The Great Smog of 1952 | A Short Documentary | Fascinating Horror
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- Опубліковано 23 лип 2024
- "On the 5th of December, 1952, an unusually heavy fog descended on London. It remained in place for five days, bringing the capital to a standstill…"
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CHAPTERS:
00:00 - Intro
00:43 - Background
02:07 - The Great Smog of 1952
06:54 - The Aftermath
MUSIC:
► "Glass Pond" by Public Memory
► "Creep" by Emmit Fenn
#Documentary #History #TrueStories
My mum's story of the smog was of a walking bus on the first night. The driver had to abandoned his bus. And as he lived at the end of the route they linked hands and walked it, with people leaving as they reached the stops. When mum reached hers she had to feel her way along the railings outside her home, my grandad had come out to look for her and that's the only reason she found the house. She was 14 and became ill with pneumonia because of it, eventually the family was advised to leave London for good because the pollution was so bad for mums health.
Wow! Thank you for sharing that story. That is just crazy
Very British story I enjoyed it 😊
@@GAVACHO5150 she passed away last year at 81yo, a stronger, braver woman you would struggle to find.
@@janepearce5382 I'm sorry to hear about your mother's passing. From what you said about her in your story, I'm happy to have read she lived a long life after experiencing this event. I hope it was a good one for her 💜
Thank you for sharing her fascinating story! I hope she didn’t suffer from the ill-effects of the smog for too long
My Dad lived and worked in London during the Great Smog, and he told me he was walking slowly home and talking to his friend, who promptly vanished into 'thick air!' Try as he might my dad couldn't find him but managed to eventually get home. Several days later after the smog has cleared they met up again; apparently my Dad's friend had fallen over a low wall into someone's front garden and knocked himself out - he never saw it coming due to the unbelievably restricted visibility. I was always fascinated by that story and often tried to imagine what it must've been like. Now I have a much better idea, thank you! :-)
I wish I could have seen your dads friend fall over the wall. I shouldn’t have laughed but I loved your description.
That's so scary! I'm glad they were both okay!
@@minicat3640 The only thing badly hurt was pride, apparently they both laughed about it later but I suppose it could've been much more serious!
@@runningwildinthecity in the smog you would've seen nothing, my Dad didn't even see it and they were both walking side by side! Laugh away - they both laughed about it as well, it must've seemed so comical afterwards :-)
Wow! How bizarre! Scary and hilarious at the same time! x)
I suspect that the Clean Air Act might still not have made it into priority if it weren't for the fact that London is where Parliament meets and thus MPs were also impacted by the event. It's kinda like how DC didn't really seem to care much about the Dust Bowl until a dust storm managed to make its way to DC and blacken the skies there while Congress was in session. Suddenly, they found their motivation to try to do something about it. Funny how that works, right?
Still works that way today
Typical thinking among many.... "It doesn't matter until it happens to me."
Same thing when the great stink of 1858 happened. The Thames was so polluted with sewage, that they couldn't stand it.
I mean that’s unfortunately how lots of voting and decision making works. “It doesn’t affect me. So I don’t care.”
No ones too keen on rocking the boat, as along as the problem doesn’t bother them. Even if they could prevent something in the future. Even if it would be life changing for someone else.
Politicians won't do anything until their own ivory towers are threatened
I remember he great smog very well, I am 82 and was 12 at the time. My most vivid memory was one morning where we lived, 12 miles from the centre of London the smog was not very dense so it was decided to go and check that my Grandparents were OK, (we didn't have a telephone in those days) Grandparents lived 12 miles away from us across country. They were fine but as the day progressed the smog became dense so we set out back home, After a couple of miles it was so dense my Father could not see the road so I was told to walk in front of the car to guide my Father, he couldn't even see me with a handkerchief so something white and large was needed for me to wave and the only thing he could see was his white shirt that he removed which I had to keep waving, I walked the next 10 miles bumping into parked cars, hedges on bends, tripping and falling over on kerbstones and traffic islands. my poor knees and hands when we finally arrived home were a mess of bleeding cuts and bruises where I had fallen or walked into hazards. It took about 6 hours to navigate those 10 miles and as said I was only 12 years old at the time,
Guess after this walk, that white shirt was not so white anymore.
I was born in 1949 in the north of England. I can remember having to wear a scarf around my face during bad smoggy days, right up into the sixties. There was a lot of industry and mills in our area. Even in the seventies there were times when it was difficult to drive because of the fog/smog. The air quality around here now is so much better. We get the normal misty/foggy morning in Autumn/Winter, but nothing like I remember as a child/young adult.
supposedly the germans could never bomb stockport viaduct due to all the smoke permanently covering the mersey valley !
My retired Brit co-worker was 6 when this happened. All he remembered that his mum had face cover and couldn't see anything outside
My dad was born in 1949 (Today would have been his birthday infact!) in Bolton. He always used to tell me how black with soot, the buildings were in Manchester . I didn’t really realise how bad until I saw pics recently! Hard to imagine.
@@siennamayh Yes, it was rough at times Nick. But, like me, your dad also got to enjoy some wonderful times during the sixties. Those were our teen years, with great music and happy times. I hope your dad had a good life. May he R.I.P.
Wow that wouldn’t be fun to experience now days since it’s such a concern. The wildfires cause smoke to stay around for up to a week and a half so I’m worried about having to deal with this more and more as the fires get more common.
Assuming a calamitous smog is "typical British weather" is the most British thing I've ever heard
These were regular events. Smog was a fact of life, just this event that became prolonged due to the coincidence of the prevailing weather conditions. Most assumed that it was 'just another smog'.
I spent a month in England once and it hailed in July so tbh I don’t really blame them 😂
"I say, what's the weather like outside?"
"Somewhat worse than usual, but I shan't complain".
@@sabresister if you're coming to the UK for summer holidays, always pack for all 4 seasons 😂😂
@@sabresister dont know where you're from but hail in summer is very common on america's east coast
The fact that people were getting to places covered in soot and didn't seem to think *that* was abnormal for "a regular london fog" says a lot about the state of air quality then....
It was considered normal though. My grandmother remembers, living in a mining village, how women would complain about how they couldn’t put their washing out on the line because it would be covered in soot and coal dust.
