Marooned

The truth about "Marooned":

One explanation for the dancing plague is ergotism. Ergot, a mould that grows on flour can cause hallucinations and spasms, so one theory is that they were all poisoned by it. It is unlikely, however, that so many people could be affected by it for so long a time. Also, it's unlikely that they would all have the same reaction to the mould. Unfortunately modern scholarship has been unable to explain this crazy phenomenon and, you might have noticed, Hailey and Dennis didn't either.

What went wrong:

A wood carving of the Dancing Plague

Nostradamus did leave the University of Avignon after it was closed down because of the plague, but he didn't go straight to Montpellier. According to himself, he wandered the French countryside experimenting with herbal remedies. He actually didn't start prophesying until around the 1550s. That poem was made up, hence its lousiness.

"...a beard that rivalled Plato's."

That da Vinci chronometer sketch doesn't exist either. Obviously.
As far as I can tell it's true that Anne Boleyn might have met Leonardo da Vinci. She was Queen Claude's maid of honour before she returned to England and seduced Henry VIII into abandoning Catholicism (or something like that). The royal family frequented Amboise where da Vinci was living thanks to King Francis I's patronage. Pretty cool.






If you have any questions or input you can fill in the comment box below.


Sources:

Donaldson, L J, J Cavanagh, and J Rankin. "Leading article: The Dancing Plague: a public health conundrum." Public Health (Nature) 111, no. 4 (July 1997): 201. Academic Search Premier, EBSCOhost (accessed December 27, 2011).


Waller, John. "Dancing Death." BBC http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_7608000/7608874.stm

Soundtrack: