Tim Cederman-Haysom with yet another blog…

Random Wikipedia link of the day – the dancing epidemic of 1518

September 21st, 2008 by Tim Cederman-Haysom Posted in Miscellaneous

You can’t make this stuff up.

The outbreak began in July 1518, when a woman, Frau Troffea, began to dance fervently in a street in Strasbourg. This lasted somewhere between four to six days. Within a week, 34 others had joined, and within a month, there were around 400 dancers. Most of these people eventually died from heart attack, stroke, or exhaustion.

(cribbed from a New Scientist book review)

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