See what happened last time swine flu hit and check out our list of must-reads that will have you chatting at the lunch counter, over IM or wherever it is that people actually talk these days.
- Swine flu gripped the country in 1976 -- except the outbreak never really materialized. Forty million citizens got vaccinated based on an unprecedented campaign by the government urging Americans to get the shot. Ultimately, only about 200 cases of swine flu and one death were reported. The debacle embarrassed the government and forced the director of the then-Center for Disease Control to leave his post.
- Also, follow the spread of swine flu in real time on Google maps here.
- A computer program could be the next contestant on "Jeopardy!" The program, named Watson after IBM founder Thomas J. Watson, is more advanced than the computer that beat chess champ Gary Kasparov in '97. IBM, which created to software, said they are considering pitting Jeopardy champ Ken Jennings against the computer.
- The Google logo that greets visitors at the search engine's site is replaced today by a series of dots and dashes. The "--. --- --- --. .-.. ." that replaces the internet giant's logo is in honor of Samuel Finley Breese Morse, the inventor of the telegraph who was born on this date in 1791.
- A statue of ill-fated horse Barbaro will greet spectators at Churchill Downs in time for Saturday's Kentucky Derby. A bronze statue of the 2006 Derby winner who later died from a shattered leg was unveiled today and is the first of its kind -- a horse mid-air with no legs touching the ground. The horse's ashes are buried under the monument.
