In spring 1954, Washington state experienced a truly peculiar epidemic. Something mysterious was pitting their windscreens even as they watched. What was the cause of this phenomenon? And what does it tell us about human nature?

While ORA is busy at work preparing season 2, here's a minisode on the Seattle Windscreen Pitting Epidemic to tide you over.

Sources:

James Ross Gardner, What Pitted Seattle’s Glass? https://www.seattlemet.com/news-and-city-life/2020/04/what-pitted-seattle-s-glass

Susan Gerbic, Why is the 1954 Seattle Windshield Pitting Epidemic Pertinent to Today? https://www.humanists.org/blog/2025-02-16/

Classified Humanity, https://classifiedhumanity.com/tagged/Windshield%20Pitting%20Epidemic  

Nahum Medalia & Otto Larsen (1958). Diffusion and Belief in a Collective Delusion: The Seattle Windshield Pitting Epidemic. American Sociological Review, 23(2), 180–186. https://doi.org/10.2307/2089002 

Nahum Medalia (1959). Who Cries Wolf? The Reporters of Damage to Police in a Pseudo-Disaster. Social Problems, 7(3), 233–240. https://doi.org/10.2307/799450 

Alan Stein, Windshield pitting incidents in Washington reach fever pitch on April 15, 1954. https://www.historylink.org/File/5136

Linton Weeks, The Windshield-Pitting Mystery of 1954, https://www.npr.org/sections/npr-history-dept/2015/05/28/410085713/the-windshield-pitting-mystery-of-1954

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