Spanish views from a small town

So, in seventy years time, when historians research this Great Pandemic of '20, where will they go to find information on how the common people got through it? Will they search attics and boxes, and chests, and libraries to find written letters and diaries? No, they'll try to find information on obsolete servers, most likely.  Some would argue that this is the most documented age. Almost everyone can read and write and has access to writing utensils, while most people in first world countries have some kind of access to internet. There have been videos, posts, memes, pictures, everything, hung on internet on how we are going through this pandemic. But will any of this survive time? How many of us have picked up a pen to write a physical letter on paper to someone we know, describing what we're going through? Perhaps we should be thankful that the 1918 flu pandemic happened before computers made themselves ubiquitous. We have letters, diaries, photos, newspaper articles,...

Nearly o ne hundred years ago this month, one of the deadliest moments of modern history began. It would last well into the spring of the next year, and even now we don't have enough information about it. At Fort Riley, Kansas, the first documented cases of the Spanish flu were recorded.  Countless soldiers there were being readied for deployment overseas. The United States had entered World War I the year before. Soldiers had already gone to Europe, and more were waiting to cross the Atlantic. On March 11, a cook was the first to come down with the flu. A few days later, he was followed by hundreds of soldiers into the camp hospital. That was the first recording of a virulent illness that quickly spread from one person to the other.  In May, thousands became infected in Spain, including the king, Alfonso XIII. This flu virus, however, affected mainly the young and the strong. The king was only 32 years old, yet he became very ill. At this time, however, no more died from ...