The ‘sleeping’ or ‘sleepy’ sickness that swept the world in the 1920s had nothing in common with the tropical disease.…
Despite its name, the flu pandemic of 1918 did not start in Spain. In fact it spread there rather late…
Fate played a cruel trick on the natives of Fiji. The islands emerged from appalling inter-tribal wars in 1874, hopeful…
The first documented account of cholera appears in an Indian medical report of 1563, but the disease seems to have…
Since the Black Death, London had suffered several outbreaks of plague and had established a quarantine system to restrict infection…
The New World that Columbus discovered in 1492 was rich in wonders but devoid of immunity to old-world diseases. Smallpox,…
The city of Perm, lying on the European edge of the Ural Mountains 1,400 km (780 mi) east of Moscow,…
When in June 2009 fire spread from a warehouse to a center minding the children of local workers, it set…
When in 2004 fire ripped through an East London warehouse housing a large selection of British contemporary art, certain sections…
There is a growing body of opinion in developed countries that people’s freedom is becoming stifled by health and safety…