Aristocratic sounding laughter: ahahah!
Robert Provine found that babies laugh 300 times a day, while adults laugh only 20 times. (…)
He’s actually proved that laughter is contagious. Consider the case of the “laugh epidemic” that swept through what’s now Tanzania in 1962. In the small town of Kashasha, three girls started giggling. Soon, the snickers rippled outward to 95 students, lasting for hours before dying down, then erupting again—for three months straight. The school closed down, briefly reopened, then shut down again after the laugh bug reinfected 57 students. Within ten days, laugh attacks plagued 217 kids in the nearby town of Nshamba, then 48 more in Bukoba. It continued to spread, closing 14 schools and afflicting about 1,000 people, before quarantines were put in place. A year and a half passed before this laughathon tailed off.
