King Leopold's Virus

So the latest studies suggest that HIV is older than we thought it was:

The research, which is published in the current issue of Nature, found that HIV began spreading between 1884 and 1924, around the same time urban centers in west central Africa were established.

Urbanization during that era begin principally around Leopoldville, or what is today Kinshasa. Leopoldville is of course named after Leopold II of Belgium, who is regarded to have presided over one of the most bloody and repressive colonial regimes of that era: between 2-10 million Congo natives died during the colonial era via torture and de facto slavery.

It would appear now that HIV is another legacy of King Leopold, albeit an indirect and inadvertent one.