Western researchers first to map effects of England’s ’little ice age’ 

London Bridge during the Frost of 1795-1796. Daniel Turner painting, City of London Corporation - It produced floods deep enough to carry away cattle, and winds powerful enough to sink flotillas. It generated heart-stopping deep freezes and weeks-long snowstorms. Weather extremes were no picnic for Britons from the 1500s to the 1700s, a period historians have dubbed the "little ice age." But because weather was something one only experienced and didn't measure - thermometers hadn't yet been invented and 'tornado' hadn't entered the lexicon - many climate particulars of those miserable days have been lost to time. Now, Western researchers have pulled those details into the present by scouring historical narratives, such as diaries and political treatises, and pinpointed specifically what extreme weather events took place, when and where. A man hanged in London on Feb. 20, 1687 "was dead to all men's thinking" and was carried several miles away to anatomists for medical examination - but when surgeons opened his chest, "[because of] the weather extreame colde, hee was found to be alive, and lived till the 23 of February, and then died.