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On Aug. 21, 1991, Wanda Lake, 18, broke the record held by Dave Horrigan. Wanda removed her shoes in the crowded lobby of a Los Angeles theatre. In the five minutes that followed, the lobby was a chaotic mass of panic- stricken people trying desperately to escape. In the end, 42 people were sick, and 14 others had passed out.
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What kind of compounds could have been created by bacteria that could have been that noxious? It’s hard to imagine that even a rotting corpse could have made 14 people pass out even though I know there is often a chain reaction. Any bio-chemists want to take a stab at this one?
A quick Google search under [“Wanda Lake” feet smell David] yielded some 19 sites, all humor-based, with the exact same article (with the exception of the previous record holder being named either “George David” or “Dave Horrigan”.
Given that every net cite for this occurance reads word for word with no link to a news story of any kind Iwould suspect this “record” is entirely made up.
Having said this, it is possible for crowds to go into a hysterical mass panic and imagine all sorts of things happening when a bad smell is in the air. A similar happenstance (behaviorally) occurred several years ago when a woman who tried to commit suicide by eating rat poison/insecticide was opened up on the operating table and people started to panic and go into a faint. In the end lots of people were treated for mysterious symptoms and some claimed permanent injury while others claimed they smelled and felt nothing.
After reviewing the incident most researchers came to conclusion it was a case of focused mass hysteria, because of the bad smell coming out of the woman. The vast majority of the symptom sufferers were female (although the population in the ER was about 50/50) who are (according to the researchers) more susceptible to this sort of hysterical mass panic than males.