On January 30, 1962, an unprecedented psychological phenomenon triggered a total societal lockdown in the village of Kashasha, located near Lake Victoria in present day Tanzania. It began at a mission run girls boarding school when three adolescent students suddenly started laughing and crying hysterically without any environmental trigger or joke. Instead of fading out, the uncontrollable outbursts aggressively multiplied across the student body, quickly incapacitating ninety five out of the one hundred fifty nine pupils enrolled at the institution. The relentless giggling and screaming rendered it completely impossible for the staff to conduct lessons, forcing administrators to officially shut down the entire school on March 18. However, sending the children home backfired dramatically. The infected students carried the psychological contagion back to their hometowns, sparking secondary outbreaks across multiple communities including Nshamba village, where an additional two hundred seventeen young adults were gripped by the same involuntary hysteria. Medical officials and researchers rushed to the region to test for hidden toxins, rare viruses, or contaminated food supplies, but found absolutely zero biological cause for the phenomenon. Modern experts classify the eighteen month long event as a textbook case of Mass Psychogenic Illness, brought on by extreme cultural stress and strict school discipline following the nation's independence from British rule. By the time the behavioral epidemic naturally burned itself out, over fourteen schools had been forced to close down and more than one thousand people had been temporarily consumed by the phantom laughter. - @bald.history