In 1665, The Great Plague of London ravaged England, killing around 100,000 people - a quarter of London's population - in eighteen months. It spread through rat-infested alleys in the bites of fleas with the Yersinia pestis bacterium all the way to the walls of the great burgeoning city. When the bubonic plague spread throughout the city, one soon-to-be-world-famous college student, Isaac Newton, was finishing his bachelor's at Cambridge. In response to the plague, he withdrew to his childhood home, Woolsthorpe Manor and began what is known as his "Year of Wonders".