Segregation and racial bias were not the only influences that greeted the birth of Jackie Robinson in 1919. The influenza pandemic was its second year in what became known as the greatest medical holocaust in history. More than 50 million died around the world over a two-year period of what was called the Spanish flu. About one in four Americans were infected and an estimated 675,000 died—more than ten times the number of American soldiers killed in World War I. The flu was one of the few things in early twentieth-century America that had no racial bias—both whites and blacks were affected at the same rate.