In the worst medical catastrophe since the plague of the fourteenth century, a pandemic of Spanish influenza sweeps the globe, killing more than twenty-one million people, in excess of 1 percent of the world's population. By the time it ends in November 1918, World War I has claimed the lives of another ten million people.

Spanish fiction writer Vicente Blasco Ibanez publishes his popular novel The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.

British writer Lytton Strachey satirizes cherished myths of Victorian England in Eminent Victorians.

18 Jan.

Lenin dissolves the Russian Constituent Assembly and proclaims a dictatorship of the proletariat.

6 Feb.

Married women older than the age of thirty are granted the right to vote in Great Britain. The same act also removes property requirements as qualifications for suffrage.

24 Feb.

Estonia declares its independence from Russia.

3 Mar.

The Soviet Union and the Central Powers sign the Treaty of Brest Litovsk, ending hostilities among...