Speaker 1: Welcome to Aaron Manke's Cabinet of Curiosities, a production of
Speaker 1: iHeartRadio and Grimm and Mild.
Speaker 2: Our world is full of the unexplainable, and if history
Speaker 2: is an open book, all of these amazing tales are
Speaker 2: right there on display, just waiting for us to explore.
Speaker 2: Welcome to the Cabinet of Curiosities. There's nothing quite like
Speaker 2: a desert island hypothetical. What movies would you take with
Speaker 2: you to a desert island? Or albums, or in particular
Speaker 2: who There are a million variations of the same question
Speaker 2: that all boil down to one thing. What's important in
Speaker 2: your life? What can't you live without? What these questions
Speaker 2: don't really consider, though, is that desert islands aren't a
Speaker 2: place that you bring your reality too. There are places
Speaker 2: that create their own reality. Today, let's turn our focus
Speaker 2: to Sable Island in the North Atlantic. If you're Canadian,
Speaker 2: you might have heard of it, but for those who haven't,
Speaker 2: it's a narrow stretch of island about ninety five nautical
Speaker 2: miles southeast of Nova Scotia. From a satellite POV, it
Speaker 2: kind of looks like a thin snake or a single eyelash.
Speaker 2: The name comes from the French word for sand, and
Speaker 2: it's easy to see why. The parts of the island
Speaker 2: that aren't beach are covered in dry grass with no
Speaker 2: native trees. Throughout the age of sail, shipwrecks on the
Speaker 2: island were frequent, thanks to thick fogs and the island's
Speaker 2: deceptive sandbars. It's estimated that up to three hundred and
Speaker 2: fifty ships wrecked themselves on the island. The most recent
Speaker 2: confirmed wreck was in nineteen forty one, although it's possible
Speaker 2: some ships struck the island as recently as the nineteen nineties. Again,
Speaker 2: looking at the shape of the island from above, it's
Speaker 2: not hard to imagine it's like a tripwire designed to
Speaker 2: catch unwary or unlucky vessel. But those shipwrecked sailors didn't
Speaker 2: stay there. Those that survive often wind up getting taken
Speaker 2: to the mainland of North America. The ones who did
Speaker 2: stay behind there, Beside the gray seals that inhabit the beaches,
Speaker 2: were around five hundred wild horses. Now we don't know
Speaker 2: exactly where they came from, but most likely these horses
Speaker 2: were introduced to the island in the mid seventeen hundreds
Speaker 2: without any natural predators. They became the most influential population
Speaker 2: on the island. For over two hundred and fifty years,
Speaker 2: they've maintained a small but relatively stable population pun intended.
Speaker 2: Other domestic animals.
Speaker 1: Have also been brought to Sable Island, but none survived
Speaker 1: quite like these horses. Survival for an animal on a
Speaker 1: desert island is not easy. Water sources are sparse, and
Speaker 1: the horses on the east side of the island have
Speaker 1: to dig in the sand to create little wells for themselves.
Speaker 1: You would never mistake a Sable Island horse for a
Speaker 1: mainland horse. Their coats are thicker, shaggy aar and have long,
Speaker 1: unkempt manes. Complete isolation from their more domesticated relatives has
Speaker 1: made them a scientific marvel of sorts. They've experienced what's
Speaker 1: known as a genetic drift away from the horses we
Speaker 1: see in Europe and North America. Basically, they've almost become
Speaker 1: a small subspecies of their own. And what's even more
Speaker 1: fascinating is that these horses are more well adapted to
Speaker 1: the environment than any plants that humans have attempted to
Speaker 1: introduce there. At one point in the nineteen seventies, a
Speaker 1: single Scots Pine was planted on the island by the
Speaker 1: park rangers who maintain this station there. They decorated it
Speaker 1: for Christmas, and it even survived for a number of
Speaker 1: years before finally dying and returning the island to its
Speaker 1: original treeless state. The horses themselves pose an interesting question
Speaker 1: for conservationists. They're clearly an invasive species, but they are
Speaker 1: incredibly valuable to understanding how species adapt to hostile environments
Speaker 1: and how a single population of animals can gradually reshape
Speaker 1: the same environment. Removing them would perhaps be good for
Speaker 1: the biodiversity of the island itself, But since the horses
Speaker 1: have been on the island for so long that ship,
Speaker 1: so to speak, has sailed. There's no buried treasure to
Speaker 1: be found on Sable Island in spite of the prodigious
Speaker 1: number of shipwrecks. But in a way, the march of
Speaker 1: history has left its own strange fingerprint all the same.
