Before you go outside on a snowy, windy day, you probably button up your coat to keep out the cold. You might put on a pair of long underwear to help you stay warm.

Buttons, buttonholes, and underwear that keeps you warm are some of the inventions people created to live in the harsh winters of the Little Ice Age.

The Little Ice Age was a time of unusual cold in Europe and North America, and some places south of the Earth’s equator. Between the 1300s and 1800s, people lived through winters that were much colder than normal. There were many cold, wet springs and summers.

Temperatures dropped by about 1.1 degree during this time.

Sea ice surrounded Iceland for miles in all directions. Glaciers spread to farms and villages in the Swiss Alps, the mountain range of Switzerland. Ice-dammed lakes burst again and again.

When the New York Harbor froze in the winter of 1780, people could walk from Manhattan to Staten Island. Rivers and canals in Europe often froze over.

The harsh winters and cold summers led to inventions and changes in how people lived.

People kept track of the strange weather of the Little Ice Age. They used new tools for measuring how much rain had fallen and how cold it was.

Galileo invented a thermoscope that showed changes in temperature. A small vase filled with water was attached to a long, vertical pipe. This pipe had a large, empty glass ball at the top. A change in the temperature of the glass ball put vacuum pressure on the water in the vase. This would make the water rise or lower in the pipe.

Beginning in the 1600s, townspeople in some cities in the Netherlands and England held frost-fairs on the frozen rivers. The first recorded frost-fair was in 1608 on the River Thames in London.

At frost-fairs, people played football and skated. They raced horses and coaches. They watched puppet plays. Printers set up printing presses on the ice to make cards and print music for popular songs.

In Germany, the snowy summer of 1816 damaged oat crops that farmers needed to feed their horses. People needed transportation that didn’t require feeding animals. That may have inspired Baron Karl von Drais to invent the running machine.

The running machine was like a bicycle with no pedals. It had two wheels attached to a curved, wooden frame. Riders turned the wheels and moved forward by pushing along the ground with their feet, like riding a scooter.

People also traveled and moved cargo using ice wagons and iceboats on frozen lakes and rivers. During the winter of 1536, King Henry VIII traveled from central London to Greenwich, England by sleigh on the Thames River.

The failure of the oat and grain crops in the colder springs and summers also led farmers all over Europe to plant more potatoes. Potatoes grew well in the cooler weather and could survive freezing weather. They were a more reliable source of food.

Inventions in heating and clothing helped to shelter people from the bitter cold.

The Old English word stofa meant a space surrounded by walls, like a room in a house. In the 1400s, people started building containers to put fires into. They called them stoves. They were made of glazed tiles, stone, and other materials.

The heat coming out of the stoves helped to keep a room warm. There was still an open fire in the kitchen for cooking.

Starting a fire in a stove that was connected to a chimney raised the temperature of the fire. It kept the warm air in the room from escaping through the chimney. Some stoves could give off heat for 24 hours after the fire burned for only a few hours.

Buttons and buttonholes for fastening clothes helped the clothes fit more closely and keep out the cold. Buttons were made with pieces of metal, so the button could be carved or painted with pictures. Buttons became popular as more people began wearing tight-fitting, knitted underwear to help their bodies hold on to heat.