'The Tanganyika Laughter Epidemic'
"Another curious feature of the social nature of laughter is its contagiousness.
In 1962 a small town in what is now Tanzania fell victim to a spate of contagious laughing called the “Tanganyika Laughter Epidemic“. A few weeks after the nation gained its independence three teenage girls in a boarding school in the isolated village began laughing and it spread to the whole town. According to a 1963 report, a total of 10,000 adult men and women and teens of both sexes caught the “disease” after coming in contact with an infected person.
The event is known as case of mass psychogenic illness and the modern explanations revolve around intense religious and cultural changes that were happening to the town at the time due to its new-found independence and the replacement of old spiritual beliefs with western religion. The laughter acted as a collective catharsis."
http://danzarrella.com/contagious-laughter.html





