The Spanish influenza pandemic became one of the deadliest events in history. It infected as many as one in every four humans on the planet, and it resulted in an estimated 50–100 million deaths.

Facts about the Spanish flu. When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Here’s how it works. In 1918, a strain of influenza known as Spanish flu caused a ...

Spanish influenza killed about 50 million people (estimates vary), including 675,000 in the United States, and up to 40 percent of the world’s population was stricken with the flu.

One hundred and two years ago the pandemic Spanish Influenza hit the United States, killing an estimated 50 million people worldwide and 675,000 in the U.S.

The Spanish influenza was unusual in more ways than one. There’s its universality: Between 1918 and 1919, the particularly aggressive H1N1 virus infected 1 in 3 people on planet Earth.

The Spanish influenza of 1918 mutated into a form that humans could catch from one another, allowing it to spread around the globe like a biological brushfire.