Stuff You Should Know - Short Stuff: Great Smog of London

Episode Date: March 9, 2022

In 1952 London was gripped by a acrid smog that settled throughout the city so thickly residents couldn’t see their own feet on the sidewalk. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. And a different hot sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life. Tell everybody, yeah, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Hey, and welcome to the short stuff. I'm Josh, and there's Chuck and Jerry's hanging around

filling in for Dave, whose spirit permeates us all. The spirit of Dave be upon you, peace, brothers and sisters and everybody. And that means this is short stuff. Yes. Dave Spirit, who has settled upon us like the great stink of London. No, no. The London did have a great stink. We talked about it. This is the great smog. That was a good episode too, if I remember correctly. Sure. They got a stink and a smog and they were both great. Poor London. I mean, come on. There's a lot of terrible things happening to the air over there. And technically it's their own fault, but still you hate for that to happen to anybody.

That's right. This was a smog in 1952, specifically December 5th, when the day started off okay, but then as it is London, not surprising, a fog starts to roll in, as it often does. But then this fog combined with the smoke of London at the time, which we'll get into, smoke plus fog equals smog, it settled in and kind of parked it there for quite a few days, and it was bad. It was really bad. And it's really saying something that it was so bad that London even named it. Because London was, like you said, very known for fog. It was also really well known for smog. Apparently complaints about the smog problems have been recorded as far back as the 13th century in London. So they've had smog for a long time. And apparently it was somebody from

London who coined the term smog to begin with. So they knew their fog. They knew their smog. And this one combined was so bad that they named it the Great Smog. It was just that bad. And it's hard, but also easy and kind of fun to get across how bad this smog was, because it did all sorts of terrible stuff to the city and the people who live there. Yeah. I mean, you've got factories pumping out smoke at the time. You got people's own chimneys pumping out smoke. This was December. So there were fires going all over the place. You had cars. I think they had gone from electric trams to diesel buses. That's a good move. Recently. So there was a ton of smoke combining with that fog to make it a very caustic situation to the point where,

you know, of course it's England. So they're going to be like, it's all fine. Cheerio. And you know, go about our day. Right. And they did their best. But even within that first day, it started to literally shut things down. It did. It shut things down in that like you, if you were driving at the time or you tried to get your car out, you like you would just end up abandoning on the street. It was too dangerous to continue on. All of the shipping transportation on the Thames stopped. There were some bus service I saw in a history.com article that some of the bobbies would walk slowly in front of the buses that were trying to operate with like a flashlight just to serve as like a beacon for them to follow through this. And even that

proved to be too much. The only way to get around was the underground, which was brilliantly located underground and away from the smog. But even the indoors wasn't safe. Right. Yeah. But first of all, you're talking about cars. Are you saying that someone might leave their flat and go down to their garage to get in the car and it would be so bad they might get scared and hide in their boot? Oh man. That was beautiful. You just earned us a lot more British listeners, I think. A lot more pints. I think you just lost a few. Yeah. Things were bad indoors. I think there were reports of movie theaters that couldn't show the movie because you couldn't see the screen. There were

reports of people not being able to see their feet, walking around, standing up, not being able to look down. I wish I knew the British word for feet. Shods. They couldn't see their shods. That's wonderful. But it's spelled like Worcestershire. Okay. That's great. But imagine that. Imagine looking down and there's smog, not just fog, smog that is making you choke and cough and wheeze. It's so thick that you cannot see your own feet. This is part of the problem. I did not see this. I couldn't find confirmation of this. Yumi told me about this and she was reading me some stuff about it. One of the things she found was that people would accidentally walk into the Thames and they couldn't get out because they couldn't see

the Thames from the smog and they would drown. It was that bad. Working as a research assistant? Pretty much. Yeah. I've got her on the payroll. How do I get that? You already have that, buddy. Who's that? Yumi? Oh, I thought you meant like, how do you get that role? No. How do I get it for myself? I don't know. I don't know. How about your daughter? She's getting to reading age. Yeah. She's not into this. Trainer Young Chuck. I'm trying to. We get emails from people like, oh, my kid is six or seven and they listen to the show. I'm like, really? Yeah. All right. I think it's just not, it's not so much that she's not into it. It's just that's what her dad does and who finds whatever their dad does interesting.

Nobody. She flipped out when we were on Jeopardy. Oh, did she really? What did she think about that? I mean, we watched Jeopardy so she just thought it was the coolest thing ever. Oh, that's really cool. So it wasn't like a special like, sit here and be quiet and watch this TV show that you've never heard of before thing. She watches Jeopardy? She watches it some with me and she, every time I answer a question first, she's like, she thinks it's some kind of weird black magic. So that's the thing though. I think that proves my point. She is into it and smart and curious. It's just that she's not into whatever her dad's job is. That's what I think it is. Yeah. I mean, she loves story pirates. That's her jam. Oh, yeah. Pete's thing, right?

