Fownhope’s Heart of Oak Society traces its roots to the age of friendly societies, when communities provided their own safety net. Its anniversary celebrations reveal a tradition still very much alive, says MARK SEDDON
Latest editorial
A hundred years of pandemics
PETER FROST helps us catch up on a bit of influenza history
An emergency hospital in Camp Funston, Kansas, during the influenza epidemic, c1918
ANGUS REID explains the significance of Cuba’s egalitarian in letter and spirit Family Code and the pertinent lessons it holds for democracies anywhere in the world
Special report by PEOPLE’S WORLD
NICK WRIGHT considers how the isolation of Israel and a new film on the controversial Italian communist leader are creating new reference points for Italy’s left
CARLOS MARTINEZ says Cuba’s achievements in the face of a criminal blockade are startling, but the island’s future if the United States succeeds in crushing it looks bleak
AMNON BROWNFIELD STEIN reports that far-right MPs who mobbed the event organised by Hadash may have helped raise awareness of the brutality of the Israeli right
A CENTURY ago in 1920 an influenza pandemic was coming to an end. It had started two or three years before, perhaps in a Kansas army camp, and it would kill more people than died in the entire first world war.
This would be the most severe influenza pandemic in recorded history. It was caused by a virus of avian origin. There are various theories where it originated — none proven. It was first identified in US military personnel in Kansas in the spring of 1918.
Some 500 million people, or a third of the world’s population, became infected with this virus, and at least 50 million died worldwide, with a death toll of 228,000 in Britain alone.
Similar stories
Coal-fired stoves in traditional homes are the primary source of extreme levels of air pollution in over-crowded Ulaanbaatar. As more people become climate-displaced, the situation is likely to worsen, write SCIENCE AND SOCIETY
