The great Spanish Flu epidemic killed millions of people around the world including over 600,000 deaths in the United States alone. There's a good chance there are Spanish Flu deaths in your family. The video embedded below shows some cases and goes on to explore how the Spanish Flu has many parallels with our Covid-19 pandemic. Schools were closed, masks required, and many sporting events were cancelled. One sporting event that was cancelled was especially near and dear to the hearts of us in the Pacific Northwest. The final game of the 1919 Stanley Cup was cancelled, and so the Seattle Metropolitans didn't have the chance to repeat their 1917 victory over the Montreal Canadiens.
For those perusing the embedded video, it might prove convenient to fast forward to various points of interest. These include:
- The Powerpoint presentation runs from the beginning to 5:30
- At about 7:00, the presentation goes from the North Beach Genealogy Blog to Newspapers dot com
- At about 7:30, the presentation moves along to the "clippings" element of that site and discovers that a search for "Spanish Flu" comes up with hundreds of clippings. At about 8:00, narrowing the search in various ways is investigated.
- At about 14:00, clippings showing Franklin Roosevelt with the Spanish Flu are discovered.
- Around 17:30, clippings reveal that the 1919 NHL Stanley Cup was cancelled, denying the Seattle Metropolitans the opportunity to repeat their victory over the Montreal Canadiens.
- Around 20:30, news articles from the 1990-1995 period reveal a global pandemic could happen once again!
- About 26:30, questions about using newspapers dot com without logging on or having an account were answered and results for the keyword "averill" were examined by about 27:15, with the keyword "Westfall" coming up about a minute later.
- Around 29:30, narrowing down "Westfall" just to Minnesota comes up with about 150 clippings.
- Around 30:30, a clipping is examined and the "OCR" (optical character recognition) feature is tested. After that, dowloading the clipping or emailing it is demonstrated.
- At about 32:00, the presentation errs in saying the email would actually be the article. In fact, the email contains a link to a clipping that can be brought up and saved. Following the link allows the email recipient to do pretty much anything with the clipping including the OCR and saving the clipping in pdf or jpg formats.
- Around 35:00, looking at clippings from a particular user is discussed. Contrary to the attempt in the video, this is accomplished by picking a clipping made by a user of interest, and THEN clipping on the link to them. To send the user an email, one must be logged in to newspapers dot com, but a paid account is not required.
