The Influenza Epidemic collection on the National Archives includes ten documents and six images including the one that I included in this blog post. As I looked through the images and documents I couldn't help but think of similarities between today's current pandemic situation and that of 103 years ago.
Applications for Education
As I read the documents (they're all short) and viewed the images in The Influenza Epidemic I started to think of questions that I would ask students to think about while they reviewed the artifacts. Here's a short list of those questions:
- How long do you think it took for people in Maine (where we live) to learn about the seriousness of the influenza epidemic?
- How do think people living in 1918 felt about wearing masks
- What are the similarities between the 1918 influenza epidemic and the current COVID-19 pandemic?
- How did the U.S. goverment respond to the 1918 influenza epidemic? How is that similar or different from the response to the COVID-19 pandemic?