>> I may be wrong, but I believe that this strain was brought to >>the US by the returning GI's from WWI. >>> >When I'm not doing genealogy, sometimes I teach microbiology. > David's right, GIs returning from Europe played a >substantial role in spreading the flu throughout the U.S. and Canada. ------snip------- >Recent thinking however is that the epidemic actually began in the >U.S., There was an article in one of my throw away journals withing the last 6 months concerning this. Someone at the AFIP (Armed Forces Institute of Pathology) took lung tissue from a young soldier who died in 1918 within 2 or 3 days of contracting the illness and extracted the viral DNA and then analyzed it. The virus of 1918 was very similar to one of the viruses we refer to as Swine Flu and the person suggested that the epidemic began in pigs, and jumped the species barrier to humans. I recall that article mentioning that the flu epidemic began in the US. OK OK, so it's a little afield from genealogy - I'm Dutch. I say what's on my mind. You can always tell a Dutchman, but you can't tell him much. Bob Lamparter