The Days Grimm Podcast

Ep.242 FROZEN IN FEAR: The Dyatlov Pass Mystery, Thames Frost Fairs, & Phantom Hypothermia | December Deaths

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Welcome to the December edition of Deaths of the Month on The Days Grimm! Hosts Brian Michael Day and Thomas Grimm are joined by producer and comedian Graham Gallagher to rank the wildest, weirdest, and most chilling winter-related deaths in history. From Victorian parties on frozen rivers to modern mysteries that still baffle investigators, this episode covers it all.

In this episode, the guys break down:

  • The Thames Frost Fairs: Between 1600 and 1814, the River Thames in London would freeze solid, leading to massive fairs with pubs, fires, and shops right on the ice—until the ice broke, leading to tragic (and bizarre) consequences.
  • The Man Who Froze in an Unplugged Freezer: The strange case of Nick Sitzman, a man who reportedly died of hypothermia symptoms while locked in a freezer that wasn't even turned on, proving the deadly power of the mind.
  • The Great Smog of London (1952): A lethal combination of industrial pollution and weather patterns that covered London in a deadly yellow smog for five days, resulting in thousands of fatalities.
  • Paradoxical Undressing: The terrifying biological phenomenon where freezing victims strip off their clothes in the final stages of hypothermia due to a false sensation of extreme heat.
  • The Year Without a Summer (1816): How a massive volcanic eruption caused global cooling, leading to famine, riots, and frozen crops in the middle of July.
  • The Dyatlov Pass Incident: The ultimate winter mystery where nine experienced hikers cut their way out of their tent and fled into the freezing night, eventually found dead with inexplicable injuries like missing eyes and tongues.

Join us as we rank these frozen tragedies from "weak" to absolute nightmare fuel!

TIMESTAMPS 

00:00 - Intro & December Deaths 

02:29 - The Thames Frost Fairs (Parties on Ice) 

08:42 - Man Dies in Unplugged Freezer (Nick Sitzman) 

14:28 - The Great Smog of London (1952) 

20:00 - Frozen Man & Paradoxical Undressing 

26:40 - The Year Without a Summer (1816) 

36:20 - The Dyatlov Pass Incident 39:45 - Ranking the Deaths

#TheDaysGrimm #DyatlovPass #TrueCrime #HistoryPodcast #StrangeHistory #LondonSmog #Hypothermia #WinterDeaths #ComedyPodcast #ParadoxicalUndressing #FrostFairs

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SPEAKER_00:

Alligar, we're just waiting on waiting on you for the most part unless you got anything else you want to put out. No, it's just uh Yeah, you fire it up whenever you want, Big Daddy. Hell yeah, dude.

SPEAKER_02:

How much money you got? How much money you got? How much money you got? How much money you got? Hello.

SPEAKER_01:

You haven't tried one of these yet, still?

SPEAKER_00:

Let me get one.

SPEAKER_02:

How much money you got? How many people you got? How many people?

SPEAKER_00:

Hello! Hello, hello, hello everyone, and welcome to another thrilling episode of The Days Grimm. My name is Brian Michael Day. My name is Thomas Grimm. Hosting, not hosting, God, why am I so fucking? Producing. Yeah, producing this uh podcast this month uh of the uh December deaths of the month. None other than Mr. Graham Gallagher. Check him out on your local comedy stage. Actually, you know what, Graham Wallet Graham doesn't have a camera or microphone. Graham, go ahead and pull up your uh IG or whatever you want so people can actually find you. Uh un Oh, you don't? Okay. Well, um talk to your local homeless man under the bridge, and he may actually know Graham. Uh, but yeah, he's a funny ass comedian. If you see his name pop up on any of these shows in town, go check them out. Um, so thank you to him for taking care of us today. Um also thank you. I always enjoy being in your presence, Tom.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, likewise. This is December's Deaths of the Month.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, uh, so I don't know how this is gonna go. Normally I pre-screen all the deaths of the week or of the month or whatever. I've done nothing. I've not even read the actually I read the titles that you gave them. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

Um, I gave them titles, not really caring about the titles on this one, and I didn't rank them, so we get to rank them at the end.

SPEAKER_00:

Okay, this is a real shotgun situation. Um starting timers, yeah. Get that going. Um, real shotgun situation, and I guess we're gonna kick this off. Are you ready to start, sir? I'll ask you. Uh so we're gonna kick it off with the Thames Frost Fares. I like that you went cold. Big fan of that.

SPEAKER_01:

I think all of these are winter related, if I remember correctly.

SPEAKER_00:

Very nice, very nice.

