How Americans Reacted to the Sinking of the RMS Luisitania

On this day just over a hundred years ago, the British passenger steam ship RMS Lusitania sank after being torpedoed by a German U-Boat killing 1,195 of those aboard — 128 of the whom were Americans. The incident forever changed the trajectory of American neutrality during WWI, a fact made evident by the intense coverage it received in the American press.

Fidan BaycoraMay 7, 2021World War I, US in World War I, Lusitania, Vanderbilt, Alfred G. Vanderbilt, Library of CongressComment

The First American Cases of the 1918 Pandemic

There is no doubt that the ongoing COVID19 pandemic is an important part of the American story. However, it is not the first time that the United States has faced an outbreak of disease on such a scale. Americans saw their first cases in the Spanish Flu pandemic in March 1918. But did you know that the first American cases of the 1918 flu might have actually been the first cases of the disease in the world?