April 29

Today it's time to get down. It's International Dance Day. Chosen for the birthday of Jean-Georges Noverre aka the guy who invented "modern ballet", this holiday is about dancing. I'm going to use this as an excuse to tell you about the dancing plague of 1518. So in 1518 a lot of people, usually guessed to be around 50-400 people, just started dancing and kept going for a couple months. A lot of people say most of them died but other sources say that's bullcrap and there were no casualties reported at the time, and it was so long ago I imagine there was a lot of telephone game about the situation either way. But regardless, the 1500's were wild.