SPEAKER_01:

Uh I hate the cold. I'm very pro-global warming, and none of these deaths would happen if we would get on the ball faster.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, you're warming your car up before you get in it in the summer.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, yeah. Calling it off. Yeah, exactly. I pre-start it to cool it. Yeah, I think most people should do that. I don't want to see snow unless it's in the mountains.

SPEAKER_00:

So this uh our first death of December comes from historic-ukistoric dash uk. Uh, the Thames Frost Fares. Between 1600 and 1814, it was not uncommon for the river Thames to freeze over for up to two months at a time. That's a long fucking time. Yeah, and there were seven of these. Um seven. Okay, we'll get there. We'll get there. Uh there were two main reasons for this. The first was that Britain uh was locked in what is now known as the quote Little Ice Age, end quote. Uh the other catalyst was the medieval London Bridge and its piers, and specifically how closely spaced together they were. During winter, pieces of ice would get lodged between the piers and effectively dam up the river, meaning it was easier for it to freeze. It's not moving, so that makes sense. It's not moving as fast. So creating an ice rink between I get it. I'm tracking, just making sure we're all on the same page here. Uh, although these harsh winters often brought with them famine and death, that's nice. Uh, it was local Londoners, uh, as enterprising and resilient as ever, uh, who decided to make the most of it and set up the Thames Frost Fairs. In fact, between 1607 and 1814, there were a total of seven major fairs as well as countless smaller ones. Now, these frost fairs would have been quite a spectacle, full of hastily constructed shops, pubs, ice skating rinks, etc.

SPEAKER_01:

It's like Franklin Street, you know, like the fall fest between two bridges.

SPEAKER_00:

Franklin Street on ice.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, because they literally said it the uh right here right here in the next, uh, but it was not until January when the ice became so thick that people started setting up camps on it. There were football pitches, bowling matches, fruit cellars, shoemakers, barbers, and even a pub or two to keep the shoekeepers warm. There were even fires in their tents.

SPEAKER_00:

That's a bold strat, bro. You're on a frozen piece of water and you're like, you know what we could use right now? A fire. And we got this beautiful photograph from the time, aka a drawing. Yeah, this was taken with a cannon fucking lead pencil. Um, so let's scroll on down, brother, brother man, uh, brother Gallagher. Um during the great winter of 1683, slash eighty-four, okay, slash eighty four between the yeah, December and yeah, where even the seas of southern Britain were frozen solid up to two miles from shore. The most famous frost fair was held, the blanket fair. The famous English writer and diarrheaist, uh John Diarrhea. That's such a gay name. Uh John Evelyn, also a gay name, uh, described it in extensive detail writing. Uh coaches plied from when Westminster to the temple and from several other stairs to and fro as the the dude talks gay. Uh as in the street. It's just getting gayer by the van. So even kings and queens would join the festivities with King Charles reportedly enjoying a spit-roasted ox. Oh my god, dude. However, as you may imagine, from holding a festival on a rather precarious piece of ice, there was the occasional tragedy. During the fair of 1739, a whole swath of ice gave way and swallowed up tents and business businesses as well as people. Another tragedy occurred in the fair of 1789, where melting ice dragged away a ship which was anchored to a riverside pub and Rothwright, good God, as we can stop reading the article there, but yeah, as the gentleman's magazine wrote in the time. It took a whole pub.

SPEAKER_01:

I know. Like, can you imagine just like the guy outside the tent that's seeing the boat start to pull away and he's like, hey, hey, you know, and then all these drunken Irishmen and British people inside are just like, you know, freaking out. Like, I just imagine dudes sitting there in the tent, like lining getting ripped away.

SPEAKER_00:

Uh also the river Thames is pronounced Tim's. Uh, our producer wanted to make sure that I knew how fucking stupid I actually was. Uh thank you, Graham, for pointing out my idiosity. Uh so dude, that's wild, right?

SPEAKER_01:

Like, one, how dumb do you have to be to be like, oh, this river's frozen? Let's put up a fair.

SPEAKER_00:

First off, fucking sick. Like, fucking sick, dude. I am fucking a thousand times going to that fair. And I'm the most anxious person you'll ever meet. I think, but I'm also a good swimmer. But okay, so while that we're having fires, though. The bold strap. Right, right on the ice. Just not even fucking not a care in the world. They're just like, you know what? We're in a tent. I'm pretty warm, but I could be warmer if we had a fire.

SPEAKER_01:

Imagine if they did burn barrels and they heat it up and just the barrel falls through the ice.

SPEAKER_00:

Here's the bridge they were referencing from before, so you can see the pillars if you're watching on YouTube. They're kind of spaced out every hundred feet or so or whatever, and they they would uh collect ice and then further help dam the water. That's that is fascinating. That's actually a really good visual because I was not picturing that in my head. So thank you, Graham.

