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

• 0:04
  Speaker 1: Hey, you welcome to the short stuff. I'm Josh, and
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: there's chucking. Jerry's hanging around filling him for Dave, whose
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: spirit permeates us all. The spirit of Dave be upon you, peace,
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: brothers and sisters and everybody. Uh, and that means this
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: is short stuff. Yes, Dave spirit who has settled upon us,
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: like the great stink of London. No, London did have
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: a great stink. We talked about it. We did a
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: great smog. That was a good episode two if I
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: remember correctly. Sure they got a stink in a smock
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: and they were both great. Poor London, I mean, come on,
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: there's a lot of terrible things happening in the air
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: over there, and technically it's their own fault, but still
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: you hate, you hate for that to happen to anybody,
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: that's right. Uh. This was a smog in ninety two,
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: specifically December five, when the day started alf okay, but then,
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: as it is London, Uh, not surprising if fog starts
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: to roll len as it often does. But then this
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: fog combined with the smoke of London at the time,
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: which we'll get into. Uh, smoke plus fog equals smog.
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: It's settled in and kind of parked it there for
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: quite a few days. And it was bad. It was
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: really bad. And it's really saying something that that it
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: was so bad that London even named it. Because London was,
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: like you said, very known for fog, it was also
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: really well known for small Apparently complaints about the small
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: problems um have been recorded as far back as the
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  Speaker 1: thirteenth century in London, so they've had smog for a
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  Speaker 1: long time. And apparently it was somebody from London who
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: coined the term smag to begin with. So they knew
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: their fog, they knew their smag, and this one combined
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: was so bad that they named it the Great Smag.
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: It was just that bad. And it's it's hard but
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: also easy and kind of fun to get across how
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: bad this small was because it did all sorts of
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: terrible stuff to the city and the people who lived there. Yeah,
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: I mean, you've got uh, you've got factories pumping out
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: smoke at the time, you've got people's own chimneys pumping
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: out smoke. This was December, so there were fires going
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: all over the place. You had cars. I think they
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: had gone from electric trams to diesel buses recently, so
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: there was a ton of smoke uh, combining with that
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: fog to make it a very caustic situation to the
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: point where you know, of course it's England, so they're
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: gonna be like, it's all fine, cheerio, and you'll go
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: about our day. Uh. And they did their best, but
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: even within that first day it started to literally shut
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: things down. It did. UM. It shut things down in
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: that like you you if you were driving at the time,
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: or you tried to get your car out, um, you
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: like you would just end up abandoning on the street.
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: It was too dangerous to continue on. UM. All of
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: the shipping uh. Transportation on the Thames stopped. UM. There
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: there was some bus service. I saw in a history
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: dot com article that some of the bobbies would would
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: walk slowly in front of the buses that we're trying
• 3:08
  Speaker 1: to operate with like a flashlight, um, just to serve
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: as like a beacon for them to follow through this
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: and even that proved to be too much. The only
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: way to get around was the underground, which was brilliantly
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: located underground and away from the small but even the
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: indoors wasn't safe right yeah, but first of all, you're
• 3:28
  Speaker 1: talking about cars. Are you saying that someone might leave
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: their flat and go down to their garage to get
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: in the car and it would be so bad they
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: might get scared and hide in their boot. Oh man,
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: that was beautiful. You just earned us a lot more
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: British listeners. I think a lot more pins. M I
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: think he just lost a few. Okay, Uh, yeah, things
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: were bad indoors. I think there were reports of um
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: movie theaters that couldn't show the movie because you couldn't
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: the screen. Uh. There were reports of people not being
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: able to see their feet, walking around, standing up, not
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: being able to look down. I wish I knew the
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: British word for feet, uh shods. They couldn't see their shods,
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: but it spelled Okay, that's great, but imagine that. Imagine
• 4:27
  Speaker 1: looking down and they're smag, not just fog, smog that
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: is making a choke and cough and weeze. It's so
• 4:33
  Speaker 1: thick that you cannot see your own feet. This is
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: part of the problem. I did not see this. I
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: couldn't find confirmation of this. Humi told me about this,
• 4:42
  Speaker 1: and she was reading me some stuff about it. One
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: of the things she found was that people would would
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: accidentally walk into the Thames and they couldn't get out
• 4:50
  Speaker 1: because they couldn't see the Thames from the smog, and
• 4:53
  Speaker 1: they were drowned. Like it was working as a research
• 4:57
  Speaker 1: a system pretty pretty much. Yeah, I got on the
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: tay roll. How do I get that? You already have
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: that buddy? Who's that? Oh? I thought you meant like,
• 5:07
  Speaker 1: how do you get that role? Oh? How do I
• 5:10
  Speaker 1: get it for myself? I don't know. Um, I don't know.
