I have been spending an unhealthy amount of time these days doing pretty much nothing other than watching and reading about random shit on the internet .. I guess I am trying to avoid certain issues I have been procrastinating for a while now, plus it helps me from thinking about shit that cause me anxiety.
Anyways, here's an interesting piece of history I read about today. Totally weird and funny 🤣
It's about an event historically known as the "Dancing plague of 1518".
Here's the short gist:
The Dancing Plague of 1518, or Dance Epidemic of 1518, was a case of dancing mania that occurred in Strasbourg, Alsace (modern-day France), in the Holy Roman Empire from July 1518 to September 1518. Somewhere between 50 and 400 people took to dancing for weeks. source
Engraving by Hendrik Hondius portraying three people affected by the dancing plague (public domain)
Yes, fucking weeks ! The event started with one single woman dancing like a wild animal in July and then more and more people joined the fun until later in September when the weird phenomenon started to cool off.
The records are a bit mixed when it comes fatalities, if any, and whether people danced till they died from starvation, exhaustion or whatever. Some mention up to 15 casualties per day while others zero. Same is true for the total number of dancers ranging from 50 upwards to 400.
As for the causes, there are two theories. One is that it was due to food poisoning (ergotism) from a fungi producing an lsd like substance. Lel.
The other that it was mass, stressed induced
hysteria because reasons.
Feel free to visit wikipedia if you want to learn more about this bizzare story, although I think I covered the basics : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dancing_plague_of_1518