Is London fog thick?

‘ But there was nothing quite like London fog. True London fog was thick, persistent, and above all basically, though not exclusively, yellow in colour.

Why is thick fog called pea soup?

The literal meaning of pea soup is pretty obvious — it’s a thick, savory soup, usually made from green or yellow split peas. The figurative meaning is less clear, since it means “a fog so thick you can’t see through it.” The first written mention of pea soup was actually spelled pease soup, in 1711.

How many people died in the pea soup fog?

12,000
Clean Air Act The overall death toll from that incident is now believed to be around 12,000.

Where does the phrase pea soup come from?

On several occasions, people fell in the Thames and drowned because they could not see the river right in front of them. And so, for obvious reasons, the thick London smog became known as a ‘pea souper’.

How did London get rid of the fog?

Slow to act at first, the British government ultimately passed the Clean Air Act four years later, in 1956, as a direct response to the lethal fog. The act established smoke-free areas throughout the city and restricted the burning of coal in domestic fires as well as in industrial furnaces.

Where did the phrase pea soup come from?

Why was Victorian London so foggy?

During the Victorian era, the worst London fogs occurred in the 1880s and ’90s, most often in November. London’s fogs mostly resulted from the gritty smoke of domestic coal fires and “the noxious emissions of factory chimneys,” coupled with the right atmospheric wet and stillness.

Did Winston Churchill ignore the fog of 1952?

Meteorologists attributed the great smog’s pollution to the over-mining of coal by the Conservative Party administration of Prime Minister Winston Churchill, who insisted that the country keep burning coal irresponsibly during the cold winter of 1952 to give the illusion of a solid economy.