In the spring of 1918, just as the man-made horrors of World War I were finally starting to wind down, Mother Nature unleashed the deadliest strain of influenza in modern history. The virus infected as much as 40 percent of the global population over the next 18 months. Of these, an estimated 20 to 50 million perished—more than the roughly 17 million people killed during the First World War. The pandemic’s grasp stretched from the United States and Europe to the remote reaches of Greenland and the Pacific islands. Its victims included the likes of President Woodrow Wilson, who contracted it while negotiating the Treaty of Versailles in early 1919.
As the pandemic reached epic proportions in the fall of 1918, it became commonly known as the “Spanish Flu” or the “Spanish Lady” in the United States and Europe. Many assumed this was because the sickness had originated on the Iberian Peninsula, but the nickname was actually the result of a widespread misunderstanding.
