The official history of smallpox (to my knowledge)

As early as 1340, smallpox was used as a weapon of bio-terror. Armies would catapult dead bodies into enemy camps, the theory being that the stench of rotting corpses caused the disease.

Later, British troops forcefully infected American colonialists in the hopes of the disease spreading throughout the American army.

British General Jeffery Amherst ordered, in 1763, that the blankets of smallpox patients be given to Delaware Indians in a show of "peace".

The vaccine as it is known today was introduced to the world by Edward Jenner in 1798.

In 1925 the Geneva Protocol was signed by nations across the world, prohibiting the use of chemical and biological agents in warfare.

During the second world war, the Japanese, American and Soviets all began developing their own forms of biological weapons.

The last case of smallpox in America was reported in 1949.

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