History of U.S.A. Panic Attacks (1692-1976) Quiz

Answer: A horse was drawn and quartered

Four-year-old Dorothy Good was the youngest person to be accused of witchcraft. She was in jail from March 24, 1692 to December 10, 1692. We tend to think that all the victims were young women or girls, but of the twenty people executed during the trials, six of them were men: George Burroughs, Giles Corey, George Jacobs S., John Proctor, Samuel Wardell Sr., and John Willard. Two dogs were shot and killed after a convulsing girl accused them of bewitching her.

Answer: Vampires

New Englanders believed that the people were being preyed upon by vampires who were sucking the lives out of the living. Consumption caused people to lose weight, cough up blood, and grow ashen-complected, so naturally it was assumed vampires were the culprit. Okay.

This led frightened New Englanders to take up the practice of digging up graves and then desecrating the corpses so that they would not rise up again as vampires.

Answer: Mercury Theatre on the Air

The show about Martians invading New Jersey aired on October 30, and the next morning on Halloween, Welles woke up to learn that the broadcast was mistaken by many listeners as being a real news report. Phone calls to police stations, newspaper offices, and radio stations led journalists to realize mass hysteria had occurred.

The Mercury Theatre troupe made headlines. Welles arranged for a press conference in the CBS building in which he fended off questions about his intent. Later he would explain: "I had conceived the idea of doing a radio broadcast in such a manner that a crisis would actually seem to be happening, and would be broadcast in such a dramatized form as to appear to be a real event taking place at that time, rather than a mere radio play."

Answer: She started having sharp pains and twitches in her leg

After Helen's leg started twitching, several of the girls also started to have leg twitches. This "condition" spread, and for the next week parents kept their sons and daughters home, fearing they might catch the twitching. Investigators determined there was no medical reason for the twitches whatsoever, and after delving further they assessed that the twitches were psychological manifestations. It turns out, they figured, that Helen was very distressed at being shown up by this freshman girl's slick dancing and that her boyfriend was giving her so much attention. The pain and twitching were her subconscious way of excusing her from dancing and also to garner sympathy. Her friends took on the twitching so that they too could gain attention.

"Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" didn't come out until 1949, a full decade later, and Fanta soda didn't catch on in the USA until 1955.

Answer: The Mad Gasser

The newspapers famously dubbed what turned out to be a fictitious character, The Mad Gasser. The symptoms of poison gas were all there--people feeling nauseous, vomiting, fatigue, dizziness, even spitting up blood. The case, however, has been cited as a textbook example of mass hysteria in psychology classrooms. Police cite that calls to report gassings fell off dramatically when police led people to believe they were mistaken, suggesting, thus, that they were embarrassed; police also pointed out that people didn't seem to want to submit to a medical examination even after reporting a gassing.

Other theories, however, offered the possibility of gas from the nearby Atlas Diesel Engine Company Plant, and also a local eccentric whose hobby was tinkering in his lab, but workers at the plant reported no symptoms.

Answer: "Have you no decency?"

Wisconsin Senator McCarthy investigated Communist activities via the House Un-American Activities Committee, and he looked to expose subversives in Hollywood and in government. Eventually, McCarthy's colleagues saw their way to denouncing him. Mr. Welch led up to that quote by saying, "Until this moment, Senator, I never really gauged your cruelty or your recklessness. You have done enough." Newsman Edward R. Murrow had said, "Accusation is not proof and... conviction depends upon evidence and due process of law."

Answer: "Seduction of the Innocent"

Amongst the book's claims was that Superman was fascist, Wonder Woman was a lesbian, and that Batman was gay. In fairness, it wasn't that he thought of homosexuality as a disease, he was just against comic books. The ensuing panic led to the creation of the Comics Code Authority. Wertham accused comic books of overt violence and references to drug use and sex, which, hey, maybe they do refer to those things, but he went a step further, saying that they led to children acting out in similar ways.

He also linked comic books to, believe it or not--illiteracy. For goodness sake, I learned to read from comic books!

Answer: windshields getting pock-marked by tiny pits and dings

The Pitted Windshield Epidemic of 1954 began in March in Bellingham, Washington, when car owners reported tiny holes and pock marks in their car windshields. Amongst the more ridiculous theories were that they came from cosmic rays or H-Bomb tests causing sand-flea eggs fallout. Perhaps it was anxiety over those atomic bomb tests that led to the mass hysteria. More and more communities reported such incidents, even the city of Seattle. Officials examined 15,000 car windshields and assessed that only 3,000 had damage, and not due to vandals or radiation. Officials cited mass hysteria.

The pittings did not seem to affect any other single glass surface, not windows, nor even other windows on the cars, which seemed suspicious. The pitting reports stopped abruptly in April. The explanation lies in a sociological phenomenon in which given a large number of people a phenomenon appears to be more common if that particular phenomenon is singled out and focused on. An infrequent incident appears to seem like a trend, when really it is just that more and more people start to focus their attention on it and go out of their way to look for anything resembling the incident. It is suspected that the complainants had those pock marks in their windshields all along and only started reporting noticing them when others reported them in the news.

Answer: Astronomy students at Winnipeg University exhibiting strabismus (cross-eyes)

Several workers in that textile factory may have actually been bitten by a June bug (leading to the moniker The June Bug Epidemic), but there is no illness known to be connected to June bugs. Upon investigation, the CDC determined that mass hysteria was the cause. Fourteen Tanganyika (later Tanzania) schools closed after a laughing jag amongst a thousand people erupted that started with three people.

The mass hysterical reaction was attributed to the stress of transitioning from rule by missionaries to independence. In Welsh, Louisiana, rumors of mandatory pregnancy tests being imposed by parents and school officials caused many students in grades 6 to 11 to exhibit seizures and other symptoms for several months. The astronomers' cross-eyes never happened.

Answer: Drugs

Authorities surmised that they must have all tried the same drug, but a search for that cause proved fruitless. What the students claimed was that they were victims of some sort of curse, and that they were hexed. As a result, a third of all the students at the school stayed home from the school, afraid that if they went, they too would fall victim to the curse.