Spanish Flu

March 4, 1918

The first recorded case, of what became known as the Spanish Flu, is detected in a U.S. Army private stationed at Fort Riley, Kansas. Troops spread the disease as they traveled overseas as part of World War I. Why is it called Spanish Flu? The U.S. and other countries involved in the war were unwilling to publicly discuss the epidemic and suppressed it from the media, as they were concerned knowledge of the epidemic would harm the war effort. Spain, who was neutral in the war, was one of the few countries that openly discussed it, and as a consequence became associated with the disease, leading to the name “Spanish Flu”. The pandemic lasted until April of 1920, killing an estimated 17-50 million people world wide. Although this is the first recorded case, it almost certainly was not the first.