My father arrived in London on leave from the army that week in '52. He had agreed to stay with his army travelling companion at his home in the east end. They couldn't find their way home from the tube station as the visibility was 2-3 yards at best in the dark. Totally lost, they stumbled into a bomb site (one of many areas not yet rebuilt after being destroyed in WW2). They picked up an old ladder, and at what they guessed was the next street corner propped it against the end wall of a house and my dad climbed up it to read the street sign about 10 feet off the ground. His mate said that he could see no further than my fathers boots up the ladder ! Using the ladder on every street corner to read the street signs they were eventually able to navigate their way home. I believe his mate kept the ladder until he died a few years ago.
Your dad and his buddy had a great idea. It's amazing that even in the most familiar surroundings, if we are used to seeing landmarks that are no longer visible we are lost. I once watched a disaster documentary on a tornado that hit near Oklahoma City. Ambulance crews couldn't get to people. This was before GPS and everything was flattened. No buildings, streets signs, stop lights, etc. Pretty much a familiar terrain turned alien.
Great story.
That's ridiculous they had to do that! He was smart to think of that
I could imagine someone’s memory of the smog was that someone nicked their ladder and never saw it again lol
@@davidcox3076 I feel like that’s Army ingenuity. Never been in the service but I’d imagine part of the training is to think on their feet like that.
As a graveyard worker, I appreciate the middle of the night releases, at least in my local timezone.
It releases at 11am where i live
I don’t get rid of dead bodies for my job though.
@@lucaschneider1613 He probably means graveyard shift. I can certainly relate.
Way on earth is a graveyard job related to a night shift? It’s not that they go anywhere…
It comes out at 4am where I live. Did you poo 💩?
@@MadJustin7 Yeah that makes sense but my kid side still says he just buries bodies deep into the night and then he comes home in a small forest shack house and watches 10 minute horror videos the entire time until someone dies again
Tum tum TUm
It was never a crisis until the football match was interrupted.
Yes
That's brit priorities for ya 😂
That’s true..here in Canada they are letting hockey players in to play games from the USA teams whilst we vaccinated citizens still aren’t allowed out of the country. It’s all about $$$$
@@Hoovie9596 yeah thats true.
@@Hoovie9596 It's not so much about the money over here, it's the fact that football is a religion. We Europeans can be most disagreeable if you disrupt the football schedule.
Not related to the 1952 smog but a great London fog story is when Sam Bartram was playing as goalkeeper for Charlton against Chelsea in 1937 and a thick fog rolled in, he was still guarding his goal surprised that nothing was coming towards his end, assuming his team were still attacking, that was until a police officer walked through the fog and found him and ask what the hell he was still doing there since the game had been abandoned 15 minutes earlier
Go Charlton! Charlton Stadium is on my road. Thanks for the historical information, that was really interesting! 😊👍🏻
We always used to refer to travelling to London as “going up to the smoke”.
The phrase was often mentioned in lorry drivers conversations etc.
"...when it became apparent that the spectators could not see the players, the players could not see one another and nobody at all could see the ball" Ahh that's funny.
4:52
Great quote 👌
That's when they realized it was an emergency. lol
I laughed at that line too! Dark humor…
i laughed out loud on that one
Oddly, it never seems to be a problem when the referee cant see anything.
The fact that most could not tell the difference between fog and smog in the first 🥇 is telling of how bad the London air quality must have consecutively been. Crazy!
Moist builds up around the pollution particles, that why we have less fog than a few decades ago.
There is one episode about the event on the netflix series The Crown. Someone tried to warn Churchill by mail and he did not recieve the letter which kind of ruined his reputation
@@gdubya83 the crown is a real political drama then? I've seen it in my recs and thought it was either a documentary or some made up events.
@@SoulDevoured It is very loosely based around real incidents, but it is a drama not facts ...
ThE FaCt ThAt
I was in high school at that time - remember walking on my street with arm outstretched in front of me, to avoid bumping into anyone. Also, biking 2 miles to school, and hearing an invisible bus slowly coming up behind me. Never forgot the terror!
The smog and air pollution in the UK was so bad, the butterflies actually changed their color. When the birch trees became darker with smog, the butterflies wings changed the natural color so they still would be camouflaged.
The peppered moth! It's not per se an unnatural color, but a natural occurring morph that's way less common under natural circumstances
They did not CHANGE colour - both hues were extant - just that the background colour changed so the ones which blended in better were less visible to the birds who ate them. Therefore, the survivors were the ones who lived to breed.
Lol classic biology class natural selection example
It's funny that we used to move so fast during the initial stages of industrialization, that these sorts of incidents could be legitimately explained as accidents or things that we just didn't know until they cost someone's life. Now this sort of stuff happens because of cheapness towards those very same regulations. Like a hateful circle
Very true. I experienced the same attitude in the industry I used to work in (public transport). The entire rule book was based on incidents, but all the rules got gradually done away with to save money. And anyone who questioned this, or even just understood what was going on, got discredited (often with serious false allegations to ensure the person would never get taken serious) and fired under some phoney excuse. That's how I lost my job. Gotta keep the truth hidden at all costs - what do lives matter after all when it comes to making more profit!
That's what's interesting with each "revolution". Looking back at the start of agriculture, it actually took centuries upon centuries for people to fully understand the impacts larger scale farming had on the environment. The need for crop rotations so fields wouldn't become fallow, for example, along with many other impacts. With industrialization we've moved very rapidly through it and it's taken decades to understand its impacts. In the grand scheme of things, we've only recently better understood the consequences of industrialization and yet we've entered into a tech revolution as well and 2 at nearly the same time is a difficult and largely unprecedented occurrence. While many of the impacts on tech are largely social, they're also heavily environmental as well on top of the impacts of industry. That said, it's because industry and tech are closely tied together and we wouldn't have the tech we have today without the industrial revolution which began in the late 1800s. Sorry this got long, I just find it very interesting.
My favorite horror narrator commenting on my favorite historical horror person? Today is a good day
@@SolaScientia Well thankfully the Tech revolution is largely environmental in the essence of e-waste and electricity consumption, most of the other half of it and arguably the largest impact is involved with the industries that produce it, which unfortunately we're understanding now, but are choosing to ignore the impact of in favor of greener end products
@@bubbleboi28 Agreed.
