MicroFactzzz#0082 · ☠️ Dark Facts
The flu that killed more people than all of World War I didn't actually start in Spain
The 1918-1919 "Spanish flu" pandemic killed an estimated number of people higher than the combat deaths of World War I — and its name is misleading.
The 1918-1919 flu pandemic, known as the "Spanish flu," infected an estimated one-third of humanity and killed anywhere from tens of millions to over fifty million people worldwide — more than died fighting in World War I.
The name "Spanish flu" is misleading — the virus most likely didn't originate in Spain. That country simply happened to be one of the few not under wartime press censorship, so Spanish newspapers were the first to freely report on the scale of the epidemic, creating the impression it had broken out there.
The unusually high death rate among young, healthy adults — not just children and the elderly, as with typical flu — is still being studied; one hypothesis points to an overactive immune response that paradoxically harmed stronger bodies more.
The significance: despite its massive scale, the Spanish flu pandemic remained relatively absent from public historical memory for decades, overshadowed by the war raging at the same time.
Sources
- General knowledge / encyclopedic sources
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Krulicza Nora
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