50 Fun Facts About Spanish Flu

The 1918 pandemic was caused by which subtype of the influenza A virus?

Its descendants caused every later flu pandemic, and a novel H1N1 returned to cause the 2009 pandemic.

Roughly what share of the world's population was infected by the pandemic?

That was an estimated 500 million people out of 1.8 to 1.9 billion.

Why did the pandemic come to be called the 'Spanish' flu?

Wartime censors in belligerent countries suppressed bad news; Spanish officials were baffled to learn other countries called it 'the Spanish grip'.

The earliest probable cases were documented in March 1918 in which US state?

Cases in Haskell County had prompted the local doctor Loring Miner to warn the Public Health Service as early as January.

The 1918 flu is conventionally dated from Albert Gitchell's case. What was his job at Camp Funston?

Within days 522 men at the camp had reported sick, and by 11 March the virus had reached Queens, New York.

When Pravda announced the flu's arrival in Moscow, what nickname did it use?

'Ispánka' became a common name across Russia; Poles called it the 'Bolshevik disease'.

The blue-violet cyanosis seen in dying patients gave the disease which grim nickname?

Two mahogany spots would appear over the cheekbones and within hours the whole face turned blue as the lungs filled with fluid.

The French press initially used which name before adopting 'Spanish flu' to avoid offending an ally?

British soldiers meanwhile called it 'Flanders flu' and the Germans 'Flandern-Fieber'.

Japan blamed which group for bringing the disease home from Taiwan?

In Senegal it was 'Brazilian flu' and in Brazil 'German flu'; almost every country blamed someone else.

In Spain itself, the disease was nicknamed the 'Naples Soldier' after what?

'Gripe española' is now common in Spain but remains controversial there.

Virologist John Oxford argued the pandemic began at an overcrowded British army camp in which French town?

The camp had a piggery and regular poultry deliveries, and a flu-like disease with high mortality had struck there in late 1916.

Historian Mark Humphries linked the pandemic to 96,000 labourers mobilised from which country for the Allies?

A 2016 study found the labourers' very low flu mortality made them an unlikely source, and pointed to circulation in Europe beforehand.

The deadlier second wave of 1918 spread by ship from Brest to Boston and which West African port?

From Freetown it moved along the coast, rivers and railways, and South Africa received it on ships bringing home labour corps troops.

A war-bond parade in which US city on 28 September 1918 triggered an outbreak killing 12,000?

In the week ending 16 October, 4,597 people died there; by 11 November the flu had almost vanished from the city.

Which month of 1918 had the highest fatality rate of the entire pandemic?

The US recorded about 292,000 deaths between September and December 1918, against 26,000 in the same months of 1915.

Celebrations of which event on 11 November 1918 caused fresh outbreaks in Lima and Nairobi?

The second wave was mostly over by December, but a third wave followed in early 1919.

Unusually for influenza, this pandemic killed which age group in the greatest numbers?

Nearly half of US deaths were among 20-to-40-year-olds; an overreacting immune system, or 'cytokine storm', is one explanation.

Most deaths were caused not by the virus directly but by what?

There were no antibiotics, and common throat bacteria reached lungs damaged by the virus.

Since the virus was invisible under a microscope, which bacterium was wrongly blamed for the disease?

A vaccine against it did not prevent infection but did reduce deaths from secondary infection.

Which country is generally described as the worst affected, losing about 5% of its population?

The 1911-1921 decade was the only census period in which India's population fell.

Roughly how many Americans died in the 1918-1919 flu season?

About 20 million of the 105 million population were infected; Native American and Alaskan communities suffered terribly.

Which Pacific territory, occupied by New Zealand, lost 22% of its population within two months?

Neighbouring American Samoa imposed a strict quarantine and did not record a single death.

Along with New Caledonia, which territory kept influenza deaths at zero via quarantine?

The flu finally reached it in 1926 once the quarantine ended.

Which country protected a third of its population by blocking the main road across the island?

Australia's maritime quarantine kept the flu out until January 1919, when it entered through Melbourne.

Resistance to face masks was exemplified by an 'Anti-Mask League' in which US city?

A later study found early mask mandates and gathering bans could cut death rates by up to 50 percent if not lifted too soon.

New York's health commissioner staggered business hours to avoid overcrowding where?