I don't think young people realize how polluted our air was well into the 1980s as compared to today. As a child in the 1970s, I well remember the downtown of my home city of Houston and Los Angeles (where we visited family some summers) being in a brown, ozone laced haze for weeks at a time. Deep breathing meant burning throat and lungs. Almost all of this was attributable to automobiles. Catalytic converters, cleaner burning gasoline/diesel, and improved engine efficiency have contributed greatly to the air quality in such cities, even as their populations boomed. Visibility in the Great Smokey Mountains has increased several fold since 1990 due to improved efficiency and the closing of some coal fired power plants to the west.
Wasn’t gas leaded at that time too? Scary stuff
@@sabresister Yes, leaded gas in the US at least was phased out starting in the mid-70s & finally being completely banned in 1996. Smog alerts were pretty common when I was a kid.
I think it’s only since the congestion charges and low emission zones that I stopped getting black snot when travelling into the centre. Before then they used to say living in London was equivalent to smoking two cigs a days.
Dang, imagine living in a city lol
Brown haze was common in the winter when I lived in Phoenix in the mid-90's. Phoenix is in a valley and temperatures inversions would trap all the junk air in the bowl of the valley.
I remember my grandfather telling me about Manchester in the twenties and thirties. You couldn't hang whites out to dry in the open because they would turn grey due to coal smoke particles, if you ran your palms a yard across a horse it would be black, lichen made a comeback in the mid-fifties after the clean air act. Added to that he told me that during WW2 Clayton Aniline started making fuel additives in Clayton and that for around a one mile radius around that plant all of the vegetation was killed off.
I remember the foggy nights, even in my small town in Scotland. Then in 1963, I moved down to Luton and worked as a bakery delivery man. Then one very foggy afternoon as I made my way back to the bakery, I was having lots of problems negotiating my way along the streets in the very dense smog. I was in first gear all the way. Eventually, I thought I saw the main town street lights ahead. A minute or so later, a dark figure gradually appeared and began knocking on my windscreen. It was a woman, a bus conductress. She called out: “Get back!”... I was actually just a few inches away from the back of a double-Decker bus.
This is by far the deadliest incident you've covered on your channel, yet the scariest thing about this is the fact that many people who were affected didn't notice how lethal the smog was and don't know that it's killing them until it's too late.
Fun fact: the WHO says air pollution kills 7 million worldwide every year.
@@ryanm9566 another fun fact: You can’t believe anything the WHO tells us.
@@FloridaCatholicGuy go breathe in some car exhaust and have fun then
@@FloridaCatholicGuy Yes the WHO have been corrupted. For exempel with the c0v1d and the connections to China.
But in the case of the ill effects of smog its well documented and proved time after time by different sources.
@@ryanm9566
And yet people are still terrified of nuclear energy even though the most generous estimates put the death toll at around 10000 over the course of its entire existence
My gran was Scottish and my granddad from Newcastle but they lived in London for a while when my Mum was wee, in the forties and early fifties. Mum can remember walking through pea soupers so thick that she could only see the hand of the adult who was walking with her. My granddad died in the early fifties, from a heart attack. He had lifelong chest problems and I often wondered if his death was a result of having fought in World War One and living in London's terrible smogs. They moved back to Scotland after my granddad died.
A great uncle of mine was gassed in WW1, lived in London all the rest of his life, suffered from chest problems and died before his 60th birthday- in 1949. His wife always said he was 'another casualty of the war', don't suppose the smogs helped.
@Super Straight HUWhite PUREBLOOD LOL, thank you.
@Super Straight HUWhite PUREBLOOD Beat me to it. I thought she meant her “mum” was in the bathroom. 😂
@Super Straight HUWhite PUREBLOOD Dude, I just read your user name and choked... Is it ironic? or are you some evil nazi?
that's an interesting share of a family story! but im abit unsure on some vocabulary that confused me as an asian-american, scottish with the "Wee" "pea soupers?"
One of my earliest memories is this smog- I was outside my home in south-east London watching a bus travelling at a walking pace being guided by the conductor walking ahead hold a torch aloft. Not a battery type torch but a flaming torch made up of a pole with material bound by chicken wire and soaked in oil or some other flammable liquid. It was so strange being that dark in the middle of the day.
SE London! ✊🏻
I didn't really know about this until I watched "The Crown." Great selection of photos. This one really sums up your channel title perfectly--Fascinating Horror.
Same here! "The Crown" did a great job in depicting what the conditions were like at the time.
Yes, my friend, your brand of reporting should be taught for general news reporting. Perhaps it would make those in this profession (and those who are in charge of employee training) more sensitive as to what needs to be reported and pass on ways of putting stories together with care for who will need to know and exactly how that information is provided. You demonstrate that there is still such a thing as imparting information in a businesslike way.
Amen! And I could imagine the news anchors would have it this way as well (a lot of them, anyway), but their bosses think we want "reality show" level of infotainment. Please, for the love of God, just give us the news! It's so hard to know what's happening when you're afraid to tune in for the irritation of it all😠
Businesslike and compassionate - qualities sorely lacking in today’s media.
It used to be this way.
@@gohawks3571
Oh, Mr “Hawkman”! I think I might be in love with you……❤️
Yet, fog as thick as “pea soup” DID NOT also mean it was green. Points off.
Also, fog is not smog. These are not interchangeable terms., then or now.
I was born in 1952 so I don't remember this one but I do remember Smog. I lived near Russell Square and went to school near King's Cross. One morning the only way to get to school was by feeling with my hands along walls. Me being small I could feel adults feeling their way along the wall above me. When I came to a corner I was lost. I had to feel my way back home.
I was born on December 19, 1952-a USAF military ’brat’-in Swindon in a civilian hospital.
I often wondered why my Mom didn’t have me in a military hospital, as my parents lived on the outskirts of London.
Could it be that all local hospitals were ‘swamped’ with Smog issues?
Haha great story David, I grew up in Bethnal Green and remember similar times in the 60s
I was born in 1951 and though I never saw a smog my father would reminisce about how he pushed his motorcycle along and following the kerb to get home. I believe policemen used flaming cloth torches to show their presence at road junctions.
