The Strasbourg Dancing Plague of 1518

In 1518, an entire town in France literally danced themselves to death and nobody

knows why. A woman named Frau Troffea started dancing in the streets of Strasbourg and

couldn't stop. Within days, dozens joined her. Then hundreds. They danced for

weeks straight, collapsing from exhaustion, some dying from strokes and heart

attacks. Authorities thought they had dancing fever, so their solution

was to build wooden stages and hire musicians to help them dance it out. That obviously made

it worse. Here's the twist though. Recent historians discovered records

showing the region was suffering from mass starvation and stress. The dancing wasn't