Aug 19, 2010

Meanwhile, back in Tanzania...

Last summer we traveled to Tanzania in our Laughter show to investigate a 1962 epidemic of contagious laughter. Well, it turns out these sorts of episodes still happen, and not just with laughter. Several fans of the show wrote in to tell us about the BBC reports of mass fainting among girls at a junior school in Tabora, Tanzania during exams. Reading up on the subject turned up this article on a 2007 'sociogenic' outbreak of twitching in Vinton, VA, and this account of more mass fainting in Bangladesh. Has anybody ever experienced this sort of thing? We'd be curious to hear...

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