Stockholm Syndrome is a condition in which innocent hostages develop a psychological bond with their captors, forming intense emotional sympathies with otherwise total criminal strangers.

Typhus is a filth disease that spreads through rats, lice and poor sanitation. In addition to fever, rash and nausea, typhus victims experience delirium, stupor and sensitivity to light. Today, typhus prevails in developing countries with inadequate sanitation.

In 1957, after a lethal respiratory virus emerged out of Hong Kong, Maurice Hilleman studied the H2N2 strain and predicted a US pandemic. Despite his claims being ignored by government officials, pharmaceutical companies used Hilleman’s work to create a vaccine that saved an estimated one million American lives.

Having killed an estimated 30 million people worldwide, Cholera is an infectious disease caused by poor sanitation spreading the vibrio cholerae bacterium.

From 1932 to 1972, the Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment was a study conducted by the U.S. Public Health Service to study the progression of humans infected with untreated syphilis.

Pandemics have had some positive repercussions. The historical upside of past pandemics has spawned bold changes in public health, sanitation, building design, social norms and more.

President Woodrow Wilson at the Paris Peace Conference had a mental breakdown most likely caused by a high fever associated with the Spanish Flu of 1918.