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Aug 8, 2002

"Of all days, the day on which one has not laughed is the one most surely wasted." --Sébastien-Roch Nicolas de Chamfort

On Jan. 30, 1962, at Kashasha village near Lake Victoria in what is now Tanzania, three schoolgirls got the giggles. Tears rolling down their cheeks, they couldn't stop laughing or keep their contagion of chuckles from spreading to almost half the other girls at their boarding school. Some fits were lasting minutes, others hours, some up to 16 days, until exasperated administrators closed the school five months later.