Before the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic, or the coronavirus of 2020, North Dakotans dealt with other outbreaks of illness. On this date in 1887, the St. Paul Globe reported that John Richards, the Burleigh County Registrar of Deeds, was seriously ill with typhoid fever. The late 1880s and early 1890s were particularly bad for outbreaks of typhoid, which was also known as mountain fever.