August 3, 2026 • 35 mins
Heat waves don’t get as much attention as blizzards, floods, and hurricanes, but extreme heat is one of the deadliest weather events on average.
Research:
- National Weather Service. “Weather Related Fatality and Injury Statistics.” https://www.weather.gov/hazstat
- Last, John. “This Summer’s Drought Is Europe’s Worst in 500 Years. What Happened Last Time?” Smithsonian Magazine. 9/8/2022. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/this-summers-drought-is-europes-worst-in-500-years-what-happened-last-time-180980711/
- Wetter, Oliver; Seneviratne, Sonia I. et al. “The year-long unprecedented European heat and drought of 1540 - a worst case.” Climatic Change 125(3-4), https://doi.org/10.1007/s10584-014-1184-2
- Orth, Rene et al. “Did European temperatures in 1540 exceed present-day records?” Environmental Research Letters. 11 (2016) 114021 doi:10.1088/1748-9326/11/11/114021.
- United Nations Environment Programme. “Impacts of summer 2003 heat wave in Europe.” Environmental Alert Bulletin. https://www.unisdr.org/files/1145_ewheatwave.en.pdf
- Pfister, Christian. “The ‘Black Swan’ of 1540: Aspects of a European Megadrought.” From Climate Change and Cultural Transition in Europe. Brill. 1/1/2018. doi:10.1163/9789004356825_007
- Grodzinsky, Ewa, and Märta Sund Levander. “History of the Thermometer.” Understanding Fever and Body Temperature: A Cross-disciplinary Approach to Clinical Practice 23–35. 23 Aug. 2019, doi:10.1007/978-3-030-21886-7_3
- John Huxham, Dr. Watson. “Remarks upon the Heat of the Air in July 1757. in an Extract of a Letter from John Huxham, M. D. F. R. S. to William Watson, M. D. F. R S. Dated at Plymouth 19th of That Month. With Additional Remarks by Dr. Watson.” Philosophical Transactions (1683-1775), Vol. 50 (1757 - 1758), pp. 428-430 (3 pages). Via JSTOR. https://www.jstor.org/stable/105279.
- Huxham, John. “An Account of the Extraordinary Heat of the Weather in July 1757, and of the Effects of It. In a Letter from John Huxham, M. D. F. R. S. to Wm. Watson, M. D. F. R. S..” Philosophical Transactions (1683-1775), Vol. 50 (1757 - 1758). Via JSTOR. https://www.jstor.org/stable/105292
- Smeaton, John. “Remarks on the Different Temperature of the Air at Edystone, from That Observed at Plymouth, between the 7th and 14th of July 1757. By Mr. John Smeaton, F. R. S.” Philosophical Transactions (1683-1775), Vol. 50 (1757 - 1758). https://www.jstor.org/stable/105286
- Sunderland, Helen. “The Great British Summer? A Historical Heatwave.” Doing History In Public. 8/12/2025. https://doinghistoryinpublic.org/2025/08/12/the-great-british-summer-a-historical-heatwave/
- Scott, John. “Four elegies, descriptive and moral.” London J. Buckland. 1760.
- The Western Flying Post; or, Sherborne and Yeovil Mercury. Page 3. 8/15/1757.
- Lind, James. “An essay on the most effectual means of preserving the health of seamen in the Royal Navy.” 1774.
- Walpole, Horace. “The letters of Horace Walpole, fourth earl of Orford.” Vol. 3: 1750-1756. Oxford. 1903.
- Zwierlein, Cornel. "Chapter 3 The Danger between Nature and Culture: The Quotidian Threat of Urban Fires in the Premodern Era". Prometheus Tamed. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 2021. https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004431225_004 Web.
- Luterbacher, Jürg et al. “European Seasonal and Annual Temperature Variability, Trends and Extremes since 1500.” Science 303, 1499 (2004). DOI: 10.1126/science.1093877
- Beniston, Martin. “The 2003 heat wave as an example of summers in a greenhouse climate? Observations and climate model simulations for Basel, Switzerland.” Global and Planetary Change. Volume 44, Issues 1–4, December 2004. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0921818104000980
- Franck, Marcy. “Heat waves and annual death rates in older adults in the United States.” Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. 3/16/2026. https://hsph.harvard.edu/news/heat-waves-and-annual-death-rates-in-older-adults-in-the-united-states/
- Poitras, Colin. “Warming U.S. climate linked to rising deaths from heat.” Yale School of Public Health. 11/7/2025. https://ysph.yale.edu/news-article/warming-us-climate-linked-to-rising-deaths-from-heat/
- World Meteorological Association. “Western Europe has hottest June on record.” 7/9/2026. https://wmo.int/media/news/western-europe-has-hottest-june-record
- Cole, Deborah. “Germany records nearly 100 drowning deaths, many of them young men, in June heatwave.” The Guardian. 6/12/2026. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/jul/12/germany-drowning-deaths-heatwave-paris-franc
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Tracy V.