SPEAKER_01:

So that's death number one. We're gonna call it frost fairs.

SPEAKER_00:

Uh such a everything about this article is just gay from the top to the bottom. Not to demean the, but yeah, dude. The guy said from to and fro.

SPEAKER_01:

Right. We'll let Graham pick this next one here.

SPEAKER_00:

Just don't forget which one we've already. Oh, here we go. Uh, this next one comes from Snopes.com. That is S-N-O-P-E-S.com. Here we go. Man dies of hypothermia in an unplugged freezer. Read the little caption. Uh a man locked in an unplugged freezer imagined himself freezing to death and died as a result. What in the fuck do you got going on? Hold on, go back up a little bit. It doesn't matter. No, no, no. Go back up. This is from uh just for the contemporaries, April 30th, uh, 2002.

SPEAKER_01:

So uh, you know, roughly a year and a half after uh Yeah, and this claims a man locked in an unplugged freezer imagined himself freezing to death and dying as a result. And we can keep going. There's a lot of like ad bullshit. There you go. Man finds himself.

SPEAKER_00:

Okay, here we go. So a man finds himself locked in a walk-in freezer. He is convinced he will die and begins writing letters. His letters end with a final passage where he is saying he cannot write anymore because his fingers are beginning to freeze. When they find him dead, not only do they find the letters, but they discover that the freezer's temperature never dropped below fifty degrees. Thus, the man pretty much psyched himself to death. What the fuck? Uh the expression quote worried to death, end quote, has more truth to it than you might think. There's a story about Nick Sitzman, a strong, young, bull of a man who worked on a train crew. It seemed Nick had everything a strong, healthy body, ambition, a wife and two children, and many friends. However, Nick had one fault. He was notorious, he was a notorious warrior. Uh he worried about everything and usually feared the worst. One midsummer day, the train crew were informed that they could quit an hour early in honor of the foreman's birthday. Accidentally, Nick was locked in a refrigerator boxcar, and the rest of the workmen left the site. Nick panicked. He banged and shouted until his fists were bloody and his voice was hoarse. No one heard him, quote, if I if I can't get out, I'll freeze to death here, and quote, he thought. Wanting to let his wife and family know exactly what had happened to him, Nick found a knife and began to etch words on the wooden floor. He wrote, quote, It's so cold, my body is getting numb. If I could just go to sleep, oh wait, if I could just go to sleep, yeah. These may be my last words, end quote. And the next morning the crew slid open the heavy doors of the boxcar and found Nick dead. An autopsy revealed that every physical sign of his body indicated he had frozen to death, and yet the refrigeration unit of the car was inoperative. And the temperature slow down, and the temperature inside indicated 55 degrees. Nick had killed himself by power of worry.

SPEAKER_01:

We don't have to read anymore, but that that's kind of wild. I didn't really think that you could, you know, die by worrying yourself to death. Like you I guess like the mind's a powerful weapon, you know.

SPEAKER_00:

So hold on. So did hold on. Did the guy in the unplugged freezer actually die of quote hypothermia? Or is it?

SPEAKER_01:

No, there were signs of hypothermia, but it was just like mental. So like his brain, he thought that he was going hypothermic, so his body went hypothermic, according to this. And Snopes is like a fact check website, so oh, is that true? Yeah, Snopes is where a lot of people go to check facts. It says fact check above.

SPEAKER_00:

I like that. I like that. And there's a check mark, so this is legit. Everybody go check out Snopes.com. Um Wild. So the guy got the guy got in voluntarily got into the fucking freeze. I guess. The first guy, the main guy, yeah that the article was written about. He voluntarily got into this fucking freezer, is what it sounded like.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah. Sounds like he was just riding along in there.

SPEAKER_00:

And then no, not the boxcar, but like in the walk-in.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, this is the the the it is a box, it is a boxcar. No, that's a freezer box card.

SPEAKER_00:

That's a second guy. There's two dudes that died here. And the second one they used as an example from like the 1800s or whatever. Yeah. But the first guy voluntarily goes into this walk-in freezer and somehow got locked in there. And then he starts to panic. But he panics himself to death. Yep. What the fuck? I'm so baffled. We're we're fucking 11 minutes in and I don't even know what to fucking do with that. What do you do with that? How do you hypochondriac, beware, bro?

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, you know, that's wild. I wonder if it works the same as like if you're in an elevator and you think the elevator's like falling, do you get fall damage? Does that bitch just fall out the sky? I don't know. You know what I mean? If I am in a tower and I'm worried that the tower will crumble, will it crumble?

