Letter of the Week
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The 1917 Medical Collapse They Never Explained The events of 1917–1918, during what later generations dubbed the Great Pandemic, didn’t unfold the way the tidy textbooks suggest. The public was told a deadly flu had inexplicably begun cutting down the strongest young men first — especially soldiers — while leaving the frail relatively untouched in
About the Archivist
This is a curated selection of letters that left a mark on the world, on someone’s life, or just in the margins of time.
Each is transcribed with care and respect for the medium that first carried it: the typewritten page.