675,000 Americans died
• The 1918 influenza virus killed more than 20
million people worldwide.
• Although the disease that caused the worldwide
epidemic was called the “Spanish flu,” the virus
apparently is a mutation that evolved in American pigs
and was spread around the globe by U.S. troops mobilized
for World War I.
• In the two years that the epidemic ravaged the
earth, one-fifth of the world’s population was infected.
The flu was most deadly for people ages 20 to 40.
• An estimated 675,000 Americans died of influenza
during the pandemic, 10 times as many as in the world
war.
• Of the U.S. soldiers who died in Europe, one-half
of them fell to the influenza virus and not the enemy.