@@garypautard1069, I remember someone sat on the bonnet of the car giving the driver directions.
Health and Safety?
The wildfires in the US West the last couple of years had moments of similar weather events trapping the dense smoke near the ground for an extended period. And it was so awful - and that's with having current awareness! I can't imagine the dreadfulness of going through this event having no idea of the dangers. RIP to all those involved, affected, especially the most vulnerable, both in this event and for similar events. Excellent work as always by FH.
I'm up in Alberta Canada and we where getting crazy amounts of dense smoke near the ground I couldn't see more than a block in any direction most days and on bad days couldn't see further than a house away, I Can't imagine how bad air quality must have been for you guys down there
I’m in Oregon and we’re having a hard time now. I hope the October rains start soon, I’m tired of tasting ash when I go to set out the bins
@@adrienneczerni6516 Yeah, it's rough today - AQI about 150. The summer that hasn't seemed to stop.
As much as I like the video, I have thoroughly enjoyed reading firsthand accounts of folks who lived it. Thank you all for commenting 💚
I was idly thinking about leaving a comment without any real commitment until I read your comment, Alison, which spurred me into action.
I was born in Rotherham near Sheffield in the late 50s and we still had regular smogs until the mid 60s every winter with the steel works still belching out uncontrolled pollution and nearly every home still using coal fires for heating and hot water. I remember my mum walking in front of our car to guide my dad who was driving. This was a common occurrence two or three times each winter. When you blew your nose after being outside in the smog the handkerchief turned as black as soot which I always fascinated me, albeit in quite a ghoulish way.
One Saturday in early December Mum and Dad took me Christmas Shopping to Leeds and we parked the car in Hunslet (still full of back-to-back housing, in those days, each heated by a coal fire) just south of the city centre. Suddenly, about 2:00pm a smog descended very quickly indeed and within 2 or 3 minutes I couldn't see my feet any more, nothing past beyond my knees and I couldn't see my Mum and Dad's faces - just as far as Mum's forearm as she was holding (or rather tightly gripping) my hand! I could feel their tension though as we tried to find the car and then Mum walked in front until we got to the edge of the city. I think that was the last real smog I experienced as after that every city seemed to introduce clean air smokeless zones at a very quick pace.
@@stephenc4206 Thank you so much for sharing your story 💜
@@alison4316 You're very welcome. Happy Christmas to you.
I thought I recognised the photo from 4:50 - "Goalkeeper Sam Bartram, alone on the pitch, not realizing that the game had been abandoned 15 minutes earlier due to heavy fog - 25 dec 1937".
It's a great image to describe the smog but the actual events behind the photo are so funny
Thought I recognised it too. Saw it in a football encyclopedia I got as a Christmas present decades ago. Thank you for the memory jog!
how did no one run and get him lmao
@@fkcct6967 One does not simply run into the fog, perhaps. 😅
Or possibly Arsenal goalkeeper Jack Kelsey in 1954
@@fkcct6967 you understand the idea of the fog is that you cant see anything lmao, they wouldnt have even noticed anyone was missing
There’s a book called Death in the Air that’s about this fog of 1952 plus a serial killer in London at the same time. It’s a great book.
Yes who was the serial killer???
@@linnsmith181 John Reginald Christie. I’ve read the book, tho you can just Google about it or ‘1952 London fog and killer’. As they word it in the book, ‘there were two killers that year’.
Wow. Thanks for the tip. 👍
Who is the author?
Its a shame that the environment only becomes a concern when our actions start killing people, its really great that you covered such an obscure, interesting and educational topic :)
Well, humans are definitely the most intelligent and the most ignorant animals around. A lot of times our ignorance overrides everything until we eventually learn and try to fix our mistakes. Sometimes it's too late, but we have to try.
@@cjayj442 Greta? Is that you?
@@cjayj442 The most intelligent species? LMMFAO 😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😷😷😷😷😷😷😷😷😷😷😷😷😷😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂
@@TheKonga88 the most physically capable, definitely not most intelligent. I don’t see other species destroying their own habitats and planet, and killing their own species in countless possible ways.
@@TheKonga88 Humans have the capability of being intelligent and so much more capable of protecting our environment. But it is people like you, who can only communicate through lame emojis, are the ones that let everyone down
Here in Pennsylvania we had an event like this over Donora in 1948 where the smog from the factories got trapped between the mountains the town is in and a lack of wind.
that happens in Utah. They call it, inversion.
I have asthma and have been straight up been instructed to avoid places like London and certain California cities unless I’m masked up, and even then to keep it brief. It ain’t easy being wheezy, y’all.
@Andreas Glad Why not?
I used to be friends with a dude who had cystic fibrosis. It causes your lungs to fill up with mucus/fluid. We called him Wheezy
Another asthma sufferer here, mine is quite mild but I do sometimes have issues when the bushfires around Sydney get really bad. Hope we have a mild season this year, but that's probably a fool's hope considering how things are going.
@Andreas Glad for science.
@@sixstringedthing oof, I might have to avoid Australia for more than the spiders
8:47 The slow color grade transition that begins here is a brilliant way to illustrate what you are talking about.
Not just London- I know someone in his late 80s who remembers Bristol University students turning out with lanterns to help traffic move around one of the big junctions up near the Downs.
I know it was the 1950s, but I'm having a hard time wrapping my head around people not making the connecting between poor health and breathing in this snog. Even if you think it's just weird weather, your clothes are caked in soot!
Ah, but London was always grimy. They were just experiencing a few days of above average griminess. Nothing to be alarmed about. Carry on.
@@davidcox3076 except when you and many others start coughing and suffocating after a while
Not really surprising due to mankind's ability to adjust to whatever their environment presents. Look at some of the worst air polluted cities today in India and parts of China.
Just another foggy day for whatever reason. Chinese people don't call it smog (maybe no equivalent) they call it just a "haze."
When it lasted till the fifth day it must've 🤔 felt like this smog is never going to go away! The city of London was slowly getting smothered to death! Those five days of smog not knowing when or if it would disappear must of been terrible, terrifying and despairing.
I didnt know about the high pressure.
