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IMHO, no, I don't think it ended WWI, it was probably the end of WWI that spread it globally so fast (plenty of malnourished soldiers going back home). Maybe a

IMHO, no, I don't think it ended WWI, it was probably the end of WWI that spread it globally so fast (plenty of malnourished soldiers going back home). Maybe a bit off-topic, I wholeheartedly agree with your teacher, but even if a historical event has several causes, it's very common for there to be a single trigger that starts the whole thing. Everybody "knows" that the first world war started with the assasination of the archduke Ferdinand, but the causes were many (the alliance between France and Russia, between Germany and Austro-Hungary, the problems in the Balkans between Russia, the Ottoman empire and Austro-Hungary...) As for your question, it probably has happened a few times (avian flu a few years ago?), but medicine is much better now and, on average, the population is healthier. Just these two facts alone make it much more difficult (but not impossible) for something like that from happening again. Another off-topic, but I find it weird that it's called the Spanish flu when, apparently, it started in France. Spain was not part of WWI and didn't have wartime censorship at the time, so it was the first place that started reporting cases of it, but it didn't originate there.

krylon 9y ago
> Maybe a bit off-topic, I wholeheartedly agree with your teacher [...] it's very common for there to be a single trigger that starts the whole thing. Everybody "knows" that the first world war started with the assasination of the archduke Ferdinand, but the causes were many Yes! That is exactly what he tried to make us understand! I loved that teacher. To him, learning history was not about memorizing dates and places[1], but understanding causal relationships. Also that us Germans had kind of lost our historical memory after World War II. Also, he taught me the important lesson that two people can have diametrically opposing opinions (I was very left-wing at the time, he was "conservative"[2]) and still respect each other as human beings and acknowledge that the fact I disagreed with him on some important issues did not make either one of us an idiot or a bad person. When I look at the people often "debate" on the Internet, I think lesson might be more important than anything else he taught me. [1] Those are important, too, obviously. But knowing the exact date World War I broke out was not nearly as important to him as understanding why it broke out, and why it would have broken out sooner or later, even if Archduke Ferdinand hat not been killed. [2] Note that "conservative" in Germany does not mean the same thing as in the USA. My teacher was, for example, vehemently anti-Marxist, but he also pointed out to us that Marx's analysis of capitalism and its inherent contradictions was spot-on in many ways and still very relevant today.

krylon 9y ago

> Maybe a bit off-topic, I wholeheartedly agree with your teacher [...] it's very common for there to be a single trigger that starts the whole thing. Everybody "knows" that the first world war started with the assasination of the archduke Ferdinand, but the causes were many Yes! That is exactly what he tried to make us understand! I loved that teacher. To him, learning history was not about memorizing dates and places[1], but understanding causal relationships. Also that us Germans had kind of lost our historical memory after World War II. Also, he taught me the important lesson that two people can have diametrically opposing opinions (I was very left-wing at the time, he was "conservative"[2]) and still respect each other as human beings and acknowledge that the fact I disagreed with him on some important issues did not make either one of us an idiot or a bad person. When I look at the people often "debate" on the Internet, I think lesson might be more important than anything else he taught me. [1] Those are important, too, obviously. But knowing the exact date World War I broke out was not nearly as important to him as understanding why it broke out, and why it would have broken out sooner or later, even if Archduke Ferdinand hat not been killed. [2] Note that "conservative" in Germany does not mean the same thing as in the USA. My teacher was, for example, vehemently anti-Marxist, but he also pointed out to us that Marx's analysis of capitalism and its inherent contradictions was spot-on in many ways and still very relevant today.