In the winter of 1683–84 the River Thames froze solid for two months and Londoners built a fair on the ice — with a printing press and an ox roast. Here's why it froze then, and can't now.
Around 9600 BC, hunter-gatherers in what is now Türkiye raised massive carved stone pillars at Göbekli Tepe — thousands of years before farming, writing, Stonehenge or the pyramids.
For five days in December 1952 a cold fog trapped London's coal smoke, turning the air lethal and killing thousands — and forcing the world's first modern clean-air law.
In 1707 a British fleet wrecked on the Isles of Scilly because its navigators could not calculate longitude. The disaster helped launch the search for the marine chronometer.
On 1 November 1755 a great earthquake struck off Portugal, the sea withdrew from Lisbon's harbour, and a tsunami returned to drown a city already shaking and burning.