A big event occurred about 8200 years before the present when the
Atlantic Ocean was flooded over a period of only one year by the breaking of
the ice dam at the northeastern edge of North American at the end of the Ice
Age, which caused the filling of the Irish Sea, the North Sea, the English
Channel and the Baltic Sea. This was accompanied by much flooding in the
valleys of Western Europe and much colder temperatures for about 300-500 years
in western Europe. (The deeper sections would have been covered with water
already.) Articles about this:
http://www.colorado.edu/PublicRelations/NewsReleases/1999/175.html
http://gsa.confex.com/gsa/2002AM/finalprogram/abstract_37607.htm
http://www.ngdc.noaa.gov/paleo/ctl/clisci10k.html
http://www.montshire.net/minute/mm990118.html
http://www.clas.ufl.edu/users/pciesiel/gly3150/glaciation.html
http://www.nbenrenb.elements.nb.ca/environews%20files/media/mediaarchives/99/icea.htm
A map of Europe before the Atlantic
flooding.
There was another big event at 7600 ybp, the flooding of the Black Sea area (Amazon.com book page).