Or just another week in Scotland.
Must've *
"Must of" doesn't exist.
Wth does "must of" mean? I of, you of, he offes? 😂 Spelling has gotten so bad you guys have started using entirely wrong words! 😂
@@Renard380 it's a depressingly common grammar problem that English people in particular are known for - mixing up the contraction "'ve" (could've, would've, should've) with "of" so you end up with nonsense like "I could of done it". Other common mistakes include; mixing up "there", "their" and "they're" and mixing up "that" and "what" (as in "it's them what did it!") I've even seen people mix up "saw" and "seen" as in "I seen an old friend today".
I was 11 months old and my mother later told me years later , we stayed in the flat in Walworth for over a week without leaving and my father , who was a cab driver , was unable to go to work , also for a week. It was not just factories or house burning of coal , that caused this disaster . Steam trains and steam ships in the London Docks also played their part . The great irony for London passenger transport , was that 1952 saw the last of the great tram way service , which was of course electrified and a relatively clean form of transport , the same as trolley buses , which were ended in 1962 .
Trams and trolley buses don't pollute directly, but if the electricity is generated by coal-fired power plants within the city it's still ultimately polluting the city. In the electric vehicle realm they talk about the "long tailpipe" of the pollution being emitted somewhere out of sight out of mind, and in this case the "tailpipe" might not have been all that long.
The trams and trolleys were replaced by diesel buses. The exhaust from these new buses was black. Absolutely idiotic in a city that suffered under the Great Smog.
@@franceskronenwett3539 agree. And in fact, the last British trolleybuses in Bradford were replaces by buses in March, 1972, only a year and some months from the first oil crisis. Nonsense at all.
Do you remember what Aylesbury estate looked like before they built the tower blocks
@@xandykkaudy8252 We lived in pullens buildings in Crampton Street and seldom went the other side of walworth road , except to go to East Lane Market . So , i cannot say that i did . I had a friend in Larcome Street and i do remember Deacon Street before the estate was built . I live in Thailand now , but i still miss The Elephant .
I used to live opposite my grandparents and frequently crossed the fairly narrow road to visit them. It was an eerie experience when you reached the middle and couldn't see either pavement. If you blew your nose, your hankie was filled with soot! The last fog (not smog) I recall was in 1962 when I had to run along in front of our car with a torch so my dad could see where the road edge was. When the forecasters talk of "fog" today, I have to laugh. It is never more than a bit of mist!
I lived in Japan as a kid and this story reminds me of the yellow dust storms that would come in the spring. I remember walking to school with a scarf over my face, barely able to open my eyes because the dust would sting so much. Being like 9 years old tho I didn't think much of it, other than it was frustrating, but it never occurred to me that it might be dangerous to be breathing :,)
Brings back memories. The middle of the day and it was like night, the street lights and neon lights being the the only things to stand out in the West End. I was then sixteen. Guess that I’m a lucky one ……still going.
Is the “West End” the same “Wild West End” Mark Knopfler and Dire Straits are talking about in their song?
@@gageb28-95 Those were the days ! Great songs….”…I saw you walking out Shaftesbury Avenue…Excuse me for talking I want to marry you.” Soho was a wicked place in those days….I’d wander around in my late teens, but I was far too young to enjoy it’s delights !
@@Meagain921 Awesome!
@@gageb28-95 Yes, the West End is London's theatre district. And that's a great song too. The 'wild West End' also gets referred to in their later song 'Expresso Love'. Unfortunately, the very next line refers to 'trouble with my breathing'...so perhaps we come full circle...
@@WeaselKing1000 Yep! I’m a huge Dire Straits fan haha
Hi, thank you for these thoughtful, unsensational vids. Would you perhaps consider doing one about the Iolaire Disaster in 1919, please? A naval yacht bringing sailors back from the Great War ran aground, in the early hours of 1st January at the mouth of Stornaway harbour, the Isle of Lewis, due to arrogance (the captain wanted the glory of returning the men home for the New Year and refused to allow a pilot with local knowledge to navigate the treacherous waters). It sank, taking more than 200 lives, including my great grandfather and his brother, and decimating an already depleted population. Unfortunately, outside Lewis and its expats and their families, this story is not well known and I know you can be trusted with it. Even if you cannot do it, thank you and all the very best to you, I found your channel relatively late in the game and do indeed find it fascinating. Take care, stay safe😷💞
That sounds like a story that would suit this channel perfectly.
This sounds like a story that needs to be told. Great suggestion I hope he takes it on.
I'd watch this!
Yes, this would be a good story to tell! They deserve to be remembered
How tradgic. To have survived through such horror to die at the hand of an arrogant captain is soooooo World War 1 it's unbelievable.
These videos are always so ridiculously well made. Well-written, shows only what it needs to show, compelling. Also it manages to strike a nice balance between having an unbiased report, while reminding us of the emotional toll these incidents have. Fantastic work as always, Fascinating Horror! 👍
As someone from northern England, what I find interesting about this is that it was a major event because it hit London. Meanwhile, in northern England this kind of pollution was not uncommon, but the policy makers in London didn't care. Even the Clean Air act was aimed at London because it would have affected industry too much had it been universal. In many ways it is like the global environmental situation today. The policy is always Not In My Backyard. We don't want industry in the UK causing pollution, so we outsource industry overseas. We don't care if those people die, and we pretend to be environmentally friendly, when really we just moved the problem elsewhere.
Although the worst example of smog in the 1950s, it was not the only one. Industrial cities across the UK regularly suffered. My late mum told me how buses would travel at walking pace with the conductor and passengers taking turns to walk in front, not only guiding the bus, but trying to work out where they were so people could get home.
We have unnaturally thick fog in Maine. It's a part of what makes Stephen King's horror stories so creepy.
I, instantly, thought of
King!
Ah..thinking of the Arrowhead project..spooky indeed!
I think "The Fog" books were way creepy though, by Dean Koontz, I think?
Only Stephen King fog book was the short story about people trapped in the grocery store. Name totally escapes me. Was it just "Fog"? They made a movie. Was it aliens outside or something, possibly?
I'm a huge Stephen King fan (have been since the early 80's), but I have memory problems due to health issues unfortunately.
