Stop what you’re doing, and listen to this report. An American woman has dental surgery done and possibly has a mini-stroke while being sedated. When she wakes up, her speech pattern is so affected she sounds as if she’s from Britain. She has a rare form of brain damage called foreign accent syndrome. You have to hear the radio report. Jane Greenhalgh states:

There have been only about 100 known cases of the syndrome since it was first reported in the 1940s. The most famous case was a Norwegian woman who was hit by shrapnel in World War II; she developed a German accent and was ostracized as a result.