Born Then1918–1920
Life during the 1918 influenza pandemic
Be born in a place it hit, a few years before it began, and see what it did to five ordinary lives.
What it meant for ordinary people
A new influenza strain swept the world in three waves and killed young adults at unusual rates. India, with crowding and war-time hunger, suffered the largest toll.
Deaths: about 25–50 million worldwide, perhaps 12–17 million in India alone.
How hard it hits each person in the game (risk of death, of being conscripted, of leaving) comes from scholarly estimates.
Around the same time
- British emigration to the colonies and America 1815–1913
- Indian indenture system 1834–1917
- Chinese emigration from Guangdong and Fujian 1845–1913
- Irish emigration after the Famine 1852–1913
- Third plague pandemic 1855–1930
- Polish emigration "za chlebem" 1870–1913
- Reforms of King Chulalongkorn 1874–1910
- Great Italian emigration 1880–1913
- Pogroms in the Russian Empire 1881–1906
- Atrocities in the Congo Free State 1885–1908
- Spanish–American War 1898
- Sixth cholera pandemic 1899–1923
- Boxer Rebellion 1899–1901
- Indian famine of 1899–1900 1899–1900
- Philippine–American War 1899–1902
- Thousand Days' War 1899–1902
- Second Boer War 1899–1902
- Russo-Japanese War 1904–1905
- Herero and Nama genocide 1904–1908
- Maji Maji Rebellion 1905–1907
- Korea under Japanese rule 1910–1945
- Mexican Revolution 1910–1920
- Balkan Wars 1912–1913
- World War I in Europe 1914–1918
- World War I in the Ottoman Empire 1914–1918
- World War I for the United States, Canada and Australia 1914–1918
- Armenian genocide 1915–1917
- Great Migration of Black Americans 1916–1970
- Russian Revolution and Civil War 1917–1922
- 1918 influenza pandemic 1918–1920