CNN — Pandemic: It's a scary word. But the world has seen pandemics before, and worse ones, too. Consider the influenza pandemic of 1918, often referred to erroneously as the "Spanish flu." ...

The influenza ward at Walter Reed Hospital during the Spanish flu pandemic of 1918 Library of Congress The Great Influenza Pandemic of 1918 reached just about every continent throughout the globe.

A pair of lungs preserved over a century ago from a deceased Spanish flu patient has helped unravel the genetic adaptations undergone by the virus to spread across Europe during the start of the 1918 ...

Scientists in Switzerland have cracked open a century-old viral mystery by decoding the genome of the 1918 influenza virus from a preserved Zurich patient. This ancient RNA revealed that the virus had ...

Researchers from the universities of Basel and Zurich have used a historical specimen from UZH's Medical Collection to decode the genome of the virus responsible for the 1918-1920 influenza pandemic ...

Researchers from the universities of Basel and Zurich have used a historical specimen from UZH’s Medical Collection to decode the genome of the virus responsible for the 1918–1920 influenza pandemic ...

A scientist harvests H7N9 virus growing in bird eggs. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention received samples of the virus from China. — James Gathany/CDC/Douglas E. Jordan / (CC0 1.0) A ...