Modern meteorologists might envy Patrick Murphy: In compiling his Weather Almanac for the Year 1838, Murphy had made a year’s forecasts at once, including the prediction that Jan. 20 would be “fair” with probably the “lowest degree of winter temperature.”

The weather complied in spades: On Jan. 20 the thermometer plunged 56 degrees and stood below zero for several hours, marking the coldest day of the century. Such a throng filled Murphy’s London shop that police were called in to keep order, and the forecaster was immortalized in verse:

Murphy has a weather eye,
He can tell whene’er he pleases
Whether it will be wet or dry,
When it thaws and when it freezes.

The almanac made £7,000 and went through 50 reprintings, and for many years afterward the winter of 1837-38 was remembered as Murphy’s Winter.

Somehow he never repeated the feat, though.

See Lucky Guess.