Speaker 1 (00:14):
Wilson and I'm Holly Frye.
Speaker 2 (00:16):
For a while now, like years, in the wake of
years of rising temperatures, seemingly every summer being hotter than
the one before, or at least as hot heat waves
all over the world, I've really wanted to do some
kind of episode about a historical heat wave. And I've
(00:36):
written episodes over the years of doing this show about
other weather phenomena and other natural disasters like Hurricane San Seriaco,
the Schoolhouse Blizzard, the Long Winter, the Vanport flood, the
year without a Summer, various earthquakes and fires and tsunamis
and volcanic eruptions. We've got a lot of this in
the archive, but never anything about a heat wave.
Speaker 1 (00:58):
In a lot of the.
Speaker 2 (00:59):
World today, Hey, heat waves just don't get as much
attention as blizzards and floods and hurricanes, even though extreme
heat is one of the deadliest weather events on average,
and that is actually true in a lot of historical
writing as well. I had a wealth of resources to
draw from on all of those other episodes that I
(01:21):
just mentioned, but getting the information together about heat waves
from the past turned out to be a lot trickier.
So instead of doing one episode about one heat wave,
which is what I was planning when I started this,
we are going to take a shorter look at three
of them. As a note, it is very possible that
(01:45):
when we mentioned specific temperatures in this episode, your first
thought might be that is not that hot. H It's
not that hot for some of the places that I
have lived. It was unusually hot for the places that
we are talking about in the time that those temperatures
were happening. It's not a contest. We do not need
(02:09):
to one up each other over the weather we have endured.
Speaker 1 (02:13):
And our first historical heat wave was not just heat wave.
It was part of a massive severe drought that affected
much of central Europe as well as northern Italy. Perhaps surprisingly,
this was during the period of regional cooling known as
the Little Ice Age, during which parts of the world,
including parts of Europe, generally saw cooler, wetter weather, including
(02:36):
the expansion of glaciers. Depending on the source and what
criteria they're using to define it, the Little Ice Age
lasted from about fifteen hundred to eighteen fifty, or from
the end of the medieval warming period, so from about
thirteen hundred to eighteen fifty.
Speaker 2 (02:53):
Yeah, the Little Ice Age was complicated, though. I feel
like even twenty years ago it was kind of being
described as this global period of cooling, but it really
did not mean that the whole world, or even just
all of Europe, was consistently colder. It would be more
accurate to say that a lot of the world saw
more variable and sometimes more extreme weather overall in multiple
(03:18):
directions during the Little Ice Age. In some areas, the
cooler weather was accompanied by periods of drought rather than
being wetter, But in central Europe and northern Italy the
weather was both warmer and drier, particularly from fifteen thirty
one to fifteen forty. There were multiple summer droughts during
those ten years. An intense period of drought started in
(03:43):
February of fifteen forty and it lasted for about eleven months.
There are hundreds of written accounts of the weather and
its effects during that year, but since they're overwhelmingly written
in other languages, we're not going to try to read
directly from them. In part of the affected regions. Surviving
accounts from fifteen forty describe no rain at all or
(04:06):
negligible rain for weeks or even months at a time.
Speaker 1 (04:10):
Water became scarce as Wells and springs dried up, and
water levels fell in lakes, rivers, and streams. Accounts from
all over Central Europe describe the ground becoming desiccated.
Speaker 2 (04:24):
This lack of water had far reaching effects. Of course,
there were crop failures and trees and other plants lost
all of their leaves. Livestock had to be driven a
lot farther to find water sources that weren't totally depleted,
and there were shortages of fodder to feed those animals
because the fodder crops failed. So all of that contributed
(04:45):
to a lot of livestock deaths.
