My interview about Spanish Flu on The Human Condition Podcast
I was a guest on The Human Condition podcast with Lisa Gregory a few months ago. The episode finally came out this week. I spoke with the host about the 1918 Spanish Flu epidemic and its comparisons to our modern virus. Here’s the interview. I hope you like it. If you do, take a look at my novel October Mourning, a medical thriller set during the flu outbreak in Western Maryland.
Watch my Festival of Books in the Alleghenies presentation
The COVID craziness has led to a cancellation of just about every event I had scheduled this year. One of those events, the Festival of Books in the Alleghenies, decided to go digital and offered authors the chance to do a digital presentation to viewers. I was lucky enough to be selected, and my interview was last night on Zoom and Facebook Live. The topic was the Spanish Flu, which I wrote about in my novel October Mourning. I must of done something right because I was told it was their most-viewed presentation, so far (and before you ask, no, I wasn’t the first presentation). Here’s the link to the presentation. I begins around the 2 minute mark. As always, let me know what you think.
Talking about Spanish Flu on WTHU
I was a guest on WTHU Radio in Thurmont, MD, to speak about the 1918 Spanish Flu pandemic. Here is the interview. You might also enjoy these posts: The Spanish Flu hits Adams County (Part 1) The sneeze that killed October Mourning
The Spanish Flu hits Adams County (Part 3)
The second wave of Spanish Flu hit Adams County particularly hard in the Fairfield area and the eastern part of the county. One doctor was quoted in the Star and Sentinel as saying, “I have just come from four homes. Three or four people were sick in every one of them. One of the families had both parents and the two children ill. I have another family in which there were six cases.” Reports said the second outbreak wasn’t as pervasive, but it could still be deadly. This is typical of locations where there was a second outbreak. I have a theory about that. In the early part of 1918, the world experienced a typical flu outbreak. It wasn’t deadly, but what was discovered by researchers was that people who had that flu fared much better during the Spanish Flu Read more…
The Spanish Flu hits Adams County (Part 2)
Spanish Flu first appeared in Adams County around the end of September 1918. It almost always it made its first appearance in any community during the last week of September, whether it was here or in Europe where there was fighting. This could indicate that that there wasn’t a flash point location so much as this was the strain that had developed in 1918 and mutated. That is a point that is argued, though. Some have tried to set an origin point. Boston and in Kansas are the most-common locations suggested. The Gettysburg Compiler reported on Sept. 28 that the flu had broken out in Camp Colt, Gettysburg’s army training camp. At this point, they believed that it had come from soldiers who had been exposed to it in Camp Devens in Massachusetts, which is one of the places in Read more…
The Spanish Flu hits Adams County (Part 1)
In 1918, the world was at war. Though it was a different war and a different century, Gettysburg found itself once again occupied by an army. Young men were sent there to learn to fight the Germans in World War I. They trained to fight the enemy using a piece of state-of-the-art military technology called the tank. The problem was that no one could see their enemy that they were fighting in Gettysburg. It moved indiscriminately through camps and communities injuring and killing men, women, soldier, children. It made no difference. This war waged for about a year until the enemy retreated and hid but not before killing, by the worst estimate, about 50 million people or more than 4 times the population of Pennsylvania died. It was not World War I that killed all those people. It was the Read more…
The sneeze that killed
Elmer Martin, who lived near Crellin, returned to work on October 15, 1918, after being sick for a few days. The 28-year-old felt fine and needed to get back to earning a living at the Turner-Douglas Mine as a driver. He seemed fine his first day back, but when he didn’t report to work the next day, someone realized that he had never made it home. A search began and lasted all night until Martin’s body was discovered alongside the tracks of the Preston Railroad. He had apparently just fallen down and died. He wasn’t the only one, either. Across Garrett County, more than 100 people died from Spanish Flu in fall of 1918. The flu wasn’t just a problem in the county, either. Spanish Flu reached nearly every place on the globe and by the time it subsided at Read more…
Don’t let the flu get you!
So it seems like everyone lately has the flu. Schools are sending warnings home to parents. Hospitals are telling patients with the flu not to come in. The Centers for Disease Control has said that is has hit epidemic level. So how bad can it get? The worst to date has been the Spanish Flu pandemic of 1918. It left about 50 million dead after just a couple months. I wrote about it in my novel October Mourning. I’ve also written about half a dozen articles about it and given a couple talks about it.I continue to be fascinated (scared?) by it. It killed more people than World War I and in a shorter time frame, too, yet the war had the headlines during 1918. It was estimated that 675,000 Americans died from the Spanish Flu or 10 times more Read more…
What? You mean there's more to Gettysburg than just the Civil War battle?
I have a new e-book available on Kindle called Beyond the Battlefield: Stories from Gettysburg’s Rich History and it happens to be coming out around the same time I’m beginning a new history column for the Gettysburg Times with the same theme. Gettysburg is best-known for the epic Civil War battle that was fought there in 1863. It tends to overshadow many of the other interesting and important stories that have taken place in Gettysburg and the vicinity. Gettysburg was home to one of the first tank training camps in the country during World War I that was located on a portion of the Civil War battlefield. This also brought a young army officer to Gettysburg who would play a very important role in town but also the world. His name was Dwight David Eisenhower. Gettysburg was also home to Read more…
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