Tanganyika laughter epidemic
Fits of laughter shut down 14 schools
In early 1962 pupils at a girls' school in the village of Kashasha by Lake Victoria began laughing and crying uncontrollably. The mass hysteria spread to nearby villages and schools and died down only after 18 months. Some 1,000 people were affected and 14 schools had to close.
Wikipedia (Russian) · Wikipedia (English) · 20th century
Meanwhile around the world (±25 years)
Whole world
- 1947–1991 Cold War — 15 years earlier
- 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights — 14 years earlier
- 1949 Founding of NATO — 13 years earlier
- 1980 Smallpox declared eradicated — 18 years later
- 1981 AIDS first described — 19 years later
Europe
- 1941–1945 The Holocaust — 21 years earlier
- 1953 Discovery of the DNA double helix — 9 years earlier
- 1957 Treaty of Rome — 5 years earlier
- 1961 Berlin Wall built — 1 year earlier
- 1968 May 1968 in France — 6 years later
Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1941–1944 Siege of Leningrad — 21 years earlier
- 1942–1943 Battle of Stalingrad — 20 years earlier
- 1945 German surrender and Victory Day — 17 years earlier
- 1957 Sputnik 1, the first satellite — 5 years earlier
- 1961 Gagarin's flight — 1 year earlier
Middle East
- 1948 Founding of the State of Israel — 14 years earlier
- 1948–1949 1948 Arab–Israeli War and the Nakba — 14 years earlier
- 1953 Iranian coup against Mosaddegh — 9 years earlier
- 1978 Camp David Accords — 16 years later
- 1979 Iranian Revolution — 17 years later
Asia
- 1945 Atomic bombing of Hiroshima — 17 years earlier
- 1953 First ascent of Everest — 9 years earlier
- 1964 First Shinkansen high-speed railway — 2 years later
- 1966–1976 Cultural Revolution in China — 4 years later
- 1975–1979 The Khmer Rouge and the Cambodian genocide — 13 years later
Americas
- 1960 Great Chilean earthquake — 2 years earlier
- 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis — same year
- 1969 Moon landing — 7 years later
- c. 1970 Mass deforestation of the Amazon begins — 8 years later
- 1983 Birth of the Internet: ARPANET adopts TCP/IP — 21 years later
Oceania
- 1941 Attack on Pearl Harbor — 21 years earlier
- 1942 The Battle of Midway — 20 years earlier
- 1954 The Castle Bravo test at Bikini — 8 years earlier
- 1959 The Antarctic Treaty — 3 years earlier
Alive at the time
- Winston Churchill (aged 88)
- Pablo Picasso (aged 81)
- Charlie Chaplin (aged 73)
- Mao Zedong (aged 69)
- Nelson Mandela (aged 44)
- Martin Luther King Jr. (aged 33)
- Neil Armstrong (aged 32)
- Yuri Gagarin (aged 28)
- Harry S. Truman (aged 78)
- Anna Akhmatova (aged 73)