’s grace as they are, who claim this is the fault of fleas on rats. Ravings to be dismissed.

“For our most advanced monks have studied the heavens, seen the 1345 conjunction of Saturn and Jupiter with Mars in the same house preceded by lunar eclipse and proven beyond doubt this called a pestilence down upon

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