This past Tuesday's Mardi Gras in New Orleans was canceled and the culprit being the you-know-what, although had they had it, it would have been a mighty cool one with top temperature at 32 degrees.
Since New Orleans is a port city it has been very susceptible to various disease outbreaks over the years as well. After a yellow fever epidemic outbreak in 1878 killed more than 4,000 people in the city, two of the three krewes did not participate in 1879, though one krewe did.
Fat Tuesday and Mardi Gras events returned the following year and ran annually until 1918, when the Spanish Flu. The United States had also entered World War I. In the aftermath of the war and with the flu outbreak the festivities were called off again in 1919.
Wars were also the deciding factors for the next cancelations. From 1941 through 1945, World War II halted the events. The Korean War in 1951 caused the growing number of krewes to scale back or not participate at all.
--RoadGras
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