In April 1979, dozens of people in the Soviet city of Sverdlovsk fell mysteriously ill.
Patients poured into hospitals, and with each ambulance came people coughing up blood and frothing at the mouth.
Others said their lungs felt as though they were on fire, while doctors recorded dangerously high temperatures.
Within two days, they were dead, and panic gripped the city.
Workers began hosing down roofs and disinfecting the streets, while residents hid inside their homes, too afraid to get sick.
Alevtina Nekrasova, whose father died after falling ill, told the Los Angeles Times: ‘Everyone sat at home, with windows and doors shut tight, shivering
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