Watch a short newsreel from USC's Movietone collection from 1919 instructing Americans on how to avoid contact with others during the major flu pandemic that killed more than half a million people in the United States.

It is thought to be only known footage associated with the 1918 flu pandemic

The instructional newsreel - shown at movie theaters before or after films - was made during the nation's deadly flu pandemic of 1917-1919. The newsreel shows Chicago city officials demonstrating their method of greeting one another avoided handshakes.

The clip is part of the university's collection - 11 million feet of film shot from 1919 to 1944 - it acquired in 1980.

Among other newsreels in the collection are a 80-year-old interview with an eyewitness to the shots that started the Civil War, eyewitness accounts of Abraham Lincoln's assassination, rare footage of aviator Charles Lindbergh a year before he made his trans-Atlantic flight in the Spirit of St. Louis, and several hours of outtakes from World War II's famous D-Day invasion.

Recently, university officials considered finding a new home to show the newsreels in the Innovista complex of buildings.

To see more clips in the university's collection: http://www.sc.edu/library/newsfilm/