Plague is one of the few diseases that has repeatedly reshaped human history — from the Justinianic pandemic that weakened late antiquity, through the Black Death and its centuries of recurrent European outbreaks, to the Third Pandemic that seeded modern epidemiology in Hong Kong and Mumbai. The modern strand runs through Yersinia pestis as a regulated select agent, the history of lab-acquired infections, antibiotic treatment and emerging resistance, and the biosecurity protocols that make an isolated laboratory death in Russia a genuine (if limited) concern rather than an outbreak. The timeline traces how a bacterium with a 1,500-year recorded history is understood, contained and occasionally mishandled today. This timeline was generated automatically by TimeStrands AI from Wikipedia research. Facts are sourced; framing may be imperfect.