In January 1962, three schoolgirls at a mission boarding school near Lake Victoria in what was then called Tanganyika began laughing uncontrollably, and what followed would become one of the strangest and most studied public health events of the twentieth century. The laughter was not joyful. It was involuntary, exhausting, often accompanied by crying, fainting, rashes and difficulty breathing, and it spread rapidly from student to student with no obvious medical explanation. Within weeks, it had jumped beyond the school's walls into surrounding villages and then into entirely separate schools, ultimately affecting an estimated 1,000 people across 18 months, forcing the closure of 14 schools and baffling doctors who could find no toxin, no infection and no single physical cause. The phenomenon died off 18 months after it started, with all affected areas falling within a 100-mile radius of Bukoba.
Get breaking news anytime, anywhere. Download the TOI app now!
