A foggy story: It happened one Christmas

Did you know?!?!?! On Christmas Day 25th of December 1937 in a match between Chelsea and Charlton Athletic at Stamford Bridge and while the score was 1-1 in the 60th minute the game was interrupted due to heavy fog.

But Charlton's goalkeeper Sam Bartram stayed on the field for almost 20 minutes not realizing that the game was abandoned.

"Soon after the kick-off," he wrote in his autobiography, "[fog] began to thicken rapidly at the far end, travelling past Vic Woodley in the Chelsea goal and rolling steadily towards me. The referee stopped the game, and then, as visibility became clearer, restarted it. We were on top at this time, and I saw fewer and fewer figures as we attacked steadily."

The game went unusually silent but Sam remained at his post, peering into the thickening fog from the edge of the penalty area. And he wondered why the play was not coming his way.

"After a long time," he wrote, 'a figure loomed out of the curtain of fog in front of me. It was a policeman, and he gaped at me incredulously. "What on earth are you doing here?" he gasped. "The game was stopped a quarter of an hour ago. The field's completely empty" (source)

The Chelsea F.C. Chronicle (27 April 1938) also reported the incident:

(image source)

For the record, Bartram played for 22 years for Charlton Athletic until his retirement, has won a FA Cup with the team and is considered one of their greatest players.