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Disease

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History of AIDS

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History of AIDS

What is HIV? The human immunodeficiency virus, or HIV, is a virus that attacks the immune system, specifically CD4 cells (or T cells). The virus is transmitted through bodily fluids such as blood, semen, vaginal fluids, anal fluids, and breast milk. Historically, HIV has most often been spread through unprotected sex, the sharing of needles […]

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Black Death

Black Death

How Did the Black Plague Start? Even before the “death ships” pulled into port at Messina, many Europeans had heard rumors about a “Great Pestilence” that was carving a deadly path across the trade routes of the Near and Far East. Indeed, in the early 1340s, the disease had struck China, India, Persia, Syria and […]

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How the SARS Virus Spread Around the World

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SARS Pandemic: How the Virus Spread Around the World in 2003

Slow reporting in China and an outbreak in a Hong Kong hotel led to over 8,000 infections in more than 20 countries.

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How Measles Helped Destroy the Hawaiian Monarchy

The death of King Kamehameha II and Queen Kamamalu was a harbinger of disaster.

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Life in the Trenches of World War I

Trenches—long, deep ditches dug as protective defenses—are most often associated with World War I, and the results of trench warfare in that conflict were hellish indeed.

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Rats Didn’t Spread the Black Death—It Was Humans

Scientists now believe the plague spread too fast for rats to be the culprits.

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This Day in History

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2003

World Health Organization declares SARS contained worldwide

21st Century
1928

Penicillin discovered by Sir Alexander Fleming

Inventions & Science
1796

Early smallpox vaccine is tested

Inventions & Science
1954

Children receive first polio vaccine

Inventions & Science
1954

Polio vaccine trials begin

Inventions & Science
1991

Magic Johnson announces he is HIV-positive

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