Ongoing History Daily: The Dancing Plague of 1518, part 1

Seven hundred years ago, life was (as English philosopher Thomas Hobbes said in the 1600s) “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.” But 100 years earlier, things were even weirder.

Just as the last of the Black Death left Europe, there was a new scourge: The Dancing Plague of 1518.

In July, a woman named Frau Troffea, who lived in what is now western Germany, went out into the street and started dancing. We don’t know why. She was the only one dancing and there was no music. She danced all day. Then all night. And for six straight days.

During that time, other townsfolk joined in and continued even when Frau Hoffea dropped from exhaustion. Then still more people joined in with this medieval silent disco. And they started to die by the dozens.

What was going on? More next time.