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Weekend


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May 10, 2002

Strange But True!

  • A weekly column of incidental information, off-the-wall observations and other random facts about the world.
    • By BILL SONES and RICH SONES, Ph.D.
    Special to the Journal

    Q. Seriously, would a "canned laughter" soundtrack still work on an audience if played backward?

    A. Laughter's indeed contagious: Even a poor laugh recording inside a kid's doll will bring giggles, not to mention the 1962 laughter epidemic in then-Tanganyika that lasted for many months among teenage girls and forced the closing of schools, says psychologist Robert R. Provine in "The American Scientist."


     
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