26First Plague Outbreak
During the first outbreak of The Black Death in France in 1348, cities ran out of consecrated ground to bury the dead in so quickly, that the current Pope, Clement VI, had to bless the entire Rhone river to allow corpses to be legally dumped in it.
27. San Francisco had an outbreak of bubonic plague in 1900–1904 that killed 119 people. While city officials acted quickly to contain it, California Governor Henry Gage covered it up to protect the powerful railroads and other businesses. Some newspapers helped by defaming the city health commissioner.
28. There was an outbreak of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease in rural Kentucky in the 1990s which was likely linked to a prion that affected people who ate squirrel brains. Symptoms of the disease include dementia, involuntary movements, blindness, weakness, and coma. About 70% of people die within a year of diagnosis.
29. Dr. Carlo Urbani recognized the emergence of an outbreak of pneumonia as a new epidemic and immediately notified the WHO about SARS. He personally flew to Hanoi to investigate. He would die in 2003 of SARS, having triggered the most effective response to an epidemic in history.
30. The Spanish Flu affected the entire world, killing more than 50 million people. The outbreak was during World War 1 and to keep morale high, wartime censors for many countries minimized it. Papers were free to report its effects in neutral Spain causing many to think it was largely confined to that country.
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311999 Legionnaires’ Outbreak
In 1999, an improperly set up hot tub at a garden show in Bovenkarspel, Netherlands, caused an outbreak of 206 cases of Legionnaires’ Disease and 32 confirmed deaths. Legionnaires’ disease is a type of pneumonia caused by legionella bacteria.
32. An outbreak of Syphilis in 16th century Europe caused a surge in Wigmaking. Wigs covered up baldness and head sores caused by Syphilis. Powdered Wigs were popular because the powder contained lavender or orange, to cover up bad smells.
33. Outbreaks of the deadly English sweat occurred from 1485 to 1551. The disease caused profuse sweating and sometimes led to rapid death. The pathogen behind it remains a mystery more than five centuries later. After raging for more than 60 years, the “English sweat” simply vanished. It was confined to England, except in 1528–29, when it spread to the European continent.
34. After the 2010 earthquake in Haiti, which killed 200,000 people, UN peacekeepers from Nepal were sent to the country. Sadly, the peacekeepers brought cholera with them leading to a massive outbreak, which infected 800,000 people, and killing at least 9000.
35. In 1950, the US army dispersed a cloud of bacteria (Serratia marcescens), believed to be harmless, in the San Francisco Bay Area to test whether enemy agents could launch a biological attack from an offshore location. The test resulted in an outbreak of urinary tract infections and one death.
