From the Archives: ‘The grip’ of 1918 better known as the Spanish flu

Your resident archivist has a few projects in motion bound to materialize soon, so I give you one of them today while we’re still researching. (I’ve never missed a deadline in the now four decades of journalism and today won’t be the first.)

On this day in July of 1918, the Boston Herald ran a short item on an inside page that read: “Spanish Grip Kills 305 Swiss Troops.” (As you can see above.) The rest was history.

One-third of the world was infected with the Spanish flu, and eventually, so many people either died from it or had immunity that the disease had nowhere to go. The CDC reports the number of deaths was estimated to be at least 50 million worldwide with about 675,000 occurring in the United States.

The Johns Hopkins University COVID map — the gold standard for analytics of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic — lists 6.38 million deaths worldwide as of today from the coronavirus pandemic; with the U.S. leading the way with 3.41 million fatalities.

Here’s the Boston Herald front page from 1918: Boston Herald July 27, 1918

What can we learn from the past? When will this pandemic end? What will people study about us 100 years from now? What have we done right? What have we done wrong?

This archive project is bottomless and your resident archivist won’t give it up. But noon is minutes away and I can speak with deep knowledge that when the time comes to hit print, you give it your best and promise to report more as soon as possible.

All insights welcome to [email protected]. Plus, look below: it will get better!

Plus, here’s a story on the Spanish flu worth a read.