Parrot Fever: The Forgotten Bird Murder Pandemic of 1929

In the modern era, we’ve gotten way too familiar with pandemics over the course of, oh, our entire lives. Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, there was swine flu, bird flu, normal flu -- we live in a veritable menagerie of influenza. Back in the ’20s and ’30s, though, the flu was almost as mysterious as the economy. We were only about a decade removed from the fear of jinxing it.

So when parrots and their owners started dropping dead, people were primed to react like Muppets in a burning building. There was panic, a backlash to the panic, and finally a bunch of dead scientists, which eventually led to the creation of the National Institute of Health. That’s right: Bird murder gave birth to centralized American medical research.