Any time I hear Maine mentioned I always think of Stephen 😁. I like that all the books are set in the same area with overlapping characters 👏🏻
@@lindatannock The Mist is the Stephen King book.
That and the aliens
They covered this in the TV show The Crown. It was a really powerful episode. They also covered the horror of Aberfan. I had watched this channel's episode of that event. So when I watched the episode of the crown, I thought wait a minute this sounds familiar...OH NO.
Mum was born in 38 and I remember her saying growing up in Stoke on Trent always smoggy. White sheets hanging out on line quickly got sooty. Her breathing wasn't great and was told to live by the sea.
One night the fog was so thick they drove with the car door open, following the kerb! Terrifying.
While nothing like this, I do remember growing up in 70s England and experiencing really thick foggy days.
@Paul A Burrows... Yeah so do I Paul but more so in 60's. Literally not being able to see your hand in front of your face. Mind you that was in Oldham where there were so many cotton Mills.Plus we got so many days off school when it was really bad!! LOL!🌫
I love fog. The foggier the better I say.
I remember Britain's fogs in the 60's as well .
I liked going to the park and having the sense that all of the universe was within the little volume that could be seem.
@@paulcooper8818 sounds nice, reminds me of the old gta games using fog to hide poor render distance.
Foggy Manchester in the 1970's, happy memories of being a kid, we would still try and play hide and seek outside. It was hilarious
This killed Charles Lightoller, 2nd officer of Titanic. A lifelong pipe-smoker, the old boy's lungs couldn't handle this, and he passed on December 8th, 1952.
Yes, from cowboy to Dunkirk he certainly had an ability to put himself in places where historical events took place.
@@tashatsu_vachel4477 He's like some of these movie characters, such as Forrest Gump (though way smarter), who manages to always be in the right place at the right time to participate in a whole bunch of important historical events. Though to think he survived all of those just to be killed by the smog - but in turn that shows that the smog is seen as so mundane, such an anti-climactic way to die, when in reality it's truly devastating.
@@quillmaurer6563 To be fair, by the standards of the day he was a very old man at the time of his death, so it is quite possible it was just his time was up anyway. At the time, the average age of death was 69 (68 for men) so he did have a good innings.
@@tashatsu_vachel4477 True, this was just the last straw that did him in. But still not a 100% "natural" death, and without the smog he probably would have lived somewhat longer - a week, several years, who knows, but probably wouldn't have died at the moment he did. Sort of the same debate seen around COVID, what qualifies as a COVID death versus caused by "other things" with COVID as a contributing factor?
The original Final Destination story. Escaped death on the Titanic only for it to catch up with 40 years later.
I grew up hearing a lot about this. My grandma was a teenager in London at this time. She said you couldn't see the houses across the narrow street
This story reminds me of when I took a trip to Los Angeles in the mid 90s. I was staying at the Universal Hilton and took a rental car down the Hollywood freeway into the city. I couldn't understand what I was looking at as I saw that I was approaching a huge brown cloud. It suddenly dawned on me that what I was looking at was smog. It was a clear beautiful February day, but it looked like I was approaching a rusty dust bowl. Once inside the city, I didn't notice it as much but it made me appreciate the difference in air quality when I returned to Seattle. I've never wanted to go back after that.
My father told us of days in Glasgow when the fog was so noxious, it would discolour your skin and clothes like this video described. This must have been in the 50's . I think there was some crisis that forced the use of horrendous cheap coal nationwide?
Iirc the post ww2 debts forced to UK to sell the higher grade coal and keep the cheap stuff in the country.
Many places in Northern England continued to experience smog into the 1980s.
In Scunthorpe it’s pretty grim still round by the massive steelworks.
@@robsmithracing Scunthorpe's so associated with steel it's even on their football club's logo.
@@Eibarwoman yes I was aware of this. I live a few miles outside there.
I remember hearing stories about this and always felt it was largely exaggerated but damn the truth is even crazier than I imagined. They lived through a horror movie.
I was 5 and had a birthday party invitation during that foggy time.
The fog wasn't just in London, we lived near Birmingham, Leicester and Coventry, a heavily industrialised area in the Midlands.
My dad and I set out in his car but had to turn back because it was impossible to see anything but the kerb by putting my head out of the passenger window and trying to tell my dad where to steer.
It was very scary.
When I was a kid in the North East, we used to experience ''pea soup'' like fog due to the steel works (I assume). It was so thick we used to play hide n' seek on a field with no obstacles just using the fog to hide in.
I was in London for a few days last week, and I can attest to the air being beautiful, like a fine sparkling wine, well maybe not. I have COPD over the 2 days we were up West me and my missus walked 20+ miles and the air quality never even came up, it was no difference from where we stay in Glasgow.
Just bring in the London underground gives you black bogies, it’s awful
@@harbours. Yeah? The only black bogies I saw on the Underground, were the ones the train was running on, ha ha.
@@harbours. Was in London for a couple of weeks in 1999. I remember the black bogies. And always being thirsty. Left on the train and as we got farther out into Kent I could tell how much better the air was getting.
@@harbours. ah, London snot. Noticeable if you have to frequently travel on the deep tunnel tubes which, thankfully, I no longer have to do everyday.
Concise, well-researched, and articulate as usual, thank you.
This may be too closely related, but a story on the Blackout during the initial days of WWII - and the incredibly high death toll in England - would also be fascinating
So glad you covered this! I was absolutely floored when I first heard about this 2 or 3 years ago
Always the home of some of the internet's most interesting historical disasters and incidents. Thank you for another great vid.
I was a kid going to school in the early 50's and on many afternoons could only find my way home by holding onto front fences until I recognised our front gate
My dad remembers this. Visibility was so poor that he had to walk to school holding on to the walls at the edge of the pavement to guide him because you could barely see your hand in front of your face. Of course, he would regularly bump into people coming the other way doing the same thing.
This was amazing as usual! You're doing an amazing job of making these stories your own with editing and your own unique voice. Keep it up!!
