Posts Tagged ‘Camp Kearny’

A postman wearing protective gauze. National Archives.

In the fall of 1918, San Diego children skipped rope to a popular rhyme:

I had a little bird

Its name was Enza

I opened the window

And in-flew-enza

In the last weeks of World War I and in the months that followed, an influenza outbreak swept the world, infecting a billion people and killing as many as 50 million. It was one of the deadliest pandemics in history. In San Diego the scourge reached epidemic proportions . . .

Read the story of The Spanish Flu.

A shocking mystery grabbed the attention of newspaper readers on Tuesday morning, January 16, 1923. “A Young Woman’s Body Found on Beach,” the San Diego Union headlined. “BODY OF PRETTY YOUNG WOMAN CAST UP ON THE WAVES” was the San Diego Sun’s lurid story.

A family picnicking on the beach at Torrey Pines had stumbled across a body . . . Had this been an accident? Was it possibly suicide, or even murder?

The story of the Death of the Dancer.

I just hung on. . . I saw the other fellows fall and it didn’t make me feel any too good, but there was nothing I could do about it except to hang on tighter. I wouldn’t do it again for love or money. —Seaman Bud Cowart

An airship disaster in May 1932, shocked San Diego. Read about the Akron Tragedy

USS Akron at San Diego, May 1932