Dancing plague, contagious laughter, and other weird epidemics

There’s an incredible world of information at our fingertips these days, but this can have its downsides. In the age of social media, it’s easy for misinformation to spread like a virus causing fear and panic. We’ve all seen alarming headlines on our news feeds heralding the next end-of-the-world fad, but we can usually trust ourselves to judge which ones are worth worrying about.

Let’s take a look at some cases where communities failed to separate fact from fiction! Click through the following gallery to get started.