New York kept its schools open in both 1918 and 1920, while Memphis shut its down.

Rumours claimed the Germans had caused the disease by poisoning which product made by Bayer?

Other rumours had U-boats releasing poison gas; real treatments ranged from quinine to strychnine and castor oil.

The 1919 final of which sporting trophy was cancelled after players fell ill, and Joe Hall died?

The Montreal Canadiens' defenceman died in April 1919; the Cup was not awarded that year.

Which sitting president of Brazil died in the pandemic?

Brazil lost around 300,000 people in total.

Which future emperor of Ethiopia caught the flu and survived?

Estimates for deaths in Addis Ababa alone range from 5,000 to 10,000 or more.

The pandemic reached Australia only in January 1919 after strict quarantine, first taking hold in which city?

Australia's death rate of 2.7 per 1,000 was among the lowest recorded, but some Aboriginal communities lost half their people.

The Māori death rate was roughly what multiple of the rate among New Zealanders of European descent?

About 6,400 Pākehā and 2,500 Māori died in six weeks.

Katherine Anne Porter's 1939 novella about the pandemic is titled what?

The pandemic was never a big theme in American literature, overshadowed by the war.

Emma Donoghue's 2020 novel The Pull of the Stars is set during the flu in which city?

The 2006 novel The Last Town on Earth imagines a town trying to seal itself off from the disease.

Some historians call the Spanish flu a 'forgotten pandemic'. What is usually blamed for overshadowing it?

The historian Guy Beiner argues it was in fact remembered in private and local traditions worldwide.

Johan Hultin dug for 1918 flu victims in the permafrost of which Alaskan village in 1951 and 1997?

The flu had killed 72 of the village's 80 residents; his 1997 lung samples helped complete the virus's genetic sequence.

In what year did researchers announce they had determined the full genetic sequence of the 1918 virus?

CDC and Mount Sinai teams then rebuilt infective virus particles from synthesised RNA segments.

Reconstruction of the virus led researchers to conclude it jumped to humans directly from what?

Swine appear to have caught it from humans, not the other way round; the human pandemic came before the first reports of flu in pigs.

Which subtype displaced the 1918 H1N1 lineage as the circulating human flu virus in the 1957 pandemic?

H3N2 replaced that in 1968, and a look-alike of the old H1N1 mysteriously reappeared in the USSR in 1977.

The basic reproduction number of the 1918 virus is estimated to have been between what?

Troop trains and crowded field hospitals meant the sickest soldiers, not the mildly ill, did the travelling, favouring the deadlier strain.

Copenhagen escaped with a combined death rate of only 0.29%. What is the usual explanation?

The city's experience showed that the mild spring wave and the lethal autumn wave were the same strain.

A 2018 study in a US epidemiology journal cut the estimated global death toll to roughly what?

Estimates range wildly: 21.6 million in 1927, 50 million in 2005, and John Barry has argued for well over 100 million.

Which Kansas doctor warned US health officials about a strange flu in Haskell County in early 1918?

The outbreak there, 200 miles from Camp Funston, is cited by historian John Barry as the pandemic's likely origin.

Roughly how many people died of the flu in Japan across two waves between 1918 and 1920?

Nearly 300,000 excess deaths came between October 1918 and May 1919, with another 182,000 in the winter of 1919-20.

Which South African diamond-mining city lost almost a quarter of its working population?

Nationwide about 300,000 South Africans, some 6% of the population, died within six weeks of the virus arriving in September 1918.

In animal trials, the 1918 virus proved deadly because it triggers what immune overreaction?

One contemporary observer noted striking haemorrhages from the nose, stomach and intestine among the complications.

Which Alaskan region populated by Indigenous people suffered a 40 per cent death rate?

Some villages there vanished entirely, while Nenana escaped until spring 1920, when a tenth of the town died.

How long did it take Tahiti to lose 13 per cent of its entire population?

The Dutch East Indies lost an estimated 1.5 million of 30 million inhabitants across the pandemic.

The pandemic has been linked to a 1920s outbreak of which mysterious 'sleeping sickness'?

A 2006 study also found people who were in utero during the pandemic had lower incomes and more physical disability later in life.

Which of these was among the contemporary remedies doctors tried against the flu?

With no antivirals or antibiotics, doctors also reached for quinine, arsenics, digitalis, epsom salts, castor oil and iodine.