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The flu pandemic that began in 1918 infected about a third of the world's population and killed an estimated 25 to 50 million people, far more than the roughly 10 million soldiers who died in the First World War.

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It is often called the Spanish flu, but it did not start in Spain. Countries at war censored bad news to protect morale, while newspapers in neutral Spain reported the outbreak freely, so Spain looked like its centre. The earliest recorded cases came from the United States in March 1918, and the disease spread through army camps, troopships and crowded cities in three main waves, lasting until 1920. Flu usually kills mostly the very young and the old, but this one also killed many healthy young adults, often through the pneumonia that followed. The cause was an H1N1 influenza virus, a subtype still found in seasonal flu today; in 2005 scientists rebuilt it from genetic material in preserved tissue. Estimates of the total death toll range from 17 to 100 million, with 25 to 50 million the most widely accepted.

Türkçe oku
1918'de başlayan grip salgını dünya nüfusunun yaklaşık üçte birine bulaştı ve tahminen 25 ila 50 milyon kişinin canını aldı. Bu, Birinci Dünya Savaşı'nda ölen yaklaşık 10 milyon askerden çok daha fazladır.

Salgın çoğu zaman “İspanyol gribi” diye anılır, ama İspanya'da başlamadı. Savaşan ülkeler halkın moralini bozmamak için kötü haberleri sansürlüyordu; tarafsız İspanya'nın gazeteleri ise salgını açıkça yazdığı için hastalık oradan çıkmış gibi göründü. Kayıtlara geçen ilk vakalar Mart 1918'de ABD'de görüldü. Hastalık askerî kamplarda, asker taşıyan gemilerde ve kalabalık şehirlerde yayıldı ve üç büyük dalga hâlinde 1920'ye kadar sürdü. Grip genellikle en çok küçük çocukları ve yaşlıları öldürür; bu salgın ise çok sayıda sağlıklı genç yetişkini de öldürdü. Ölümler çoğu zaman gribin ardından gelişen zatürreden oldu. Salgına, bugün mevsimsel gripte de dolaşan H1N1 alt tipinden bir grip virüsü yol açıyordu; bilim insanları 2005'te saklanmış doku örneklerindeki genetik malzemeden bu virüsü yeniden oluşturdu. Toplam ölü sayısına ilişkin tahminler 17 ile 100 milyon arasında değişir; en yaygın kabul gören aralık 25 ila 50 milyondur.

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Background reading: 1918 flu pandemic
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On the mainland, the last woolly mammoths died out around 10,000 years ago, as the Ice Age ended and the cold grasslands they lived on shrank. Two island populations held on much longer: one on St Paul Island in Alaska until about 5,600 years ago, and one on Wrangel Island until about 4,000 years ago, around 2000 BC. Rising seas had cut Wrangel off from Siberia, leaving some 300 to 1,000 animals alone there for thousands of years. These dates come from radiocarbon dating of bones and tusks, which measures how much of a slowly decaying form of carbon is left in them. Genetic studies show that the population was inbred but stayed stable for thousands of years, so its end seems to have come suddenly. What finally killed the last mammoths is still unknown.

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Oxford has no founding date. There is evidence of teaching there in some form by 1096, and it grew quickly after 1167, when Henry II barred English students from the University of Paris. In 1209, after clashes with the townspeople, some scholars left for Cambridge and started the university there. The popular claim that Oxford is older than the Aztecs usually uses 1325, the year the Mexica people founded Tenochtitlan on an island in Lake Texcoco, where Mexico City stands today. But the Mexica became an imperial power only in 1428, when, together with Texcoco and Tlacopan, they defeated Azcapotzalco, the city that had dominated the valley. The empire lasted less than a century: Hernán Cortés and his Indigenous allies took Tenochtitlan in 1521.

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Around 1259 BC, Ramesses II of Egypt and the Hittite king Hattusili III made peace after generations of rivalry over Syria. Egypt carved its copy on temple walls, the Hittites kept theirs on clay tablets, and both survive.

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Next card in the archiveThe First World War (1914–1918) ended four empires: the German, Austro-Hungarian, Russian and Ottoman. The peace treaties that followed drew new borders, created states such as Poland and Czechoslovakia, and placed much of the Middle East under British and French rule.Read next →