• 5:14
  Speaker 1: How about your daughter, she's getting to reading age. Yeah,
• 5:18
  Speaker 1: she's not into this trainer, young Chuck. I'm trying to
• 5:24
  Speaker 1: I get We get emails from people are like, oh,
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: my kid is six or seven and they listen to
• 5:27
  Speaker 1: the show. I'm like, really, all right, I think it's
• 5:31
  Speaker 1: just not it's not so much that she's not into
• 5:33
  Speaker 1: it's just that's where her dad does. And who finds
• 5:35
  Speaker 1: whatever their dad does interesting? Nobody. She flipped out when
• 5:39
  Speaker 1: we were on Jeopardy. Oh did she really what she
• 5:41
  Speaker 1: think about that? I mean, we watched Jeopardy, so she
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: just thought it was the coolest thing ever. Oh, that's
• 5:45
  Speaker 1: really cool. So it wasn't like a special like sit
• 5:48
  Speaker 1: here and be quiet and watched this TV show that
• 5:49
  Speaker 1: you've never heard of before. Thinks she watches Jeopardy does.
• 5:53
  Speaker 1: She watches it some with me, and she every time
• 5:55
  Speaker 1: I answer a question first, she's like, she thinks it's
• 5:57
  Speaker 1: some kind of weird black magic. So that's the thing
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: that I think that proves my point. She is into
• 6:04
  Speaker 1: it and smart and curious. It's just that she's not
• 6:08
  Speaker 1: into whatever her dad's job is. That's what I think
• 6:11
  Speaker 1: it is. Yeah, I mean she loves story pirates, that's
• 6:13
  Speaker 1: her jam Pete's right, Yeah, I was made by our friend,
• 6:18
  Speaker 1: in part by our friend Peter McNerney. And I keep
• 6:21
  Speaker 1: telling her Peter and Beth and their family came to
• 6:24
  Speaker 1: Georgia and we all went to the lake together a
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: few years ago. And I keep telling it was like,
• 6:29
  Speaker 1: you know, Peter, he went to the lake with us.
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: She's like really, And I'll show her pictures and she's like,
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: that's him. I don't remember that. Hey, that's the guy
• 6:37
  Speaker 1: from the valveoline commercial. That's the guy from the A
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: T and T commercial. He was in a super Bowl spot.
• 6:44
  Speaker 1: He's in tons of stuff, all right, So enough with
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: Peter McNerney. Let's take a break. And we'll talk more
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: about the smog right after this. Yeah, mm hmmm. So
• 7:13
  Speaker 1: it's really fun to talk about all the stuff that
• 7:15
  Speaker 1: just went awry during this this fog. Like you said,
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: people couldn't see movies anymore because there's so much smog
• 7:22
  Speaker 1: that came in unless it was awful true, Um, like
• 7:26
  Speaker 1: ambulance is not being able to run or people walking
• 7:29
  Speaker 1: into the Thames, right what about what about robberies and
• 7:33
  Speaker 1: perch snatchings increasing? Sure, you're gonna have an increase in
• 7:37
  Speaker 1: crime when all those uh oh, there's a good word
• 7:40
  Speaker 1: British word for criminal. I can't think of it, but
• 7:44
  Speaker 1: I don't know they would they would definitely per snatch
• 7:47
  Speaker 1: with that heavy fog. Yeah, man, whatever they call either
• 7:50
  Speaker 1: cat burglar. Yeah, well, at any rate. Um. One of
• 7:56
  Speaker 1: the other things that happened to Chuck reportedly was that
• 7:58
  Speaker 1: an entire um heard of cattle in nearby Smithfield. I
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: believe Um died choke to death on it. And that
• 8:08
  Speaker 1: really reveals like just how how much this this how
• 8:11
  Speaker 1: bad this was And and I don't know if we've
• 8:13
  Speaker 1: said it or not yet, but this didn't go on
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: like just on December, Um, December five, this went on
• 8:21
  Speaker 1: for five days, and it kept getting worse. And the
• 8:25
  Speaker 1: whole reason it kept getting worse is because remember our
• 8:27
  Speaker 1: heat waves episode. Yes, so an anti cyclone uh a UM,
• 8:33
  Speaker 1: I believe a high pressure system settled over London. It
• 8:37
  Speaker 1: was thirty miles wide and settled over London, and it
• 8:40
  Speaker 1: basically kept any breeze and air at bay. So all
• 8:43
  Speaker 1: of those smoke sacks and emissions and all that stuff
• 8:46
  Speaker 1: just kept building and building and building, and they were
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: trapped at roughly surface level. Uh. And over five days
• 8:52
  Speaker 1: they just kept going because this this low or this
• 8:55
  Speaker 1: high pressure system would not move, and finally went out
• 8:59
  Speaker 1: to see on December ninth. That's right. Uh. And in
• 9:02
  Speaker 1: the meantime, it exacted a very large health toll. Uh.
