Misfortunate Monday: The Dancing Plague of 1518

     Hello everybody and welcome back to another edition of Nations Made Fun! I'll be your host, Mr. Nations, your tour guide to this massive world we all call home! Today on Misfortunate Monday, we'll be taking a look the Dancing Plague of 1518. Well, what are we waiting for? Let's dive straight into it!

     In July, 1518, residents of the city Strasbourg were struck by a sudden and seemingly uncontrollable urge to dance. The dancing kicked off when a woman named Frau Troffea began to silently dance. She kept up her solo dance for a week and before long, nearly three dozen others joined in. When this mania began, physicians simply credited the disease with "hot blood" and thought that they would simply dance the disease away.

     Unfortunately, non-stop dancing did nothing. Many simply died from exhaustion or dropped dead from stroke or heart attack. Strangely enough, this is not the only case of dancing fever in history. Many have been reported and no reason can be found for the cases of endless dancing.

     Fun Facts: 

• The dancing fevers most likely occurred because of superstition.
• Another more probable cause was stress.
• In Italy, there was a case of dancing induced by tarantula bites.