It was the bubonic plague, caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis. This outbreak, the first known bubonic plague pandemic in recorded human history, marked the first of many outbreaks of plague - a disease that claimed as many as 200 million lives throughout history.
A key element to the design of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial is the names of the men and women who died while serving with the U.S. armed forces in the Vietnam War. There are more than 58,000 names inscribed on the black granite Memorial. The list of names begins at the vertex of the walls below the year of the first casualty and continues to the end of the east wall. It resumes at the tip of the west wall, ending at the vertex, above the year of the last death.
How many names on The Wall? One of the more frequently asked questions about the Vietnam Veterans Memorial (The Wall) is, âHow many names are on the Memorial Wall?â When the Vietnam Veterans Memorial was dedicated in 1982, 57,939 names were engraved on 140 polished, black, granite panels.