5 Greatest Unsolved Mysteries of the World

Dancing Plague

In July 1518, in the streets of the city called Strasbourg (now in France), which was then part of the Holy Roman Empire, witnessed a weird spectacle. A woman named Troffea from the crowd suddenly took to dancing on the street and was quickly joined by others, all dancing without control for days. Troffea danced for four to six days and within a week, 34 others joined her on the street and in a month, almost 400 dancers were seen dancing and remarkably most being adolescent females.

The uncontrollable dancing mania killed these people from heart attacks, strokes or exhaustion. Due to this mass dancing, almost 15 people were killed in a day. There are still theories revolving around this strange incident were some points out a psychogenic movement disorder happening in mass hysteria and others stating that it was due to a food-poisoning caused by the toxic and psychoactive chemical products of ergot fungi, which grows commonly on grains in the wheat family; but none of them really justified the unusual event happened on the streets of Strasbourg.