This is a timeline of HIV/AIDS, including but not limited to cases before 1980.
Pre-1980s
Researchers estimate that some time in the early 20th century, a form of Simian immunodeficiency virus found in chimpanzees (SIVcpz) first entered humans in Central Africa and began circulating in Léopoldville (modern-day Kinshasa) by the 1920s. This gave rise to the pandemic form of HIV (HIV-1 group M); other zoonotic transmissions led to the other, less prevalent, subtypes of HIV.
1930s to 1950s A range of small scale Pneumocystis pneumonia epidemics occurred in northern and central European countries between the 1930s and 1950s, affecting children who were prematurely born. The epidemics spread likely due to infected glass syringes and needles. Malnutrition was not considered a cause, as Europe largely had recovered from wartime food shortages. Researchers state that the most likely cause of the epidemic was a retrovirus closely related to HIV (or a mild version of HIV) brought to Europe and originating from Cameroon, a former German colony. The epidemic started in the Free City of Danzig in 1939 and then spread to nearby countries in the 1940s and 1950s, including Switzerland and the Netherlands. 1952 American Richard Edwin Graves Jr., a 28-year-old World War II veteran who had been stationed in the Solomon Islands died on 26 July 1952 in Memphis, Tennessee, with pneumocystis pneumonia and CMV, which some authors suggest constitutes a sufficient number of opportunistic infections that are suggestive of an AIDS diagnosis. 1959 The first known case of :HIV in a human occurs in a Bantu man who died in the Congo. His blood sample, designated LEO70, which was taken for a study on Malaria and Glucose-6-phosphate dehydrogenase deficiency later tested positive for HIV using multiple testing modalities. June 28, 1959: In New York City, Ardouin Antonio, a 49-year-old Haitian shipping clerk, dies of Pneumocystis carinii pneumonia, a disease now closely associated with AIDS but then considered highly anomalous for an adult. Gordon Hennigar, who performed the postmortem examination of the man's body, found "the first reported instance of unassociated Pneumocystis carinii disease in an adult" to be so unusual that he preserved Ardouin's lungs for later study. The case was published in two medical journals at the time, and Hennigar has been quoted in numerous publications saying that he believes Ardouin probably had AIDS."Strange Trip Back to the Future – The case of Robert R. spurs new questions about AIDS", Time, November 9, 1987 David Carr, a Manchester printer (sometimes mistakenly referred to as a sailor) who died on 31 August 1959 following the failure of his immune system; he succumbed to pneumonia. Baffled by what he had died from, doctors preserved 50 of his tissue samples for inspection. In 1990, the tissues were found to be HIV-positive. However, in 1992, a second test by AIDS researcher David Ho found that the strain of HIV which was present in the tissues was similar to the strain of HIV which was found in tissue samples which were collected and analyzed in the late 1980s rather than an earlier strain of HIV (which would have mutated considerably over the course of 30 years). Ho's discovery has cast doubt on the theory that David Carr's death was caused by AIDS. 1960s HIV-2, a viral variant found in West Africa, is thought to have transferred to people from sooty mangabey monkeys in Guinea-Bissau. Genetic studies of the virus indicate that HIV-1 (M) first arrived in the Americas in the late 1960s likely in Haiti or another Caribbean island. At this time, many Haitians were working in the Congo, providing the opportunity for infection."Solved: the mystery of how AIDS left Africa," New Scientist, November 3, 2007, p.20 1964 Jerome Horwitz of Barbara Ann Karmanos Cancer Institute and Wayne State University School of Medicine synthesizes AZT under a grant from the US National Institutes of Health (NIH). AZT was originally intended as an anticancer drug. 1966 Williams and Williams note that an unusually high incidence of simultaneous Kaposi's sarcoma, river blindness, and femoral hernia in patients within the West Nile sub-region of Uganda. They went on to speculate that the black fly which transmits river blindness may also transmit the causative agent for Kaposi's sarcoma. Slavin, Cameron, and Singh note first that research indicates that "Kaposi's sarcoma occurs with great frequency in indigenous African Negroes", and then goes on to describe 117 cases of Kaposi's sarcoma (including cases in children indicative of vertical transmission), typical of HIV/AIDS infection. Finally, they note that, at the time of publication, 4% of malignancies diagnosed in Tanzania by biopsy indicated Kaposi's sarcoma as the causative agent. 1969 A St. Louis teenager, identified as Robert Rayford, dies of an illness that baffled his doctors since first exhibiting symptoms in 1966. Eighteen years later, molecular biologists at Tulane University in New Orleans test samples of his remains and find evidence of HIV, suggesting he may have been the first documented AIDS case in North America. 1976 January: The 8-year-old daughter of Arvid Noe dies of what was later identified the first AIDS death in Europe. Noe, a Norwegian sailor, dies in April; his wife dies in December. Later it is determined that Noe contracted HIV-1 type O, in Africa during the early 1960s. 1977 Danish physician Grethe Rask dies of AIDS contracted in Africa. A San Francisco woman, believed to be a sex-worker, gives birth to the first of three children who are later diagnosed with AIDS. The children's blood was tested after their deaths and revealed HIV infection. The mother died of AIDS in May 1987. Test results showed she was infected no later than 1977."And the Band Played On", Randy Shilts, pp. 512–513, St. Martin's Press, 2007 French-Canadian flight attendant Gaëtan Dugas, a relatively early HIV patient, gets legally married in Los Angeles to obtain U.S. citizenship. He stayed in Silver Lake whenever he was in town. A Zairian woman in her 30s seeks treatment in Belgium for symptoms indicating a suppressed immune system and AIDS-like disease (rapid weight loss, swollen lymph nodes and severe CMV). She initially came to Belgium for care of the oral fungus infection of her baby daughter. Her two other children, who were recently born as well, had died from respiratory infections; both also had an oral fungus infection since birth. The woman contracted even more opportunistic infections, dying in Kinshasa in early 1978. Tissue and blood samples were not preserved, but researchers state this might be an early AIDS case. 1978 A Portuguese man known as Senhor José (English: Mr. Joseph) dies; he will later be confirmed as the first known infection of HIV-2. It is believed that he was exposed to the disease in Guinea-Bissau in 1966. 1979 A thirty-year-old woman from the Dominican Republic dies at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City from CMV infection. A Greek man who worked for years as a fisherman at Congo's Lake Tanganyika shows up in a Belgian hospital with a range of untreatable opportunistic infections, including a very rare fungal meningitis. After he dies, the hospital keeps his blood and tissue samples for future analysis. After HIV testing becomes available, his samples are tested for HIV and give a positive result.
