Fascinating Facts
and Curious Cures

• Influenza gets its name because in the medieval days, people thought that it was caused by the   astrological influence of the planets in certain order.  It was during the time when people thought the planets had an effect on everything that happened in life.

• 85 out of every 100 soldiers that died during WWI did not die fighting, but died from the 1918 influenza (flu) pandemic.

Click here to find out more about the influenza epidemic of 1918 (The Purple Death).

• London only had one epidemic of the plague, unlike many other cities.  This was the result of the great London fire which happened at the same time.  The fire caused all the straw thatch houses which provided homes for the rats to burn down.  After the fire, Londoners built houses out of brick, so rats carrying the plague would not find their homes so suitable.

• Did you know in 1665, 7,000 people died every week in London because of bubonic plague, also called the black death. 

• A long time ago, people believed a skeleton or a skeletal bird symbolized the coming of the plague, but it is not true.

Click here to learn more about the Bubonic Plague.

• If a bacteria divides every 15 minutes there will be 4.096 x 10 to the 28th power bacteria at the end of 24 hours.

• Some diseases create cross immunities to other diseases.  Once you form an immunity toward leprosy, for example, that immunity will fight tuberculosis germs so you do not become sick if exposed to tuberculosis.

• Your body is composed of one hundred trillion cells.  For every one human cell, your body has 100 bacterial cells.

• To transport cowpox as a vaccine against smallpox, early colonists to this country would put one hundred and fifty children on a boat and ship them across the ocean.  One child would be deliberately infected with the cowpox virus.  That child would spread it to the others.  By the time they got to their destination, a vaccine could be acquired from children who had just recently caught the disease.

• Diatoms (microscopic one-celled organisms) created the Earth's atmosphere (or at least most of the oxygen in it).

• A virus cannot reproduce by itself.

• People used to believe that when you sneezed, your spirit would leave your body for a little while and allow bad spirits to enter, and that's why you say "Bless You" when somebody sneezes.