When the bubonic plague hit Florence in 1348, writer and poet Giovanni Boccaccio fled the city and stayed in the Tuscan countryside.

During this period, he wrote The Decameron, a collection of novellas framed as stories a group of friends tells each other while quarantined.

Since the WHO declared the new virus a pandemic and officials have urged people to stay home as much as possible, many Americans have suddenly found themselves with more free time and limited ways to spend it.

If you want to use this time to be productive, you have many historical role mod...

In 1665, during one of the last major outbreaks of the bubonic plague in England, classes at Cambridge University were canceled, and Newton had to retreat to his family estate.

With zero structure, the young mathematician produced some of his best work during his year in quarantine, writin...

Thomas Nashe was an Elizabethan playwright who gained fame around the same time as William Shakespeare.

When the bubonic plague hit London in 1592, Nashe fled to the English countryside to avoid infection. During this time he wrote Summers' Last Will and Testament, a play that reflects hi...