On this day March 11th 1918, the first recorded case of the Spanish Flu was published and known to men. The Flu, through the course of a decade or two, infected about 500 million people and killed about 100 million of them, making it one of the most most lethal natural disease in the history. The deadly nature of the flu was attributed to not only the disease itself but also contributed by the wartime malnourishment and stress, increasing combatants’ susceptibility.

Given the time of the occurrence, the pandemic was not permitted for media to cover in many European countries to maintain wartime morale; Spain was the only country that voiced the cases in the media, causing the false assumption that the disease started in Spain.

The source of the disease is to this day uncertain. Some scholars blamed it to the country of the Far East, asserting that the Chinese labour employed to work behind the frontline of the Triple Entente brought the Influenza from China.