SPEAKER_00:

If I'm in a tower and I think that it's 9-11. And no plane hits it? It's a missile. If a plane hits a tower and no one's around when the plane hits the tower, does it tower fall? Well, let's go on to the next one. This is not making any sense anymore, uh, nor is it funny. Okay, here we go. Next source is one of my favorite sources, uh, and I never know how to say it. Britannica. Britannica.com. That's B-R-I-T-A-N-N-I-C-A. C O M. Britannica.com. Uh and we're going to get into the great smog of London from 1952. Lethal smog that covered the city of London for five days from December 5 to December 9 in 1952. It caused it was caused by a combination of industrial pollution and high pressure weather conditions. The smoke and fog brought London to a near standstill and resulted in thousands of deaths. Its consequences prompted Parliament to pass the Clean Air Act four years later, which marked a turning point in history of environmentalism. Background. Wish this would happen to LA. No shit. I think they're trying to burn it out. It's their game plan. Uh so the phenomenon of quote London fog, end quote, long predated the crisis of the early 1950s, known as quote, pea supers, end quote, for their dense yellow appearance, such as all-encompassing fogs, had become a hallmark of London by the 19th century. Could you imagine that? Yellow fog. Fucking call that guy that we interviewed from LA. I bet he's seeing that shit every day.

SPEAKER_01:

What was Chernobyl? Green fog?

SPEAKER_00:

I don't know. That's a good question. Gray? Probably. Sadness. Uh but polluted fog was an issue in London as early as the 13th century due to the burning of coal, and the situation only worsened as the city continued to expand. Complaints about smoke and pollution increased in the 1600s, when ultimately ineffective legislation was passed under King James I to restrict coal burning. Rapidly increasing industrialization that began in the late 1700s made conditions even worse. These hazes were not natural formations of the atmosphere. Water vapor would stick to particulates released by coal burning factories, producing dark, heavy clouds that impaired visibility. This variety of fog later came to be known as smog. Parentheses emerging of the words smoke and fog. Thank you for clarifying. Which is funny, this term wasn't invented by until the 20th century. Also, I fucking hate the name Londoner. Jesus. We couldn't come up with a better anyways. Air pollution reached a crisis in the 19th century with the spread of the Industrial Revolution. Clearly, that's a fucking problem. And the rapid growth of uh the metropolis. Metropolis? Yeah, metropolis. Um metropolis, sorry, my bad. The increase of domestic fires and factory furnaces meant that polluted emissions surged considerably. It was at this time that the fog-laden atmosphere of London portrayed vividly in the novels of Charles Dickens, Bangers, uh, and Arthur Conan Doyle, never read him, emerged. The fogs of London could last up to a week, and fog-related deaths were reported on gravestones in the early 19th century. Despite the deterioration of public health, little was done to check the smog, even the plethora of jobs that new industry provided and the comforts uh afforded by domestic coal fires.

SPEAKER_01:

I just thought that was like pretty crazy. Like, you imagine like just all the fog we have here, and we're like in whatever they classify as like the forgotten industrial area. Like that we have like the worst pollution here in Evansville from like all the all the plants around here and everything.

SPEAKER_00:

It's so bad. We were talked about on Joe Rogan. Right. That's how fucking bad it is.

SPEAKER_01:

Right.

SPEAKER_00:

We are JRE famous.

SPEAKER_01:

And then I was like, yo, this is wild. This could low-key happen here.

SPEAKER_00:

Uh so moving on into the event.

SPEAKER_01:

I mean, uh, you don't really have to cover any more of this article. I don't. You got the gist of it. So people were just dying from fog.

SPEAKER_00:

Inhalation. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

Like inhaling it, and it caused, you know, like a bunch of people to go to the hospital, you know, abandoned cars.

SPEAKER_00:

What were some of the uh there was a spike in deaths and hospitalization?

SPEAKER_01:

There were indoor plays and concerts that were canceled due to the audience unable to see the stage, and crime on the streets increased. It's like that scene from Batman where Raz Algu releases whatever that air chemical is, you know.

SPEAKER_00:

So it sounds like pneumonia and bronchitis was uh running rampant.

SPEAKER_01:

Um herds of cattle apparently choked to death. The fog lasted five days. Could you imagine just not being able to see around the street corner and then like on the fifth day the fog goes away and there's just bodies?

SPEAKER_00:

Looks like fucking apocalypse now. Right.

SPEAKER_01:

Just fucking dead Vietnamese right here, fatalities which amounted to about 4,000 people. Oh god. Uh present day estimates rank the number of deaths to been about 12,000.

