Few remember the Spanish flu of 1918-20 but some say it killed more than 20 million. In fact estimates of the number of deaths worldwide run as high as 100 million. Keeping of data in those days before computers was an inexact science, so no one knows for sure.

Records show that the influenza pandemic began in Fort Riley, Kansas and spread to New Jersey and then to Brest, France as American occupations troops were moved to Europe. Crowded conditions on troop ships were apparently ideal for spreading the disease rapidly.

Most of the victims were healthy young adults and up to one billion people were infected around the world, half the planet's population at the time.

The pandemic lasted from March, 1918 until June, 1920 spreading even to the Artic and remote Pacific Islands. More than twice as many people died from the flu as died from World War I.

Scientists have used tissue samples from frozen victims to reproduce the virus for study, which may be ill advised due to the virulence of the strain and the possibility of it escaping from research labs.

The flu pandemic has been described at the "greatest medical holocaust in history" and may have killed more people than the black plague.

In India, 17 million died, 500,000 to 600,000 died in the United States, in England 250,000 died, and in Canada 50,000 died. Another 12,000 died in Australia. Entire villages perished in Africa and in Alaska. In Japan, 257,000 died.

In many places stores and schools closed. There were too few health care workers to care for the sick and too few grave diggers to bury the dead. Mass graves were dug by steam shovels and bodies buried without coffins in many places.

Many historians call the Spanish Flu of 1918 "a forgotten pandemic." Let us hope history does not repeat itself.