Yeah. Made by our friend in part, by our friend Peter McNerney. And I keep telling her, Peter and Beth and their family came to Georgia and we all went to the lake together a few years ago. And I keep telling them, it's like, you know, Peter, he went to the lake with us. She's like, really? And I'll show her pictures and she's like, that's him. I don't remember that. That's him. Hey, that's the guy from the Valveline commercial. That's the guy from the AT&T commercial. And he was in a Super Bowl spot. He's in tons of stuff. Yeah. All right. So enough of Peter McNerney. Let's take a break and we'll talk more about this smog right after this.

Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to when questions arise or times get tough or you're at the end of the road. Okay, I see what you're doing. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. This I promise you. Oh, God. Seriously, I swear. And you won't have to send an SOS because I'll be there for you. Oh, man. And so my husband, Michael. Um, hey, that's me. Yep, we know that Michael and a different hot sexy teen crush boy band are each week to guide you through life step by step. Oh, not another one. Kids, relationships, life in general can get messy.

You may be thinking, this is the story of my life. Oh, just stop now. If so, tell everybody, yeah, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts. I'm Mangesh Atikular. And to be honest, I don't believe in astrology. But from the moment I was born, it's been a part of my life in India. It's like smoking. You might not smoke, but you're going to get second hand astrology. And lately, I've been wondering if the universe has been trying to tell me to stop running and pay attention. Because maybe there is magic in the stars, if you're willing to look for it. So I rounded up some friends and we dove

in and let me tell you, it got weird fast. Tantric curses, major league baseball teams, canceled marriages, K-pop. But just when I thought I had to handle on this sweet and curious show about astrology, my whole world can crash down. Situation doesn't look good. There is risk to father. And my whole view on astrology, it changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, I think your ideas are going to change too. Listen to Skyline Drive and the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. So it's really fun to talk about all the stuff that just went awry during this fog. Like you said, people couldn't see movies anymore because there's so much smog that came in.

Unless it was awful. True. Like ambulance is not being able to run or people walking into the Thames. Right. What about what about robberies and purse snatchings increasing? Sure. You're going to have an increase in crime when all those, oh, there's a good word, British word for criminal. I can't think of it. But I don't know. They would definitely purse snatch with that heavy fog. Yeah. Whatever they called them. I don't know the name of it either. Cat burglar? Yeah. Well, at any rate, one of the other things that happened to Chuck reportedly was that an entire herd of cattle in nearby Smithfield, I believe, died, choked to death on it. And that really reveals like just how bad this was. And I don't know if we've said it or not yet, but this didn't

go on like just on December 5th, 1952. This went on for five days and it kept getting worse. And the whole reason it kept getting worse is because remember our heat waves episode? Yes. So an anti cyclone, I believe a high pressure system, settled over London. It was 30 miles wide and it settled over London and it basically kept any breeze and air at bay. So all of those smokestacks and emissions and all that stuff just kept building and building and building and they were trapped at roughly surface level. And over five days, they just kept going because this low or this high pressure system would not move and finally went out to sea on December 9th. That's right. And in the meantime, it exacted a very large health toll. There have been differing numbers on people

that they can directly attribute to dying as a result of the Great Smog. I think back then, they said it was about 4,000 people. These days, people say it might be more like 12,000 people. Yeah. That is an astounding number of people to... And granted, some of these people were probably had breathing issues or asthmatic or COPD, but it would push them to death. I don't know about completely healthy people that died within those five days, but 12,000 people is a lot of people no matter how you slice it. Yeah. Over five days, that wouldn't... I mean, the point is these people wouldn't have otherwise died. That's those deaths directly attributable to this. And it was so bad that the British government basically was forced to act. They came up four years later with the

Clean Air Act. And this is the 50s and they're coming up with a Clean Air Act. When you think about environmental policy and movements and stuff, you typically think of 1970s, like the beginning of that. That's how bad this smog was that they came out with a Clean Air Act in 1956 directly because of that smog event. Yeah. I mean, LA, I remember when I was living there, people would say, oh man, can you imagine living here in the 1950s and when it was just so clean and beautiful and the 1950s in LA were awful. Yeah. Terrible, terrible smog back then. And the smog, I think, got worse in LA through the 70s and then things started getting better. But it's way better now than it ever used to be as well as in London, thanks to stuff like the Clean Air Act. And then,

I think later on, there was another smog crisis in 62 where they... I think they added some more teeth to the Clean Air Act. But basically, they offered a lot of incentives. They offered a lot of restrictions on industry and people. But they also said, hey, why don't we try things like electricity or natural gas or oil and set a burn in this coal all over the place? And it worked. I don't believe there's been a great smog since 1962. So way to go, London. Way to pull it out. Go London. You got anything else? I got nothing else except to say that we want to one day come back to London and do more live shows. Yeah, totally. Agreed. And in the meantime, thank you for listening, London. Thank you for listening to the rest of the world. And

thank you, most of all, Chuck. I think we can say to you, me, for coming up with this one, too. Oh, it was her idea? Yeah. She's the one who told me about it. We got to get her on the payroll. I got her covered. Okay. Okay. Everybody, short stuff is out. Stuff you should know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts on my heart radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.