Speaker 1: Who would have thought that feral horses could thrive on
Speaker 1: a thin sandbar thirteen square miles in area. But that's
Speaker 1: the thing about desert islands. They always bring out the
Speaker 1: unexpected in all of us. When there's nothing but you,
Speaker 1: the sand and the ocean. You either need to escape
Speaker 1: or adapt. You've probably heard people say that laughter is contagious,
Speaker 1: but that isn't always just a turn of phrase. On
Speaker 1: a January morning in nineteen sixty to a teacher was
Speaker 1: writing on the chalkboard at a girl's boarding school in
Speaker 1: the African republic of Tanganika. She heard laughter behind her
Speaker 1: and turned around to see three of her students giggling uncontrollably.
Speaker 1: This wasn't unusual for a classroom full of teenage girls,
Speaker 1: but when the teacher asked them to stop, they didn't. No,
Speaker 1: they couldn't. Beneath their smiles, there was a spark of
Speaker 1: fear in their eyes, as if their laughter truly was uncontrollable.
Speaker 1: The teacher sent the girls to the principal's office and
Speaker 1: got on with the lesson. But at the end of
Speaker 1: the school day, when she passed by the nurse's office,
Speaker 1: she saw those three students and two more girls, all
Speaker 1: doubled over in their chairs, all still laughing, with tears
Speaker 1: streaming down their faces. It was hard to tell whether
Speaker 1: they were amused or agonized. Their laughter hadn't stopped the
Speaker 1: following morning, In fact, it was spreading several more girls
Speaker 1: in the same dormitory had to skip class that morning
Speaker 1: because their laughter was so intense that they could barely
Speaker 1: sit still. Each girl's laughing fit could last for anywhere
Speaker 1: from a few hours to multiple days, and after they
Speaker 1: had finally stopped giggling, some of them would start up
Speaker 1: again just a few minutes later. Within a week, almost
Speaker 1: one hundred students at the school were afflicted. There was
Speaker 1: no end in sight, and the staff had no idea
Speaker 1: what to do. The students had been examined by doctors
Speaker 1: and nothing appeared to be physically wrong with them. It
Speaker 1: had to be psychological, perhaps induced by stress. If this
Speaker 1: was a subconscious ploy to get out of doing homework,
Speaker 1: it was working. With more than half of the school's
Speaker 1: students doubled over in laughter at any given moment, it
Speaker 1: was impossible to conduct class, and when the madness still
Speaker 1: hadn't died down by March, almost three months after it began,
Speaker 1: the administration was left with only one option. They decided
Speaker 1: to close the school and send everyone home until they
Speaker 1: got their giggles under control, and that was a mistake.
Speaker 1: The students went back to their home villages and they
Speaker 1: spread the laughter up add throughout the entire region. Over
Speaker 1: the next two months, around one thousand young people over
Speaker 1: one hundred mile radius were afflicted by laughter. Fourteen schools
Speaker 1: had to be shut down, and the school where it
Speaker 1: all started was slapped with a lawsuit for sending everyone
Speaker 1: home to transmit the contagion. The laughter came and went
Speaker 1: in waves for the next year and a half until
Speaker 1: it gradually died out in the summer of nineteen sixty three.
Speaker 1: Order was restored and schools were reopened, but experts were
Speaker 1: never able to explain exactly why this outburst happened. Some
Speaker 1: researchers speculate that it was a case of mass hysteria.
Speaker 1: Just a month before the laughter started, Tanganika had gained
Speaker 1: independence from Britain, which began a period of massive social upheaval.
Speaker 1: On a subconscious level, maybe the girl's laughter could have
Speaker 1: been a way of releasing stress and coping with the
Speaker 1: chaos and confusion. But at the end of the day
Speaker 1: it backfired. After eighteen months of NonStop chuckling, everyone could
Speaker 1: agree the joke just wasn't funny anymore. I hope you
Speaker 1: enjoyed today's guided tour through the Cabinet of Curiosities. This
Speaker 1: show was created by me Aaron Mankey in partnership with
Speaker 1: iHeart Podcasts, researched and written by the Grim and Mild
Speaker 1: team and produced by Jesse Funk. Learn more about the
Speaker 1: show and the people who make it over at Grimandmild
Speaker 1: dot com slash Curiosities. You'll also find a link to
Speaker 1: the official cabinet of Curiosity's hardcover book, available in bookstores
Speaker 1: and online, as well as ebook and audiobook. And if
Speaker 1: you're looking for an ad free option, consider joining our Patreon.
Speaker 1: It's all the same stories, but without the interruption for.
Speaker 2: A small monthly fee.
Speaker 1: Learn more and sign up over at patreon dot com,
Speaker 1: slash Grimandmild, and until next time, stay curious.