Why 400 People Couldn't Stop Dancing

In July 1518, a woman stepped into a street in Strasbourg and started to dance. She didn't stop for days, and within a month hundreds of people were dancing beside her. The city's cure? Hire musicians. The dancing plague of 1518 is one of history's strangest episodes. We follow the story from Frau Troffea to the council's stage and band, the debate over the cause (the ergot theory versus historian John Waller's argument for psychological contagion, with the deadly toll in later chronicles still disputed), the red shoes at Saint Vitus's shrine, and a documented modern echo: the 1962 Tanganyika laughter epidemic. CHAPTERS 0:00 Intro 0:17 Why this matters 0:51 The first dancer 2:27 The cure that backfired 4:00 The great debate 5:34 The red shoes 7:05 The final fact 8:00 Final thoughts SOURCES The Public Domain Review: The Dancing Plague of 1518: https://publicdomainreview.org/essay/... National Geographic: What caused Strasbourg's dancing plague: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/hi... Dancing plague of 1518 (overview): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dancing... Tanganyika laughter epidemic (overview): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tangany... If this story surprised you, like the video and subscribe for more strange stories from history. #DancingPlague #History #DidYouKnow ------------------------------------------------------------ dancing plague, dancing plague of 1518, strasbourg 1518, mass hysteria, mass psychogenic illness, social contagion, tanganyika laughter epidemic, saint vitus, medieval history, weird history, unexplained history, animated history, stick figure history, history documentary, did you know