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This is an iHeart podcast. Guaranteed Human. Welcome to Erin Menke's Cabinet of Curiosities, a production of iHeartRadio and Grim and mild. Our world is full of the unexplainable. And if history is an open book, all of these amazing tales are right there on display, just waiting for us to explore. Welcome to the Cabinet of Curiosities. There's nothing quite like a desert island Hypothetical what movies would you take with you to a desert island? Or albums? Or, in particular, who? There are a million variations of the same question that all boil down to one thing. What's important in your life? What can't you live without? What these questions don't really consider, though, is that desert islands aren't a place that you bring your reality to. They're places that create their own reality. Today, let's turn our focus to Sable island in the North Atlantic. If you're Canadian, you might have heard of it, but for those who haven't, it's a narrow stretch of island about 95 nautical miles southeast of Nova Scotia. From a satellite POV, it kind of looks like a thin snake or a single eyelash, like the name comes from the French word for sand. And it's easy to see why. The parts of the island that aren't beach are covered in dry grass with no native trees. Throughout the age of sail, shipwrecks on the island were frequent, thanks to thick fogs and the island's deceptive sandbars. It's estimated that up to 350 ships wrecked themselves on the island. The most recent confirmed wreck was in 1941, although it's possible some ships struck the island as recently as the 1990s. Again, looking at the shape of the island from above, it's not hard to imagine. It's like a tripwire designed to catch unwary or unlucky vessels. But those shipwreck sailors didn't stay there. Those that survive often wind up getting taken to the mainland of North America. The ones who did stay behind there beside the gray seals that inhabit the beaches, were around 500 wild horses. Now, we don't know exactly where they came from, but most likely these horses were introduced to the island in the mid-1700s. Without any natural predators, they became most influential population on the island for over 250 years. They've maintained a small but relatively stable population. Pun intended. Other domestic animals have also been brought to Sable island, but none survived quite like these horses. Survival for an animal on a desert island is not easy. Water sources are sparse and the horses on the east side of the island have to dig in the sand to create little wells for themselves. You would never mistake a Sable island horse for a main horse. Their coats are thicker, shaggier and have long, unkempt manes. Complete isolation from their more domesticated relatives has made them a scientific marvel of sorts. They've experienced what's known as a genetic drift away from the horses we see in Europe and North America. Basically, they've almost become a small subspecies of their own. And what's even more fascinating is that these horses are more well adapted to the environment than any plants that humans have attempted to introduce there. At one point in the 1970s, a single Scots pine was planted on the island by the park rangers who maintained the station there. They decorated it for Christmas, and it even survived for a number of years before finally dying and returning the island to its original treeless state. The horses themselves pose an interesting question for conservationists. They're clearly an invasive species, but they are incredibly valuable to understanding how species adapt to hostile environments and how a single population of animals and can gradually reshape the same environment. Removing them would perhaps be good for the biodiversity of the island itself. But since the horses have been on the island for so long that ship, so to speak, has sailed, there's no buried treasure to be found on Sable island, in spite of the prodigious number of shipwrecks. But in a way, the march of history has left its own strange fingerprint all the same. Who would have thought that feral horses could thrive on a thin sandbar 13 square miles in area? But that's the thing about desert. Desert islands, they always bring out the unexpected in all of us, when there's nothing but you, the sand and the ocean, you either need to escape or adapt. You've probably heard people say that laughter is contagious, but that isn't always just a turn of phrase. On a January morning in 1962, a teacher was writing on the chalkboard at a girls boarding school in the African Republic of Tanganyika. She heard laughter behind her and turned around to see three of her students giggling uncontrollably. This wasn't unusual for a classroom full of teenage girls, but when the teacher asked them to stop, they didn't. No, they couldn't. Beneath their smiles, there was a spark of fear in their eyes, as if their laughter truly was uncontrollable. The teacher sent the girls to the principal's office and got on with the lesson. But at the end of the school day, when she passed by the nurse's office. She saw those three students and two more girls all doubled over in their chairs, all still laughing. With tears streaming down their faces, it was hard to tell whether they were amused or agonized. Their laughter hadn't stopped the following morning. In fact, it was spreading. Several more girls in the same dormitory had to skip class that morning because their laughter was so intense that they could barely sit still. Each girl's laughing fit could last for anywhere from a few hours to multiple days. And after they had finally stopped giggling, some of them would start up again just a few minutes later. Within a week, almost 100 students at the school were afflicted. There was no end in sight and the staff had no idea what to do. The students had been examined by doctors and nothing appeared to be physically wrong with them. It had to be psychological, perhaps induced by stress. If this was a subconscious ploy to get out of doing homework, it was working. With more than half of the school's students doubled over in laughter at any given moment, it was impossible to conduct class. And when the madness still hadn't died down by March, almost three months after it began, the administration was left with only one option. They decided to close the school and send everyone home until they got their giggles under control. And that was a mistake. The students went back to their home villages and they spread the laughter epidemic throughout the entire region. Over the next two months, around a thousand young people over a hundred mile radius were afflicted by laughter. Fourteen schools had to be shut down, and the school where it all started was slapped with a lawsuit for sending everyone home to transmit the contagion. The laughter came and went in waves for the next year and a half, until it gradually died out. In the summer of 1963, order was restored and schools were reopened. But experts were never able to explain exactly why this outburst happened. Some researchers speculate that it was a case of mass hysteria. Just a month before the laughter started, Tanganyika had gained independence from Britain, which began a period of massive social upheaval. On a subconscious level, maybe the girls laughter could have been a way of releasing stress and coping with the chaos and confusion. But at the end of the day, it backfired. After 18 months of non stop chuckling, everyone could agree. The joke just wasn't funny anymore. I hope you enjoyed today's guided tour through the Cabinet of Curiosities. This show was created by me, Erin Manke, in partnership with Iheart Podcasts, researched and written by the Grim and Mild team and produced by Jesse Fung. Learn more about the show and the people who make it over@grimandmild.com curiosities. You'll also find a link to the official Cabinet of Curiosities hardcover book available in bookstores and online, as well as ebook and audiobook. And if you're looking for an ad free option, consider joining our Patreon. It's all the same stories, but without the interruption for a small monthly fee. Learn more and sign up over@patreon.com grimandmild and until next time, stay curious. This is an iHeart podcast. Guaranteed human.