1918 had been a very good year, factories across the were running at capacity, wages were good and work was plentiful. With the war winding down, the future looked bright. With news from the front and the celebrity hoopla over the latest Liberty Loan drive drawing all the attention, a small notice from the Surgeon General's Office warning of a spreading influenza epidemic was easy to overlook. The influenza pandemic of 1918-1919 has been cited as the most devastating epidemic in recorded world history. More people died of influenza in a single year than in four-years of the Black Death Bubonic Plague from 1347 to 1351. More than one-fifth of the world's population suffered from some of the disease's deadly symptoms. The Influenza Pandemic claimed the lives of more than 21,000,000 people worldwide, including 600,000 in America alone. As the afflicted died by the thousands, the survivors lived in fear. photos The Library of Congress http://www.loc.gov/rr/print/catalog.html U.S. Department of Health and Human Services http://1918.pandemicflu.gov/ Middle Tennessee State University http://www.mtsu.edu/~kmiddlet/history... University of Minnesota http://www1.umn.edu/twincities/index.php Tulane University http://tulane.edu/ The National Museum of Health and Medicine http://www.nlm.nih.gov/hmd/medtour/nm... Oral Histories Talking History - I Remember When Professor Charles Hardy III - producer http://www.talkinghistory.org/hardy.html I can not recommend the above site too highly, one of the most outstanding websites for teachers and students of all facets of history Music A River Runs Through It Mark Isham http://www.isham.com/ Fanfare for the Common Man Aaron Copeland Conceived and Produced by Dale Caruso