As the cannons thundered and screams still resounded in European trenches, another deadly catastrophe broke out in every corner of the globe. The Spanish flu, the first pandemic in history, infected about one billion people and made more victims than World War One.
This month’s digital calendar is focused on the influenza pandemic that broke out in the spring of 1918. It started to develop as a benign form in 1918 but by the autumn of that same year and then throughout the winter of 1919, it spread far and wide, claiming ever-greater numbers of victims. In addition to the texts by Anna Grillini on the Spanish flu and by Jacopo Calussi on "Arditi e arditismo”, the digital calendar includes a "Testimonianze" section, by Gustavo Corni, and a panel by Adriano Siesser which makes a comparison between the bombings in the battle of Megiddo in September 1918 and US raids on Highway 80 in 1991 during the Gulf war.
Read the full episode on the calendar’s website link
The photo gallery contains some pictures from the digital calendar LaGrandeGuerra+100