The Day Laughter Became Contagious #didyouknow

Added: 2026-05-20

[00:00:00]Imagine laughing and [music] not being able to stop. In 1962, three schoolgirls in Tanganyika suddenly started laughing during class. At first, it seemed harmless, but the laughter [music] spread through the entire school. Some students laughed for hours, others cried, fainted, [music] and screamed.

[00:00:20]The school shut down, yet the epidemic spread to nearby villages. Nearly 1,000 people were affected. Doctors found no virus, no poison, no disease. Experts later [music] called it mass psychogenic illness, where fear and stress spread between people like a contagion. The Tanganyika laughter [music] epidemic remains one of history's strangest real events.