Remains of Venice plague
This is one of 1,500 skeletons of bubonic plague victims, whose mass grave was recently discovered on the island of Lazzaretto Vecchio, in Italy's Venetian Lagoon. When the disease struck Venice in the 15th and 16th centuries, anthropologists say, everyone sick or showing symptoms of plague were quarantined on the island until they recovered or died. Thousands of skeletons still remain buried beneath the island's meadows.