Perhaps some of you saw the film on your local public broadcasting affiliate - I missed it, so particularly enjoyed this web site about the influenza epidemic of 1918. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/influenza/ I find this fascinating on several fronts. One is the role of disease in history. Somehow the history books put the diseases in separate categories and fail to include the effect on general events. For example, much is made of the conquering role of Europeans on the American continents. In every case, the Europeans were aided in their conquest by the diseases they brought with them. When the first Europeans sailed into Puget Sound, the native population had pock marks; smallpox had gotten across the continent faster than the Europeans could sail, and had killed enormous numbers of the natives. In the case of the 1918 flu epidemic, the influence on WWI in Europe is mentioned in the web site material. Another reason for my fascination is that I personally was caught by another great flu epidemic - the so called Hong Kong flu of the mid-1960s. I have never been so acutely ill or had such a long recovery time and I was young. The greatest reason for my interest was that my mother was a victim of the 1918 epidemic. She was nine and it was such an experience that she never forgot it. She also never had flu again her entire, long life. The 1918 flu was so monumental that it conferred life-long immunity. Diane Hettrick dhettrick@earthlink.net