I love your videos! I am an environmental science teacher, and discuss the Great Smog in my class. I will be showing your video this year when we talk about it. Thank you!!👍
Check the comments here too, see also the video on the building of the Churchill Estate in Pimlico and some of the reasoning for it. London did not have that many (power stations and waste incinerators aside) chimneys - maybe some hospital boiler systems and a bit of chemical works along the lea valley, but 000s of small domestic and small office and workplace chimneys. Think too of all the coal yards off the railways - few electrics or diesels in 1952.
This channel is consistent, fascinating, informative and too short. I want moreeeeeee! This is kind of content that should be on tv. I'd be a couch potato
TV as we once knew it is dead. UA-cam channels like this one are the future of quality content.
@@quillmaurer6563 Amen bro
The conciseness of this channel is why it's so good, it's the main appeal imo.
He doesn't draw it out and sensationalize it. He just tells you what happened, the immediate negative consequences it had, and the aftermath beyond that (sometimes preventive measures to keep it from happening again, giving it a relatively happy ending).
The obscurity is a part of it, but if you're going to make something more interesting by sensationalizing it I think you need multiple people with a higher production value working on it, it can't just be something like this guy talking out of his ass and rambling.
He makes me interested in these obscure events because he does a very good job explaining them in around 10 minutes instead of making me watch an hour long video to know what happened.
I remember reading about the fog when I was a kid. What shocked me was that some of the clothing hung up to dry developed holes and just rotted on the line. (Unless there was another fog I got this confused with.) Stockings just disintegrated.
i can imagine the acid rain/acidic mist that makes up the fog! i wont be surprised..
Just like in today's world, unless people SEE the problem(s), nothing gets changed.
Great show. Thank you.
It's easy to make change it's just that people are too lazy to do anything to actually make it
I remember some thick 'pea-soupers' growing up in the early sixties. It was also a common sight (in Edinburgh) to see workers sand blasting the old city centre buildings to restore the colour back to the original from black.
Waking up and watching your videos reminds me of when id wake up before school and watch the history channel (when it was actually about history).
I watched Buffy the vampire slayer and flipped over to history or discovery or animal planet during commercial.
Ah if one could go back in time...
Hemi: Sad isn't it? I was so excited when the History Channel came on the air and it turned out to be a real bust.
I love the broad range of topics you cover. I’ve never even heard of a lot of them.
Thanks for everything you do.
I remember as a child in old Los Angeles as a child in the 60s and up into to 70s on some days the smog was some bad yours eyes would water and your lungs stung when you ran! Have seen photos of the 50s where you could only see yards in front of you before they banned the incinerators, etc.
Remember visiting LA in the late 80s (at the Hollywood reservoir) enjoying a beautiful orange sunset at noon!
Los Angeles surprisingly had the worst smog in the United States from the 40s to 60s
I would extend my arm and not see my hand. Dad walked home after work by counting lampposts. One year at Tulse Hill there was also black ice, and I walked up the hill faster than the bus without traffic.
1958 when I was 9 it was like that in Liverpool. Many of us children had to get off the bus as it could go no further and we held hands and walked to other kids houses to sleep there. Crazy times.
As a sergeant in uniform patrol in Philadelphia for many years, we immediately knew when fog rolled in burglary would spike. Just sit during night shift with your windows down and engine off and you would hear glass break and follow the sound until we would find the break in. It was extremely common. Criminals know the fog is a visual shield and they would try and take advantage of it.
"Crimes of opportunity", and there's nobody as opportunistic as a petty thief.
Wasn't there a similar deadly event somewhere in Pennsylvania, forcing the closure of factories, & eventually bringing about the establishment of the first environmental-protection laws in the U.S.A.?
@@stevie-ray2020 I think you're referencing a Superfund site, one of the first ones, but for the life of me I can't remember which! I believe you're right, though.
Welcome to philly
@@effluviah7544 Worked out that it was the 5-day smog event in 1948, in Donora, Pennsylvania, where tremendous amounts of pollution were pouring out the steel-wire foundry & the zinc smelter (both owned by the same company)!
I remember the winter of 1981 where London was blighted by a freezing fog during a blizzard and visibility was absolutely zero and the only way you knew it was daytime was the clock told you as it was quite eerie. In the 70's despite claims to the contrary, London was still under attack by polluters mainly big factories that still lingered and you had the gas flares running 24/7 on the Essex side of the Thames plus Deptford, Tilbury and other power stations still chucking out dirty smoke. Of course dirty warm smoke hitting cold river water created mist and fog and it was these power stations that ensured the whole line of the Thames was blanketed with many miles inland under heavy fog.
The last bad smog in London was in the early 1960s and I have a vague memory of it. It was nothing like the air pollution today. It was smelly and seemed to be very weird and frightening to me, as a young child. We were living in the suburbs. I remember that my father came home early from his job because of it. It took the Clean Air Act to stop this sort of thing, but it did not end these sort of events until the sixties, but we still get a light smoggy haze, that hangs in the sky. Central London is still unsafe for people with poor lungs. A recent case of a young girl who developed asthma and died of it, because she lived near a major main road, as a result of which her mother fought to have that recorded by a coroner's court, has made the issue of smog, still something to be dealt with by London authorities.
I was born on December 19, 1952-a USAF military ’brat’-in Swindon in a civilian hospital.
I often wondered why my Mom didn’t have me in a military hospital, as my parents lived on the outskirts of London.
Could it be that all local hospitals were ‘swamped’ with Smog issues?
It's 4:15 AM here. Good morning everyone
🙂 I'm always awake before everyone here. Good morning.
Same time where I'm at. Good mornin!
Good morning! Ditto for the time, here!
10.17pm here
Morning!
This guy's voice is sooo relaxing! I can fall asleep to these vids (not cos there boring there amazing), I always end up watching them over again!
I was literally watching this event from an episode of "The Crown" not too long ago, crazy event, great series.
I always appreciate they way you convert measurements from the metric system for us Americans. I look forward to your videos every Tuesday morning.
I'm in UK, and still use old metric system so I'm grateful
feet and yards are much easier to visualize than a bunch mathematical measurements. but british people still act so high and mighty
@@rileybobbert6527 Most english use feet and yards as well as miles and pints. The British system carried over as we settled in America. Remember that.
