Case file · High strangeness
Tanganyika laughter epidemic
Uncontrollable laughing, crying and fainting spread from a girls' boarding school near Lake Victoria to surrounding villages, closing 14 schools.
1962 CE · -1.67, 31.50 · status: explained
The account
The outbreak began at a mission school in Kashasha in January 1962 and spread over months to around a thousand people. Some blamed spirits or poisoning; no toxin was found.
The sceptical view
Doctors classed it as mass psychogenic illness, triggered by stress around school and social change after independence.