"Before Russia invaded Ukraine in February, its diplomatic missions began circulating some particularly fantastical lies. For example, the United States was using Ukrainian laboratories to develop biological weapons that would be spread by specially trained migratory birds and 

Despite its moniker, the 1918 “Spanish flu” pandemic almost certainly did not originate in Spain. The belligerents of World War I suppressed reporting on the outbreak in order to avoid harming morale, while Spain, as a neutral country, had a media free to report openly on the extent of the disease. Since most media coverage of the outbreak came from Spain, so too did its origin story. The 1918 outbreak — frequently compared to the current COVID-19 pandemic in terms of public fear and response — could have begun in China, or the United States, or northern France.