10th Century--Measles identified by Arabic doctors as a mild form of small pox
1600s--Sydentam described measles as a separate disease
1846--Peter Panum, a Danish physician, studied a measles outbreak on the Faroe Islands.
          He was the first to describe the clinical presentation, incubation period, and infectious
          nature of measles.
1934--The first discovery of mumps virus. Johnson and Goodpasture showed that when saliva
          of patients with parotitis was injected into the salivary glands of rhesus monkeys, the
          monkeys also developed parotitis. 
1937--A nosocomial pneumonia epidemic occurred in a hospital nursery.  The bronchial
          cells of the dead babies showed cytopathic inclusion bodies of what was later found to
          be RSV.
1941--There were 894,134 reported cases of measles and 2250 deaths.
1954--Measles virus was first grown in culture by Enders and Peebles
1955--First parainfluenza virus isolated from kids with croup.
1956--First isolated RSV from symptomatic lab chimps which had cold-like symptoms.
1950s(late)--Enders developed a live attenuated vaccine for measles.
1963--The Schwarz measles vaccine, Attenuvax, was licensed for use and proved to be about
          95%  effective.
1967--First live attenuated mumps vaccine
1980s(early)--Development of trivalent measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine which is
          universally recommended in the United States.
1983--Historically, the year with the fewest number of measles cases--1497 cases, 2 deaths.
1986--Clinical trials for MMRV vaccine combined with varicella.
1989--Measles morbidity of 1643 cases on college campuses, totaling 9% of the total cases.
          Large increase in measles due to failure of vaccine to produce life-long immunity.
          Introduced need for booster shot of those who had been vaccinated prior to 1980.
1996--Candidate for a live attenuated RSV vaccine made from recombinant DNA.
Future--Possible measles eradication!