The 1918 influenza epidemic struck my grandfather's household on their rural North Dakota homestead. Two of his younger brothers died of the disease on the very same night (December 28, 1918). One of them had been born only a week earlier; the other was 5 years old. My grandfather (then aged 14), his older sister, and their mother all nearly perished that same night as well, but they survived.
It is almost impossible to comprehend.
My grandmother died in Baltimore, MD, in 1918 of the "Spanish Flu". I am very leery of this new "bird flu".
In 1918 children would skip rope to the rhyme...
I had a little bird,
Its name was Enza.
I opened the window,
And in-flu-enza.
John Barry's book is decent reading.