SPEAKER_00:

Golly, so if you were a Londoner in 1950, fucking rest in peace, bro. Yeah. Rest in fucking peace, dude. You know, shortly after that they made Rosemary's baby. Let's move on to the next one. What we got? My headphones are stuck. All right. What we got here? Uh this is coming from WjackTV.com. That's W J A C T V dot C O M. Here we go. Corner. Jonestown man froze to death after falling outside home. Hold on, go back to the top for a second. Go up a little bit. This is from January 22nd, 2022 at 11 15 AM. Update. Cambria County, Pennsylvania, from again, WJAC, which is a news station there. According to Cambria County Coroner Jeff Lees, a Jonestown man died of hypothermia Friday night after falling outside his home located along the 100 block of Adam Street. The coroner's office identified the man as sixty-three-year-old Daryl Lewis. Quote, with these extreme weather conditions that we're seeing, we want to make sure a public service announcement announcement to Cambria County and all surrounding areas to please use extreme caution, end quote, Lee said. Lees has ruled his death as accidental, but says the investigation is still ongoing. And when I look this up, he was found naked. Wild. Uh wild. All right. A lot of times when somebody is experiencing hypothermia, we often see them stripping down their clothes and taking their clothes off because of the heat that they feel when they're actually freezing. It's actually like a common thing. I have heard that before. That does check out.

SPEAKER_01:

There was actually one that I almost included that was a guy that like his cabin burned down and he like grabbed all his stuff. And so they say people either get naked or they get naked and they burrow themselves. Like they try to dig a hole or dig into the snow or whatever. And like this one guy made it like 28 days or something crazy, like out in Alaska. But go ahead.

SPEAKER_00:

Um, yeah. Jesus Christ. Hold on. Where'd we go? Hold on. One more to the yeah, that one. Uh, here we go. Um, so again, he was partially frozen or partially clothed. Uh a lot of times when somebody is experiencing hypothermia, we often see them stripping down their clothes, taking off their clothes because of what they feel. Oh, I already read that. During Saturday's press conference, Cambria County, EMA director, Art Marty Nuska uh stressed the importance of staying warm in the bitter cold and reminding residents to quote, check on their neighbors, end quote. Quote, we ask everybody to look out for each other. If you have a neighbor or a friend or an acquaintance or a homeless man under a bridge, I added that, who is having difficult times during these cold snaps and cold periods, please reach out to us. We'll reach out to the appropriate social service agencies to make sure they're safe and protected. End quote. What the fuck are they doing about all the homeless people, huh? Uh they a lot of uh extra places open up and then Hell yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

Um, and then the original is information is limited, so this is just like the uh Yeah, it's uh the it's basically this guy was coming home and he slipped and fell, and then like he couldn't get up, and so he was just like freezing. So then he started stripping clothes. 63.

SPEAKER_00:

He was uh older dude probably broke his hip or something.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah. Um This is actually common um in hypothermia.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, let's get into this real quick. Paradoxical undress Paradoxical undressing is a phenomenon where individuals with severe hypothermia remove their clothes because their bodies mistakenly perceive a sensation of heat, often accompanied by confusion and hallucinations. Uh this occurs in the final stages of hypothermia. So if you know you're feeling this, shit's getting real bad for you. Um when the muscles that normally constrict blood vessels in the extremities become fatigued, relax and allow warm blood to flow back into the limbs, creating a false feeling of heat. This behavior is uh this behavior, which also includes thermal burrowing, which you had mentioned, uh like hiding under furniture, accelerates death by increasing heat loss. That is again paradoxical undressing. I I've heard this before. I didn't know that I'd never heard it was some crazy. I had never heard the burrowing, though. And I bet the guy that burrowed in the snow and the ice and stuff made it so long because Dude, he made it like 28 days. Ironically, that's why the fucking Aborigines You probably type it into Google.

SPEAKER_01:

Just uh if you search like terminal burrowing and then just do like Man in Alaska.

SPEAKER_00:

But they how do you think the people the Aborigines in Alaska live? They live in fucking ice cream. Yeah, they live in ice houses. I think what the what's the name for the Eskimos? Eskimos. I just call them Aborigines, but you get it. Um but yeah, they fucking um the ice and the snow is actually a good insulator. Terminal burrowing is known is a known phenomenon associated with lethal hypothermia. We already read this. Um He was in Alaska.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, yeah, yeah. But I I don't I guess we're not finding it as fast as I thought we would.

SPEAKER_00:

Ah, that's fine. But that's wild though. I bet that's why he made it so long. Yeah, right there. Yeah. PVC. The man who refused to freeze to death. Hell yeah, dude. This is a mountain man right here. This is fucking Jim Bridges' fucking son. Wow. Oh, piss on you, Tor Island. Lost, wet, and alone, freezing, snow covered landscape. He was 23.