@@sicooper4230 Yep, it's true. Although I only ever hear pints used to measure ice cream or soup
@@sicooper4230 ok awesome. they also use meters and the 10 different types of meters. then criticise us for using our measurements and our units of temperature which theirs isnt more special because of 0 and 100 that they do. ours temperature is easier since its less numbers on the scale that humans work around. so screw off and dont act all high and mighty over me
Admittedly, I first learned about this incident from an episode of “The Crown.”
Having watched all of these, I get super excited when a new one comes out lol. Thank you for the videos
I remember smog in the East end of London in the late 60s, early 70's. One time my uncle was walking along the Rd in front of dad driving his van, we could barely see my uncle a few feet ahead.
I still think those days were the best! Just shows what a world we live in now.
Nicely presented, well-researched, usual.
All the best.
"Oi, this prompts memories of Silent Hill, me ol' chap!"
"What the bloody hell are you talking about?"
"Oi Gov', 'ave you eva given a listen to Los Dug Dugs?"
"What!!! Wha' bullux is this!!"
@@overlookers ?! 🤷🏼♀️
@@lindatannock ua-cam.com/video/5YBRKL4Q0pM/v-deo.html
Love your work. Imagine you researching and compiling info and editing all in very organized way.
I’m glad you covered the fact that although air quality was improved in London it is still a problem to this day that leads to early deaths.
5:00 So you're telling me that Londoner's would still go to work when their place of work was reduced to rubble in 1940, but smog made them go home in 1952, that's very British, only ever complaining about the weather.
Probably because the was over by that time and also because the Germans weren't dropping poison gas like this essentially was...
@@Shinzon23 one think though they at first they did not think it was dangerous just reduced the visibility so your argument is bad and operation Sea Lion was suppose to use a tone of Sarin, We need to remember that Germany targeted only London after the British attack on German city so yeah the real reason why the Londoner's got back to work was because they left the city and the one resting pretty much just waited that the blitz end to go back help the war effort
They couldn't see though, which would make getting about very difficult. Plus they could breathe easily when the bombs weren't dropping. Whether or not they thought the air was poisonous or it was just a bad fog, if it's extremely difficult to breathe then it's still going to make travelling to work or anything else extremely difficult, even if you weren't relying on transport.I imagine that you could taste this fog, it wasn't just bad weather, it had mass, like walking through soup and you would be trying to hold your breath because of the foul smell. I've never experienced it but I have had to walk through smoke from a building fire and that was bad enough. I think they had a lot of smogs, it was just that this one was exceptionally bad but thankfully it culminated in reform which benefitted the whole country, not just London.
@@aoki6332 tell that to Coventry... And you do know operation Sea Lion never actually happened?
@@janepearce5382 Can't you read ? Sea Lion was **suppose** to use and yeah i know they did bomb other city i just put the wrong words i should have say Mostly and not only
For around half a century Londoners had called smog 'Ripper weather ' following a series of unsolved killings.
As ' black as Jack ' had been also used in children's schoolyard chants.
This is one Fascinating Horror video that truly lives up to that modifier. Excellent work as always 👍
My grandmother, who lived in London until around 16 years of age, told me about the fog. She said it was frightening, and not seen as an everyday thing at all, and people avoid going outside as much as possible. She said it made it nearly dark as night, and sometimes you couldn't see as far as you could reach. It was very hard to breathe, made many people sick and killed a lot of people, including one of her friends.
Perfect timing from my favorite notification enable channel 🔥 keep up the marvelous work bro!
I had just thought of suggesting this one the other day. Horrible for all involved but the changes it brought on were very much for the better.
Something something our safety regulations are written in blood. But yeah - this was an interesting topic, thanks for telepathically influencing him to cover it!
Some lobbyists are still fighting those "changes". Shameful.
I can remember (around 75' > 76') there being an all enveloping fog that descended on Stamford Hill in North London whilst I was at work.
Leaving work I couldn't look down to see my feet as they were lost in the mist.
Hearing unseen vehicles colliding and invisible people crying out for help, it was quite a scary experience as I made my way to the pavement edge.
Once at the edge of the pavement (in the UK the pavement is what pedestrians walk on and the road is what vehicles drive on) I was able - with extreme caution - to navigate my way home, a distance of over 2 miles.
It had helped that I knew the route very well from having run to and from work on many occasions.
The scariest part was crossing main roads, but thankfully I didn't get disorientated or lost.
In the 80's I was based out of a hospital in West London, taking units of crossmatched blood to operating theatres in London by motorcycle, and one afternoon a fog descended which was so dense that I could barely see anything around me!
Riding up the Goldhawk Road to Shepherds Bush Green and the Shepherds Bush Roundabout, visibility reduced to literally zero, and the thought of trying to negotiate these two busy London landmarks without being run down was distinctly unappealing!
Not wanting to become a recipient of the units of blood on board, I parked my motorcycle, found a coffee shop in the gloom and rang the bloodbank to update them that in the interests of survival, I wouldn't be riding in these extremely dangerous conditions.
These were clearly weather related events as opposed to being caused by smog, but I have never experienced anything like it, it was like a Pilot suddenly finding themselves in IFR conditions, losing all visual references!
In the following decades there has never been anything to compare to those two events and I was very pleased to have experienced both.
I love watching your channel blow up! I’ve been a fan for a long time. ❤️
What fascinates me is peoples reactions. In 1952, the public took this in their stride. If it happened today, the paroxisms of terror would be extraordinary!
Look at this current fuel issue. A couple of garages can't get fuel immediately so suddenly PANIC!!!!!!! Everyone goes out and buys every drop they can, overwhelming the supply chain. Insanity!
Mostly down to irresponsible news reporting and social media spreading misinformation
@Warhammered: (cool name by the way).... Very true. However, sadly there does seem to be a marked reduction in stoicism and a huge increase in panic. Personally, I think social media is a cancer that should be excised.
Absolutely love these videos! Can you do one on the Empress of Ireland?
So nice to see good, informative content presented by a normal person. Subbed and upvoted - looking forward to more quality videos. Thanks!
The new background music is very atmospheric, I’m loving it.
Great content as always
oh i’ve always wanted to learn more about the deadly smog, but there have never been terribly thorough videos on it. there’s a few good articles floating around out there on it, though. still, nice to hear it narrated!