These newspaper articles illustrate the impact on American society of Spanish Influenza (H1N1), which first appeared in the United States in March 1918.[1] There were periodic, minor outbreaks for six months, but in September a highly fatal second wave of influenza broke out across the country and lasted through January 1919. Within days of being exposed, patients became gravely ill and many died. Influenza is usually only dangerous for the very young and the elderly. During this outbreak the disease was deadly for people aged twenty to forty as well. According to the Centers for Disease…

At the outbreak of World War I, Ella Jane Osborn was a surgical nurse at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City. In January 1918, she volunteered to serve with the American Expeditionary Forces as a member of the Red Cross’s nursing service in Europe. Initially, nurses were to work only in hospitals far from the front lines. However, the need to have medical treatment available near the fighting changed these plans, and Osborn was assigned to Evacuation Hospital Number 1 at Sebastopol Barracks in France, just seven miles from the front. Sick and wounded soldiers were sent from the front lines…

During World War I, approximately 370,000 black men in the US military served in segregated regiments and were often relegated to support duties such as digging trenches, transporting supplies, cleaning latrines, and burying the dead. One notable exception is the “Harlem Hellfighters,” organized in 1916 as the 15th Infantry Regiment of the New York National Guard. Their nickname came from the 200 Harlem residents who comprised the core of the regiment, and the German view of them as “Hellfighters.” On April 6, 1917, the same day that the United States declared war on Germany, the 15th New York…

When the United States declared war on Germany in April 1917, it needed funds to support the war effort. The Civil War had demonstrated that simply printing more currency would lead to inflation and economic trouble. During World War I, the Secretary of the Treasury and head of the Federal Reserve, William G. McAdoo, did not want to risk devaluing the new US paper currency, which had only been in existence since 1914. Therefore, McAdoo decided to gather one-third of the money needed through taxes and the rest through fundraising. On April 28, 1917, only twenty-two days after the US entered the…

When World War I ended in 1918 more than 4.6 million men returned to the United States from war. The American people and the US government were unprepared to reintegrate and care for the men who returned with physical injuries and psychological damage that would affect many of the veterans for the rest of their lives. According to the Library of Congress, 224,000 soldiers returned home with a permanent physical or mental disability. Of the injured, 4,400 were amputees. Almost 100,000 soldiers had been removed from combat due to psychological injuries and 40,000 of them were subsequently…

Emma Goldman was born to a Jewish family in Kovno, Russia (present-day Lithuania). In 1885, at the age of sixteen, she emigrated to the United States, becoming a well-known author and lecturer promoting anarchism, workers’ rights, birth control, and other political and social movements. Anarchists believed that people could naturally govern themselves without systematic controls. They openly rejected US involvement in World War I, and their anti-government activities concerned many in authority.During World War I, Goldman actively protested the war and encouraged men not to register for the…

In 1839, seventeen-year-old Hiram Ulysses Grant received an appointment to the United States Military Academy at West Point. It changed the course of his life—and his name. Grant always disliked his first name and was commonly known by his middle name. He wanted to swap his first and middle names when he entered the Academy. However, Congressman Thomas Hamer had submitted Grant’s application to West Point under the name “Ulysses S. Grant.” Hamer knew the boy as Ulysses and, at a loss for his middle name, chose “S” because Grant’s mother’s maiden name was Simpson. On September 22, 1839, shortly…

More than 11,000 American Indians served with the American forces during World War I. Nearly 5,000 Native men enlisted and approximately 6,500 were drafted—despite the fact that almost half of American Indians were not citizens and therefore not eligible for conscription. In all, approximately 25 percent of Native men served in the military.[1] They often volunteered to serve in dangerous roles, including as snipers and scouts. Unlike African American soldiers, Native Americans were not restricted to segregated regiments. Joe High Elk, an American Indian soldier during the war, wrote about his…

This engraving depicts a White Union soldier reading the Emancipation Proclamation to an enslaved family. It was published in 1864 by Lucius Stebbins, based on a painting by Henry W. Herrick. According to Stebbins, the scene “represents the only way in which the glorious news could reach the . . . slaves, viz.: through the faithful soldier.”[1] On January 1, 1863, Abraham Lincoln used his wartime powers to issue the Emancipation Proclamation,[2] which declared that “all persons held as slaves within any State or designated part of a State . . . in rebellion against the United States, shall be…

On April 7, 1980, President Jimmy Carter announced the breaking of diplomatic ties with Iran as a result of the Iran hostage crisis of 1979–1981. The US had first become actively involved in Iran in 1953, when the CIA helped overthrow the country’s prime minister, Mohammad Mossadegh, who implemented legislation to wrest control of Iran’s oil fields from Great Britain. The US supported the return of Iran’s monarch, Mohammed Reza Shah Pahlavi, a brutal dictator who strove to modernize Iran while ruthlessly suppressing his opponents. In 1978, religious leaders, lower- and middle-class Iranians…