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T A N G A N Y IK A LAU G H TER E P ID E M IC V E R O N IC A G U A R IS C O , 2 D
Over the course of history, it hasn’t always been viruses and pathogens which have caused epidemics, but also uncontrollable laughter. Although 1962 was a year known for events such as the beginning of the Second Vatican Council, the death of Marilyn Monroe and the nationalization of electricity, another episode dates back to that same period that the most common yearbooks don’t contemplate, known as the “Tanganyika laughter epidemic”. On January 30, in a girls’ school in Tanzania, three students began to laugh at the utterance of a joke, of E t C e t e r a M a jo r a n a
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which we will probably never know the content. In just a few minutes, the pervasive giggle had already taken 95 damsels, infecting everyone present with joy. Incredibly, the laughing wouldn’t stop. In the following hours, the number of students crying with laughter had risen to 159, so many that the institute was forced to close to block the contagion. Despite the apparent joviality of the situation, it was accompanied by potentially-severe symptoms: itching, pain, fainting, shortness of breath. The measures adopted to hold back the situation hadn’t been enough, since A p r ile 2 0 2 2 - N ° 8
