One hundred years ago the Spanish flu came to Michigan.
The flu lead to a quarantine on the campus of Alma College.
Now, a professor at the University is using Twitter to teach her students about the pandemic which killed at least 50 million people worldwide.
Kristin Olbertson teaches history at Alma. She said from now until mid-October her class will be live tweeting articles about the local impact of the event.
“I thought that would be a fascinating and slightly creepy thing to do as if the pandemic were happening here again on the 100th anniversary of the flu. So that’s exactly what my students will be doing.”
Olbertson said she spent her summer finding articles in the Alma College and Alma Town newspapers about the impact of Spanish flu on Alma.
She said students will tweet out those articles around the same time they were published 100 years ago.
Olbertson said she hopes local residents will come forward with stories or artifacts from their families experience with the period.
To find out more you can follow @MichFlu_1918 on twitter or go to facebook.com/MichFlu1918