Five who survived
A Strasbourg dancer, a Caribbean prisoner, a pope behind fires, a young Dane with a broken nose, and an officer on a rock in the Atlantic.
5 questions. Pick an answer to see the explanation. Share your result at the end.
Who began the 1518 Strasbourg dancing plague?
In early July 1518, a woman named Frau Troffea stepped out of her house in Strasbourg and began dancing in the street. She did not stop for several days. Within a week, thirty-four others had joined her. By August, around four hundred people were dancing. The Strasbourg city council's official response was to build stages and hire musicians.
True or false: A prisoner in a Saint-Pierre dungeon was one of only two survivors of the 1902 Mount Pelée eruption.
True. Louis-Auguste Cyparis, a stevedore arrested for fighting two days earlier, survived in a windowless stone cell with one east-facing door — away from the volcano. He was severely burned through the cell's ventilation grate but lived. He was later signed by Barnum & Bailey Circus and toured as 'the man who lived through Doomsday.' The other survivor, Léon Compère-Léandre, was at the southern edge of the city in a thick-walled stone house.
How did Pope Clement VI survive the Black Death in plague-ridden Avignon?
On the prescription of his physician Guy de Chauliac, Clement VI spent the worst of the Avignon plague (spring 1348) confined to a chamber between two large fires. The smoke and heat were thought to drive away corrupted air; whether the regime worked or the imposed seclusion did is unrecoverable. He did not contract plague.
Why did Tycho Brahe and Manderup Parsberg fight the duel that cost Tycho his nose?
The 20-year-old Tycho and his slightly older cousin Manderup Parsberg fought with rapiers in the dark at Rostock on 29 December 1566 over a mathematical disagreement that had begun at a Christmas engagement party. Tycho lost the bridge of his nose. He wore a metal prosthesis — probably brass with thin gold and silver coating — for the rest of his life.
How long did Alfred Dreyfus spend in solitary confinement on Devil's Island?
Dreyfus arrived at Île du Diable on 14 April 1895 and was returned to France on the cruiser Sfax on 9 June 1899 — 1,510 days, four years and seven months. He was the only prisoner on the island. For nearly two months of that time he was shackled to his bed at night by ankle irons (the *double boucle*).