The Bellevue-Stratford Hotel in July 1976, when it hosted a statewide convention of the American Legion. Soon after, a pneumonia-like disease killed 29 people and sickened 182 more who had been in the hotel. The vast majority were members of the convention. The negative publicity associated with what became known as "Legionnaires' Disease" caused occupancy at the Bellevue-Stratford to plummet to 4 percent and the hotel finally closed on November 18, 1976. In 1977, Dr. Joseph McDade discovered a new bacterium, which was identified as the causative organism. It thrives in hot, damp places like the water of the cooling towers for the
2014 Democratic Republic of the Congo Ebola virus outbreak independent event, with no relationship to the outbreak in West Africa. <br> This was the country’s seventh Ebola outbreak since 1976. The first case of Ebola disease ever recorded occurred in August 1976 in Yambuku, a small village in Mongala District in northern Democratic Republic of the Congo (then known as Zaire). The first victim of the disease was the village school headmaster, who had toured an area near the Central African Republic border along the Ebola river in mid-August. On 8 September, he died of what would become known as Ebola virus disease. Subsequently, a number of other cases