Many of our high school students take a math class called Pre-Calculus and from there a number of them move on and take AP Calculus. What a lot of people do not know is that Sir Isaac Newton created calculus during the Great Plague of London. He was one of the students that were sent home from Cambridge because of the pandemic. During his year at home, not only did he develop his theories that would become our modern day calculus, but his famous theory of gravity took shape during this sabbatical from school.
This is just one of the many interesting bits of information I learned from a new book called “The Pandemic Population: Eight Strategies to Help Generation Z Rediscover Hope After Coronavirus” by Dr. Tim Elmore. It was also through this book that I learned about the last major pandemic the world faced. No, it was not the Spanish Flu of 1918 but actually a flu-like virus very similar to Covid in 1968. It became known as the “Hong Kong Flu” and is estimated to have killed as many as 4 million people.