3. Originating in the Russian city of Saint Petersburg, the flu pandemic of 1889-1890 rapidly spread throughout the globe to kill more than a million people within two months
Sometimes referred to as “Russian flu” or “Asiatic flu”, although not to be confused with the Russian flu strain known as H1N1, the pandemic of 1889-1990 was a worldwide outbreak of influenza. Assisted by the advancement of modern transport infrastructure, with the largest nineteen nations of Europe possessing a collective two hundred thousand kilometers of railway by the late-19th century, influenza, for the first time, was provided the opportunity to become truly global in scope. First recorded in Saint Petersburg in December 1889, within four months the virus had spread throughout the Northern Hemisphere.
Demonstrating the rapidity of its spread, the peak of the pandemic in the United States was the second week of January 1890. Taking just five weeks to reach peak mortality, more than one million people worldwide were killed by the outbreak. Originally thought to have been a strain of the H2N2 influenza virus, known as Asian flu and mutated from birds, modern medical analysis has cast doubt on this claim. Instead, it is widely suggested today that the pandemic was a result of the broader H3N8 strain, more commonly found in ducks, dogs, and horses.