Hello and welcome to the History Hour podcast from the BBC World Service with me Max Pearson,

the past brought to life by those who were there.

This week the detective work involved in finding out the exact makeup of the 1918 Spanish flu.

Tens of millions of people died around the world,

and so understanding how this outbreak occurred,

why it was so virulent,

and what the lessons that we can learn from that are extremely important.

Also how the Saudis got involved in Yemen's civil war, the sinking of a South Korean warship in 2010

was North Korea to blame, and Chinese babies abandoned in Hong Kong in the 1960s.

We were left in places like trash bins, public conveniences, graveyards in the gutter, just anywhere, hopefully where the general public

would stumble across us.

That's all coming up later in the podcast, but as the world struggles to get to grips with the current coronavirus pandemic,

we start this week with another virus which spread around the world leaving fear and death in its wake.

But this is from nearly 40 years ago.

In 1981, doctors in San Francisco began noticing that young healthy people were contracting a strange and deadly disease.

At the time, little was known about HIV-AIDS,

how to treat it or how to prevent it.

The city's vibrant LGBT community was particularly badly hit, thousands of gay men died.

The gay rights activist, Cleve Jones lived through those traumatic years

and devised a campaign that would change public perceptions simple enough in concept but moving

and impactful.

Cleave Jones has been telling Rebecca Kessby the story of the AIDS Memorial Quilt.

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