1) The bubonic plague wiped out more than one-third of Europe's population during one twenty-year period in the fourteenth century 2) What caused such devastation 3) A bacterium called Pasteurella pestis was transmitted to humans by fleas 4) The fleas were carried by rats that came to Europe via the Near East in the holds of merchant ships

1) What true art enthusiast has not heard of the Cloisters, a museum of Medieval art and architecture, located in Fort Tryon Park, New York 2) It is part of New York City's Metropolitan Museum of Art 3) The Cloisters includes no less than four separate ecclesiastical cloisters as well as a Romanesque chapel shipped stone by stone from France

1) What are the easiest pets to take care of 2) Among them must be included the goldfish, which is native not to Europe or America, but to China 3) Originally a rather ordinary looking little creature, the goldfish has been bred into several strange varieties, including some with oversized eyeballs bulging from the tops of their heads

1) Mountain climbing is not the safest sport 2) Hundreds of people have lost their lives trying to get to the top of relatively small mountains in the Appalachian chain, not to mention the many who have died trying to scale monsters like Mount Rainier or even peaks in the Himalayas 3) If walking up the side of a cliff gets you excited, consider trying an indoor rock-climbing facility first 4) The floors in such establishments are usually padded, and professional spotters are often available to help you down when you get into trouble

1) Dr. Roberta Bondar, an eminent neurologist, was the first Canadian woman astronaut to go into space 2) She participated in the 1992 space shuttle Discovery mission 3) Due to the work she conducted on this mission, she is globally recognized for her contribution to space medicine 4) And what has been the result of these accomplishments 5) Based on her experiments in space she continues to find connections between brain recovery and a zero gravity environment 6) A true renaissance woman, Dr. Bondar is also an acclaimed photographer and author