Sublime

Sadiq Khan.

This vast realm of geographical ignorance reduced European activity in the Outer World to an archipelago of settlements, mines and trading depots connected by a skein of pathways kept open only by constant effort.

Basel,

Economic expansion ground to a halt amid the demographic catastrophe of the mid fourteenth century, when the Eurasian pandemic called the Black Death carried off perhaps 40 per cent of the population. The fifteenth century saw a slow recovery.

Abraham ibn Daud.

The city of Florence lost 50,000 of its 100,000 inhabitants.