SPEAKER_01:

Just skip down. It was here in the early hours of March twelfth, nineteen eighty four, that the twenty-three-year-old, some fucking French bullshit, stumbled towards salv was salvation. His bare feet were bleeding from the deep cuts caused by volcanic rock hidden beneath the snow. His clothes soaked in seawater and froze to his body. He should have already died several times over, but something deep inside led this French bullshit to propel himself forwards. The night was clear and cold. The temperature was negative two degrees Celsius, 28 degrees Fahrenheit. It's not that. With strong winds, could have been colder. Like he uh he paused at the bathtub filled with water left for the sheep. What I'm I'm so confused. Anyways. But like basically this dude's house caught on fire and he like ran outside and basically like made like a barrow in like snow and stuff.

SPEAKER_00:

What does this bitch jogging in the snow have anything to do with this?

SPEAKER_01:

But it's crazy. This guy survived like 28 days before like neighbors came to check on him.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, dude, honestly, that probably is Jim Bridges' great great grandson.

SPEAKER_01:

Um, if we go to the third tab, it's the last one here.

SPEAKER_00:

This one?

SPEAKER_01:

Yep.

SPEAKER_00:

We're only doing three?

SPEAKER_01:

Then we we've already done four.

SPEAKER_00:

Oh shit. Oh, you said the third tab to guy. Yeah, yeah. Um, so this is the last one. Here we go, guys. So everybody just buckle up. Uh, this better be a good one, Tom. This source is from Wikipedia, uh, Englishwikipedia.org, enwikipedia.org. Uh, a year without a summer, and I am familiar with this. I do know this. Uh, the year 1816 is known as the year without a summer because of severe climate abnormalities that caused average global temperatures to decrease 0.4 to 0.7 degrees Celsius, which is quite a bit more in Fahrenheit. Yeah, 0.7. It's like 0.7 to 1 degree Fahrenheit. Um, God bless you. Summer temperatures in Europe that year were the coldest of any on record between 1766 and 2000, resulting in crop failures and major food shortages across the northern hemisphere. Evidence suggests that the at the anomaly was predominantly a volcanic winter event caused by massive the massive 1815 eruption of Mount Tambora uh in April in modern day Indonesia. So you've heard about this before? I know I've heard the year without a summer. Really?

SPEAKER_01:

Yes. I'd never heard about this. That's why I put it in there.

SPEAKER_00:

Um the eruption was the largest in at least 1300 years. Uh its effect on the climate may have been exacerbated by the 1814 eruption of Mayan in the Philippines. The significant amount of volcanic ash and gases released into the atmosphere blocked sunlight, leading to global cooling. Countries such as the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland and Bourbon Restoration that's such a weird name. Bourbon Restoration France. Is that a town? Whatever. France experienced significant hardship. That's a typo. Some asshole paid twenty dollars to add that to this Wikipedia.

SPEAKER_01:

It's actually just a period of French history, which is wild.

SPEAKER_00:

Oh, okay, okay, okay. Gotcha. Gotcha. Okay, where were we? And Bourbon Restoration France experienced significant hardship with food riots and famine becoming common. The situation was exacerbated by a lot of exacerbation. Um the situation was exacerbated by the fact that Europe was still recovering from the uh Napoleonic Wars. Yep, Napoleonic Wars, adding to the socioeconomic stress. North America also faced extreme weather conditions. In the eastern United States, a persistent quote, dry fog dimmed the sunlight, causing unusual cold and frost throughout the summer months. Crops failed in regions like New England, leading to food shortages in and economic stress. These conditions forced many families to leave their homes in search of better farming opportunities continuing to westward expansion.

SPEAKER_01:

See, this doesn't really go into like like a story about deaths, but you can only assume that thousands died. Actually, uh zoom out a little bit.

SPEAKER_00:

Do we have like a death toll? Is there like anything about lives lost? We could probably Google it. Yeah, how many how many lives were lost in the let's just do that. What was the year? 1816. The year without a yeah, let's just pull up a damn Google. Yeah. Lives lost in the year without a summer, 1860. Yeah, that'll work. Oh, it says right there, more than six sixty-five thousand people. Ooh, uh, that's a spy. Uh more than sixty-five thousand people died as the disease spread out of Ireland. Long-running central England temperature record reported the 11th coldest year. Millions of deaths worldwide. It's crazy. With a notable surge in mortality due to famine disease in the 1815 Mount Tambora eruption. Of course, people got clapped during the eruption, dude. Jesus Christ. That's wild. Holy fuck knuckle. I didn't know it was that bad, though.