1980s 1980 April 24 – San Francisco resident (and supposed gay sex worker) Ken Horne is reported to the Center for Disease Control with Kaposi's sarcoma (KS). Later, in 1981, the CDC would retroactively identify him as the first patient of the AIDS epidemic in the US. He also had Cryptococcus.KQED LGBT Timeline. Kqed.org. Retrieved December 3, 2011. October 31 – Gaëtan Dugas pays his first known visit to New York City bathhouses. He would later be incorrectly deemed "Patient Zero" for his supposed connection to many early cases of AIDS in the United States. December 23 – Rick Wellikoff, a 37-year-old schoolteacher, dies of AIDS in New York City. He is the fourth US citizen known to die from the illness.And the Band Played On, Randy Shilts, 1987. Chapter 5: Freeze Frames. sec. December 23: New York City. A Zairian woman and a French woman die in late 1980 of Pneumocystis pneumonia in the Claude Bernard Hospital in Paris.And the Band Played On, p. 37. A 36-year-old Danish homosexual male dies in the Rigshospitalet in Copenhagen from Pneumocystis pneumonia.And the Band Played On, p.35. 1981
April 28 – Sandy Ford, a drug technician at the Centers for Disease Control, writes her superiors a memo on an unusual cluster of pneumocystis pneumonia and Kaposi's sarcoma cases she has identified. Ford was in charge of CDC distribution of pentamidine, a medicine used to treat pneumocystis pneumonia, and she had noticed a surge in young homosexual men with the disease, which appears only in individuals with suppressed immune systems. Her memo begins the CDC's investigation into the disease. May 18 – Lawrence Mass becomes the first journalist in the world to write about the epidemic, in the New York Native, a gay newspaper. A gay tipster overheard his physician mention that some gay men were being treated in intensive-care units in New York City for a strange pneumonia. "Disease Rumors Largely Unfounded" was the headline of Mass' article, which ran on page 7. Mass repeated a New York City public health official's claims that there was no wave of disease sweeping through the gay community. At this point, however, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) had been investigating the outbreak that Mass' source dismissed for about a month. June 4 – Brent Thomas, the Associate Editor of The Advocate magazine, dies from AIDS complications. June 5 – In an issue of the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, the CDC reports a cluster of five Pneumocystis pneumonia cases in five "young...practicing homosexuals" in Los Angeles. Each of these cases included simultaneous Cytomegalovirus infection, and several included other AIDS-defining clinical conditions, including Candidiasis, Hodgkin lymphoma, and Cytomegalovirus retinitis. The CDC goes on to suggest that there is a possibility of a "cellular-immune dysfunction related to common exposure that predisposes individuals to Opportunistic infections" July 3 – An article in The New York Times carries the headline: "Rare Cancer Seen in 41 Homosexuals". The article describes cases of Kaposi's sarcoma found in forty-one gay men, mostly in New York City and San Francisco. July 3 – A new article appears in Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report headlined "Kaposi's Sarcoma and Pneumocystis Pneumonia Among Homosexual Men — New York City and California." One cluster in New York City included 20 patients, 7 of whom had died at the time of publication. The other cluster, in California, had just six with an additional death. Of the 26 cases reported, 12 had tests for Cytomegalovirus, all of which were positive. The report describes frequent hepatitis and amoebiasis infections among those described. It also details the apparent connection between Kaposi's sarcoma and immune suppression, noting the abnormality of the disease among young adults. The report notes that, aside from those receiving immunosuppressants, the only group previously known to be at elevated risk for Kaposi's sarcoma was children and young adults in Equatorial Africa — no doubt because of the already endemic HIV in the area. August 28 – A third article in Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report increases the number of known cases to 108. While the vast majority remain in New York and California, it reports new cases in Georgia, Florida, and Oklahoma. October – Self-proclaimed "AIDS poster boy" Bobbi Campbell is diagnosed with Kaposi's sarcoma in San Francisco. That same month he creates and displays San Francisco's first AIDS poster.