Feb. 2, 1046: There’s a 400-Year Nip in the Air

“1046: English monks record the onset of a cold snap so harsh that “no man then alive could remember so severe a winter as this was.” Little do they realize that they are chronicling what might have signaled the beginning of a centuries-long cooling period now referred to as the Little Ice Age. The monks set down their observations in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, a loose collection of historical records kept in monasteries across England between the eighth and 12th centuries.”