SPEAKER_01:

Now you ready to rank these? Let's fucking rank them, Daddy. Uh for me, number five has got to be the dude that dies of imaginary hypothermia.

SPEAKER_00:

Such a weak way.

SPEAKER_01:

Such a softy.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, like, dude is flaccid as fuck. Like, right. How much of a simp do you have to be to fucking amp yourself up into death? Right. How much of a hypo condo are you that you're like, I'm gonna die, I'm gonna die, I'm gonna die, and then you fucking die. Just kill yourself thinking you're gonna five. Easy five. Easy five. Now I'm gonna I'm gonna pull out a wild card here. I'm going four uh four is is the Londoners, the fog. Kind of weak. The fog? Yeah, not a big fan of that one. Okay, not a big fan of that one. Mostly because like uh it's still a thing. Like, you know what I mean?

SPEAKER_01:

And like to a degree, to a lesser degree.

SPEAKER_00:

And this is a relatively content, you know, you know, relatively contemporary article, 1952, because we don't have like a year that we cover all years, like the history of man, but relatively contemporary, and like this is still kind of a fucking issue. Right. I mean, but and also we didn't get a lot of information on like w how many people or like what they died thereof. I'm calling this one four. How do you feel about that?

SPEAKER_01:

I I could be cool with four as long as three is the year without summer. Because those are just kind of broad strokes.

SPEAKER_00:

I'm going, I'm going. Yeah. Cause what else do we have? Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I think that this the guy that froze to death naked, that's number two. Even though he was old.

SPEAKER_00:

I want to know, was he naked or did he have draws on? You know what I'm saying?

SPEAKER_01:

From some of the some of the stuff I looked up before I found like an actual article, was that like he was naked. But it I mean it's an old man, so like maybe just pants around his ankles, and they were like, eh, they weren't off completely. And you maybe he still had socks on. Then it's not gay.

SPEAKER_00:

Well, then he's not completely naked. It is gay if your socks are on. I can't remember the rules. So you're saying if he has pants on, you're calling it two. I'm saying even if he's got socks on, I'm calling it too. Now, what if he's total nude birthday suit? Does that bump up to one for you? No. Really? Yeah. Really? That's a nudger for me. Is it? Real close.

SPEAKER_01:

Uh he didn't have much of a nudger. We're edging. Could you imagine how small that dick is? Oh, he he has a vagina. He has a vagina now. Those nuts are looking like fucking.

SPEAKER_00:

They actually originally reported it as a 63-year-old woman was found frozen to death.

SPEAKER_01:

Right. Dude, his nuts before he fell were at his ankles, and when he died, they were inside him.

SPEAKER_00:

I'll give you two. I'll give you two. And then the clear winner is the uh the Thames. Dude, the the fucking frog on a frozen river. Yeah. Just wild. The Thames. Or I think it's like I've heard it called actually now that we're now that I'm saying the word Tim's, I've heard it called the Thames. I know the Tim's. That actually checks out. I'm glad that Yeah, they live on a van down by the river. Dude, I this one is wild to me. This is by far my favorite. Absolutely absurd. I can't, I could probably think of a death that we've done better than this, honestly. But honestly, you have to consider the volume. Bunch of folks died. Yeah. Which is that's sick.

SPEAKER_01:

But like, how many people are dumb enough to get on a frozen lake with fires? And the boat going away, like hilarious. Watch your tone because I'm one of those people. I don't know how I don't like how you keep saying that. I want to hit up the Ford Center and see how many people can get on the ice at an iceman game.

SPEAKER_00:

Hear me out. The Ohio back in the day, we talked about this with your grandpa. The Wabash or the Ohio, they would freeze. And then people would ice skate on it. You're not going ice skating on the Ohio River?

SPEAKER_01:

No, I mean I've ice skated on frozen ponds and like farm fields that have like broken. I was little. I was a kid. I didn't know any better. We thought it was hilarious to run across and watch the ice break behind us.

SPEAKER_00:

Tough guy Tommy over here. How dumb are these people? They're having they're living life in the fucking 1700s, brother. They're just out here grinding. Yeah, they're just out here grinding for teen. Yeah. They're just they're just having they're like, I'm gonna die of syphilis in six months. I'm done. I'm gonna party on this video.

SPEAKER_01:

Speaking of syphilis, did you know that like Blackbeard had like syphilis and shit, and he put up a blockade in order just to get like a cure for syphilis? Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

That's wild. Yeah. Also, one of the famous composers died of syphilis. Yeah. I can't remember which one. One of the famous uh yeah, let's well before we let's get this Blackbeard shit straight. Um highly probable that Blackbeard and his crew suffered from syphilis. I like how they're like, we're pretty sure.