• 9:06
  Speaker 1: There have been differing numbers on people that they can
• 9:10
  Speaker 1: directly attribute to dying as a result of the Great Smog.
• 9:14
  Speaker 1: I think back then they said it was about four
• 9:16
  Speaker 1: thousand people. Uh. These days people say it might be
• 9:20
  Speaker 1: more like twelve thousand people. Yeah. Uh, that is an
• 9:23
  Speaker 1: astounding number of people to um. And you know, granted
• 9:27
  Speaker 1: some of these people were probably had you know, breathing
• 9:30
  Speaker 1: issues or asthmatic or co op D, but it would
• 9:33
  Speaker 1: push them to death. I don't know about like completely
• 9:36
  Speaker 1: healthy people that died within those five days, but twelve
• 9:39
  Speaker 1: thousand people is a lot of people. No matari usslice
• 9:41
  Speaker 1: it Yeah, over five dayste that wouldn't I mean, the
• 9:45
  Speaker 1: point is these people wouldn't have otherwise died. That's those
• 9:49
  Speaker 1: like directly attributable to this. And it was so bad
• 9:51
  Speaker 1: that the British government basically was forced to act. Um
• 9:55
  Speaker 1: they came up four years later with the Clean Air Act.
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: And this is the fifties and they're coming up with
• 10:02
  Speaker 1: a Clean Air Act. Like when you think about environmental
• 10:05
  Speaker 1: policy and in movements and stuff, you typically think of
• 10:09
  Speaker 1: nineteen seventies like the beginning of that. That's how bad
• 10:13
  Speaker 1: this small was. That they came out with a Clean
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: Air Act in nineteen fifties six directly because of that
• 10:18
  Speaker 1: small event. Yeah, I mean l A. I remember when
• 10:22
  Speaker 1: I was living there, people would say, Man, can you
• 10:24
  Speaker 1: imagine living here in the nineteen fifties, and like when
• 10:27
  Speaker 1: it was just so clean and beautiful, and the nineteen
• 10:30
  Speaker 1: fifties and l A were awful, terrible, terrible smag back then.
• 10:34
  Speaker 1: And the smog I think got worse in l A
• 10:37
  Speaker 1: through the seventies and then things started getting better. But
• 10:39
  Speaker 1: it's way better now than it ever used to be,
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: as well as in London, thanks to stuff like the
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: Clean Air Act. And then I think later on, uh,
• 10:48
  Speaker 1: there was another small crisis in sixty two where they
• 10:53
  Speaker 1: I think they added some more teeth to the Clean
• 10:54
  Speaker 1: Air Act. But you know, basically they offered a lot
• 10:56
  Speaker 1: of incentives, they offered a lot of restrictions on industry
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: and you know people, but they also said, hey, why
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: don't we try things like electricity or natural gas or oil,
• 11:06
  Speaker 1: and we set of burning this coal all over the
• 11:09
  Speaker 1: place and it worked. I don't believe there's been a
• 11:11
  Speaker 1: great smog since nineteen sixty two. So way to go, London,
• 11:14
  Speaker 1: way to pull it out, Go London. Ah, you got
• 11:19
  Speaker 1: anything else, I've got nothing else except to say that
• 11:22
  Speaker 1: we want to one day come back to London and
• 11:24
  Speaker 1: do more live shows. Yeah, totally agreed. And um. In
• 11:28
  Speaker 1: the meantime, thank you for listening London, Thank you for
• 11:31
  Speaker 1: listening to the rest of the world, and thank you
• 11:33
  Speaker 1: most of all, Chuck. I think we can say to
• 11:35
  Speaker 1: you me for coming up with this one too. Oh
• 11:37
  Speaker 1: it was her idea. Yes, she's the one who told
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: me about we gotta get her on the on the payroll.
• 11:43
  Speaker 1: I got her covering. Okay, okay, Uh, everybody's short stuff
• 11:47
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