Hello and welcome to this day in esoteric political history from radiotopia.

My name is Jody Avergan.

This day, July 14, 1968, we keep coming back to 1968 listeners, and I suppose it's for a good reason a very tumultuous year, but on this day in Hong Kong, reports started to trickle in about a sudden increase in patients with flu-like symptoms.

This would lead to an influenza outbreak that swept the city.

Within months the rest of the world, we will get into the details, but I just want to paint

two images right at the top here in late 1968 up to half the adult population in Milwaukee in the United States did not show up for work due to being sick at home and in in Berlin, this flu killed so many people

that bodies had to be stored in subway tunnels.

So an influenza pandemic in the year of 1968,

let's talk about the H3N2 virus,

also known as the Hong Kong flu. I'm joined as

always by Nicole Hammer of Columbia. Hello Nicky. Hey Jody and our special

guest today is Leon Nefock host of the History Podcast fiasco creator

and host of the first two seasons of

slow burn and all-around lover of curious historical moments. Leon welcome to the

show. Thanks Jody, hi Nicky. Hey Leon. So Leon as with all things, we're here because of a tweet.

You a couple weeks ago tweeted something along the lines of,

there was a flu in 1968 that killed a million people worldwide and I feel like no one is talking

about it.

So let's start that.

We'll cut your eye about this story.

Well, it was, if I'm not mistaken, I tweeted about it right as the death toll in the

US was inching towards 100, thousand and I think I learned about

...