London’s Great Stink of 1858
This summer heat wave has lived in infamy not only for its soaring temperatures but also for the malodorous stench it unleashed on England’s capital.
The Great New York Heat Wave of 1896
At the end of the 19th century, New York City was home to some 3 million people, many occupying the notoriously cramped and stifling tenements of the Lower East Side and other low-income neighborhoods. When 10 days of relentless heat baked the Big Apple in August 1896, these abysmal living conditions went from an uncomfortable reality to a death sentence for an estimated 1,300 New Yorkers. Roasting in their jam-packed bedrooms and barred from sleeping in public parks by a citywide ban, many tenement dwellers sought a breath of fresh air on rooftops, fire escapes and piers. A sizable share of the heat wave casualties occurred when people fell asleep, rolled from their perches and plummeted to their deaths; others succumbed to heat stroke and other heat-related ailments. More than 1,000 horses also died during the crisis.The North American Heat Wave of 1936
In the United States, the timing of the 1936 North American heat wave could not have been worse. Battered by the Great Depression, bled dry by years of drought and blinded by perpetual dust storms, the country took yet another debilitating hit when temperatures soared to all-time highs in 12 states, clearing the 120-degree mark in some regions. (The Canadian provinces of Ontario and Manitoba also saw record heat that summer.) Like the blistering summer of 2010, the 1936 heat wave started early and followed an unusually cold winter, leaving Americans unprepared for such a drastic change in weather.Reports of dramatic and horrific scenes poured in from around the country. The Midwest had been battling a grasshopper infestation for several years, and as temperatures climbed their broiled, lifeless bodies began dropping from the sky like antennaed hail. In New York City, which hit a record high of 106 degrees, 75 seamstresses at a single factory fell into a collective, heat-induced swoon. In Detroit, one of the steamiest cities, doctors and nurses collapsed while treating patients, overcome by heat and exhaustion, and the morgues were overrun with bodies. By summer’s end, upward of 5,000 Americans and 1,100 Canadians had died from heat-related causes or drowned while trying to cool off in rivers and lakes.
The Chicago Heat Wave of 1995
Like much of the central and eastern United States, Chicago had suffered through the devastating heat waves of 1980 and 1988, which persisted for weeks and caused tens of thousands of fatalities nationwide. But in the summer of 1995, the Windy City lost approximately 700 residents in just five humid and sweltering days–a staggering mortality rate that exposed the city’s inadequate response system while debunking common assumptions about which groups are most susceptible to heat-related death.
The European Heat Wave of 2003
In July and August of 2003, countries across Europe sizzled through what some scientists deemed their hottest summer since 1500 A.D.
https://www.history.com/news/heat-waves-throughout-history
