1918–1919Reputable sourceWell documented
The 1918 Influenza Pandemic
On the timeline · around 1918–1919 · The Rise of Medicine
What happened
As the First World War ended, a ferocious strain of H1N1 influenza swept the world in successive waves. Spread by wartime troop movements and censored by governments (giving it the misleading name 'Spanish flu'), it infected about a third of the global population and killed at least 50 million people — unusually, many of them young and healthy adults.
Why it matters
The 1918 pandemic was the deadliest of the 20th century, killing more people than the war that helped spread it, and it remains the benchmark against which modern pandemic preparedness is measured.
Sources
- U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. 1918 Pandemic (H1N1 virus) · Reputable source
Related timelines
- World War I → — The pandemic that swept the world as the Great War ended