35 years ago: An unusual pneumonia, then an epidemic

The Centers for Disease Control described five cases of a rare pneumonia in its newsletter June 5, 1981.

The next month the CDC found a rare cancer that affected 41 gay men. By August, researchers were puzzled that 100 gay men died from rare diseases.

The first 121 cases of what came to be called Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome were the seemingly minor herald to an epidemic that killed thousands of gay men, according to the New York Times.

The first case was probably in 1959, according to the CDC, but by the 1980s, the disease began to move slowly at first then leapfrogged into the thousands and tens of thousands of cases.

Today, 658,500 Americans have died of AIDS. New treatments have dramatically increased the chances of living with the virus.