Worst Plagues To Spread To America

  • New England

    1616, 1633, 1713, 1721, 1732, 1747, 1788, thousands of deaths in Boston, spreading in crowded cities, and decimating native Indian populations, symptoms indicate possibly yellow fever, bubonic plague, influenza, smallpox, measles, chickenpox, typhus.
  • Yellow Fever

    5,000 deaths in Philadelphia, followed by 25 different outbreaks across the country over the next century, possibly brought by slaves or merchants from Africa or Caribbean and spread by mosquitos;
  • Cholera Outbreak

    Affected millions worldwide 1832, 1848, 1866. By the early 1800's, the British Empire had grown to be the largest empire in world history, controlling over 13 million square miles and ruling over a half billion people.
    It was the first truly global disease, killing tens of millions in crowded cities in:
    England, Ireland, Belgium, Netherlands, France, Spain, Italy, Germany, Hungary, China, Japan, Java, Korea, the Philippines, India, Bengal, Iran, Iraq, Algeria, Tunisia, Egypt, Arabia, and Africa.
  • Scarlet Fever

    Affected over 20,000, mostly children.
  • Period: to

    Typhoid

    Affected over 100,000 during Civil War and Spanish America War
  • Period: to

    Tuberculosis

    Caused 100,000 deaths per year.
  • Period: to

    Polio

    Eventually peaking with 60,000 children infected in 1952, hundreds of thousands of paralytic cases worldwide.
  • Spanish Flu

    75 million worldwide
  • Diphtheria Outbreak

    200,000 cases a year through the 1920s;
  • Asian Flu

    2 million deaths worldwide.
  • Hong Kong Flu

    1 million deaths worldwide.