SPEAKER_04:

Uh yeah, dude.

SPEAKER_00:

I don't give a shit, dude. Do people die? Is it related to syphilis? Okay, cool. Is it related to syphilis? Does it have anything to do with syphilis? Uh so here we go. Um the wild card that uh the uh the producer wanted to bring up today, and I'm glad we did because I love it. Reading death stories, uh, the Yatlav Pass incident um was an event in which nine Soviet ski hikers died in northern the northern part of the Ural Mountain Ridge in the Russian SFSR of the Soviet Union. I don't know what the fuck that means, on one or two of February 1959 under under under under determinated circumstances. The experienced trekking group from the Europolytechnical Institute led by Igor Datlov went on a hike of the highest difficulty level at the time and had established a camp on the eastern slopes of Kolot Mountain. Overnight, something caused them to cut their way out of their tent by knives and flee the campsite while inadequately dressed for heavy snowfall, strong winds, and highly sub zero temperatures as low as negative fifty or negative forty six Celsius. After the group's bodies were discovered, an investigation by Soviet authorities determined determined that six of them had died from hypothermia, while the other three had been killed by physical trauma. One victim had a major s had major skull damage, two had severe chest trauma, and another had a small crack in his skull. Four of the bodies were found in May 1959. When did this start? Go back to the top. So they were found in May of 195. Oh shit. So a couple months later. Like three months later? Okay. Sorry. I had to for reference. So a few months later, four of the bodies were found lying in running water in a creek, and three of them had damaged soft tissue of the head and face. Two of the bodies had missing eyes, one had a missing tongue, and one had missing eyebrows. Jesus. So here we go. The investigation concluded that a compelling, quote, compelling natural force, end quote, had caused the deaths. Numerous theories have been put forward to account for the unexplained deaths, including animal attacks, an avalanche, or loud slab avalanche to their tent, appearance of a UFO or ball lightning, catabatic winds, infrasound-induced panic, conflict with local ethnic groups or fugitive criminals, a botch spy meeting with representatives of the Western Bloc, military, rocket, nuclear testing involvement, or some combination of these factors.

SPEAKER_01:

And during the little break of camera airs, Graham mentioned that there was like several signs of the hypothermic or whatever paradoxical. Paradoxical burrowing or getting naked. Getting naked. Beats out number one.

SPEAKER_00:

This is up there, dude.

SPEAKER_01:

Well, and it's funnier because it comes from Russia, so they're like, it was everything but us. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

Dude, the US is here and they're taking our tongues. Uh yeah, I don't know, dude. I'll tell you what, this is fascinating. I'm gonna have to do another. I I'm pretty sure I've heard this story before, but I'm gonna have to do a deep dive on the uh again. This is the Diatlav Pass incident. Um, yeah, and as we're wrapping up, we'll just run through the the the the ranks again. What did we say the ranks were?

SPEAKER_01:

Uh uh number five was the man who just, you know, thought he was dying. Yeah, week. Yep. Number four was what did we say? The smog week number three was the summer with or the year without summer. Yeah, weak. Number two was the old naked frozen man.

SPEAKER_00:

Number looked like a woman.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

Probably.

SPEAKER_01:

Number one was the fair, and now number zero with the past incident.

SPEAKER_00:

Dude, so shout out to Dyatlov. That dude was a gangster.

SPEAKER_01:

Yo, shout out to Winner, really killing people.

SPEAKER_00:

Hell yeah, dude. Honestly, we're gonna get some good ones. Hopefully 2025, 2026 is a big winner. We catch a couple of freebies out here. Hell yeah, dude. Maybe somebody died in that big pile up in Indy. I like where your head's at. Um, but yeah, folks, you got it. This is your uh your monthly dose of December's deaths of the month. You know where to find it. The creepy, the eerie, the weird. Get in here. Like, subscribe. Uh, we're gonna do one of these every month because we love you and we know you love it. Um, short of that, this has been another thrilling episode of the days, Graham. My name is Brian Michael Day. My name is Thomas Girl. Produced by Graham Gallagher, no other than. Thank you so much, sir. We appreciate you.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah, hell yeah, I'm on my way. I'm seeing the G's, I'm seeing the B's, and I'm seeing the D's on my way to the top of the G O D. And I'ma be there for a while if you don't believe. So I gotta say that I'm afraid to say on the radio. God showed me the way because the devil's tryna bring me down. The only thing that I pray is that my feet don't fail me now. And I don't think there's nothing I can do now. I wanna talk to God, but I'm afraid cause we ain't smoking so long.