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Bunga! Bunga!
The Dreadnought Hoax involved aristocratic joker Horace de Vere Cole and five friends — writer Virginia Stephen (later Virginia Woolf), her brother Adrian Stephen, Guy Ridley, Anthony Buxton, and artist Duncan Grant — who disguised themselves with skin darkeners and turbans. On 7 February 1910, Cole's accomplice sent a telegram to HMS Dreadnought, saying that the ship must be prepared for the visit of a group of princes from Abyssinia. The telegram was purportedly signed by Foreign Office Under-secretary Sir Charles Hardinge. Cole with his entourage went to London's Paddington station where Cole claimed that he was "Herbert Cholmondeley" of the UK Foreign Office and demanded a special train to Weymouth; the stationmaster arranged a VIP coach. In Weymouth, the navy welcomed the princes with an honour guard. An Abyssinian flag was not found, so the navy used that of Zanzibar and played Zanzibar's national anthem. The group inspected the fleet. To show their appreciation, they communicated in gibberish drawn from Latin and Greek. During the visit to Dreadnought, the visitors showed amazement or appreciation by exclaiming, "Bunga! Bunga!" When the real Emperor of Ethiopia, Menelik II, visited England some time later, he was chased by children shouting "Bunga! Bunga!". Ironically, the Emperor afterward requested to view the Navy's facilities, but the senior Admiralty officer in charge declined to grant his request. During the First World War, HMS Dreadnought rammed and sank a German submarine. The telegram of congratulation read, "BUNGA BUNGA".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dreadnought_hoax
Hot Blood
The Dancing Plague of 1518 was a case of dancing mania that occurred in Strasbourg in July 1518. Numerous people took to dancing for days without rest, and, over the period of about one month, most of the people died from heart attack, stroke, or exhaustion. The outbreak began in July 1518, when a woman, Frau Troffea, began to dance fervently in a street in Strasbourg. This lasted somewhere between four to six days. Within a week, 34 others had joined, and within a month, there were around 400 dancers. As the dancing plague worsened, local physicians announced that the plague was a "natural disease" caused by "hot blood". Instead of prescribing bleeding, authorities encouraged more dancing by opening two guildhalls and even constructing a wooden stage. The authorities did this because they believed that the dancers would only recover if they danced continually night and day. To increase the effectiveness of the cure, authorities even paid for musicians to keep the afflicted moving.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dancing_Plague_of_1518
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