Challenge #20 Stumper The Bubonic Plague killed half of the Roman Empire in the 500's A.D., and killed two million people in India in 1920's. The Black Death killed twenty-five million people in the 1300's. What disease (popularly but incorrectly associated with Spain) affected at least one billion and killed more than twenty million people in the Western World in the pandemic of 1918-20? Stumper Answer: Influenza The pandemic of 1918-1919 was popularly called "Spanish Flu" but probably started in the United States. Of the 20 to 21 million deaths, India lost 12 million. Inuit villages in Alaska were wiped out. Samoa lost 20 percent of its people. In the United States there were about 550,000 deaths attributed to this illness.