The 1962 Tanganyika ‘laughter epidemic’

The Tanganyika laughter epidemic of 1962 was an outbreak of mass hysteria or mass psychogenic illness (MPI), rumored to have occurred in or near the village of on the western coast of Lake Victoria in the modern nation of Tanzania near the border of Kenya.

The incident
It is possible that, at the start of the incident, a joke was told in a boarding school" and that this joke triggered a small group of students to start laughing. The laughter perpetuated itself, far transcending its original cause.
The Tanganyika laughter epidemic is sometimes understood as implying that thousands of people were continuously laughing for months. However this may not have been the case. Other reports tell that the epidemic consisted of occasional attacks of laughter among groups of people, occurring throughout the vicinity of the village of Kashasha at irregular intervals. According to reports, the laughter was incapacitating when it struck.
The school from which the epidemic sprang was shut down; the children and parents transmitted it to the surrounding area.Other schools, Kashasha itself, and another village, comprising thousands of people, were all affected to some degree. Six to eighteen months after it started, the phenomenon died off. The following symptoms were reported on an equally massive scale as the reports of the laughter itself: pain, fainting, respiratory problems, rashes, and attacks of crying.

(thanks to wikipedia!)


Readings:

Rankin, A.M.; Philip, P.J. (May 1963). "An epidemic of laughing in the Bukoba district of Tanganyika". Central African Journal of Medicine 9: 167–170.

Christian F. Hempelmann (February 2007) "The laughter of the 1962 Tanganyika ‘laughter epidemic", International Journal of Humor Research 20 (1): 49–71

Abstract
The present article discusses the role of laughter in the much cited ‘laughter epidemic’ that occurred in Tanganyika in 1962. Despite its extraordinary nature, the veracity of the event is confirmed, crucially on the basis of similar reports. But most current representations are flawed by their exaggeration and misinterpretation of the role of laughter in the event, relating it to a humorous stimulus, a virus or environmental contaminant, or identifying it as contagious laughter. It is argued that the event is a motor-variant case of mass psychogenic illness of which laughter is one common symptom. Therefore it cannot serve as support for other arguments in humor research.