Speaker 1 (04:48):
Water was also a major source of power, with rivers
powering water wheels that were used to mill grain. Without
enough water in the rivers, people turned to mills that
were powered by horses, but those horses also needed food
and water and could become overheated as they worked. People
could grind grain for their own use using hand mills,
(05:10):
but that wasn't really something that worked at large scale,
especially with people facing the same heat and water shortages
that these stock animals were. Rivers were also a major
transportation route for people and goods, and in a lot
of areas that whole transportation system just shut down.
Speaker 2 (05:28):
While the drought led a lot of crops to die
in the fields. In some parts of Europe, fifteen forty
became an exceptionally good wine. Here, a lot of vineyards
tried to adjust their harvest based on the weather conditions.
They either harvested early or they left fruit on the
vine later than normal, hoping that another rainfall would come
(05:49):
and would make the fruit juicier. At some vineyards around
the Alsace region, the harvest was partial because some of
the grapes had basically dried into raisins and just couldn't
be salvaged. In places that delayed the harvest but did
wind up with harvestable fruit, the resulting overly mature grapes
turned into a wine that was very sweet, and fifteen
(06:12):
forty wound up being described as a millennium vintage. It's
likely that the lack of water contributed to the spread
of illness. People did not have enough water to wash
themselves or their environments. Some places actually banned doing laundry.
During the driest weeks as wells dried up. People got
(06:33):
water from sources that were likely to be contaminated, including
rivers that had become sluggish and stagnant. The lack of
rain meant that contaminants that would have been washed away
or at least diluted in a typical year, stayed around.
There was an epidemic of dysentery, and it is possible
that as many as half a million people in Europe
(06:53):
died of disease during this period, Much of it spread
through Contaminated water was also a serious problem. In July,
Martin Luther wrote a letter to his wife about forest
fires in Germany that had burned at that time more
than one thousand acres, and he thought that would probably
make timber more expensive. There were also forest fires in
(07:17):
the Voges Mountains in eastern France and in Hungary and Poland.
Fires also struck villages and towns, and some of them
burned down entire communities. That included Einbeck in central Germany,
which was entirely destroyed on July twenty sixth fifteen. Forty
hundreds of people were killed in that fire. Estimates range
(07:38):
from one hundred to five hundred, especially in towns and villages.
This spike in fires led to accusations of arson, and
at least some of those accusations were connected to the
changes that European societies were going through in the sixteenth century.
The start of the Protestant Reformation is generally marked as
(08:00):
Martin Luther posting his ninety five theses at the Castle
Church in Wittenberg, Germany, on October thirty first, fifteen seventeen.
Conflict between Protestants and Catholics was ongoing in fifteen forty
and in Germany, Duke Einrich the Younger was accused of
hiring arsonists to burn down Protestant communities in other areas,
(08:24):
and a Baptists, who were facing religious persecution were the
ones who were blamed for starting the fires. Most of
these fires were probably accidental and just a byproduct of
how dry everything was and how little water there was
to fight them. There are lots of written records describing
the lack of water, the crop failures, illnesses, and fires
(08:46):
in fifteen forty, and there are written descriptions of the heat.
Another letter from Martin Luther to his wife that summer
describes the heat as unspeakable and unrelenting, and reads as
though he is praying for the last day, meaning judgment day,
so that that heat will be over. But we don't
have anyone's first.
Speaker 1 (09:07):
Hand accounts of the actual temperature because modern thermometers did
not exist yet.
Speaker 2 (09:13):
The earliest known thermometer like device was described by Philo
of Byzantium in the third century BCE. This was a
hollow lead bulb attached to a tube, with the end
of the tube submerged in water. When the bulb was heated,
the air in it would expand and bubbles would come
out of the end of the tube.
Speaker 1 (09:33):
Through the water.
Speaker 2 (09:34):
When the bulb cooled down, water would then be drawn
up into the tube from the vessel. But there was
not any kind of a scale attached to this. It
was just a way to illustrate that the volume of
air expands when it's heated and contracts when it cools,
and then that corresponds to changes in temperature. It was
(09:55):
not a precise method of measuring air temperature by any stretch.
Speaker 1 (10:00):
So while we do have lots of general descriptions of
what life was like, we don't have exact numbers of
how hot the summer of fifteen forty was in Central Europe.
Our knowledge of that comes from proxy data things like
ice cores, tree rings, and pollen samples, combined with modeling techniques.
But even with those sources of data, there is debate
(10:23):
about exactly how high the temperatures reached during this event,
specifically whether they were higher or lower than more modern
day temperature records.
Speaker 2 (10:32):
A frequently used benchmark in a lot of writings about
this is the summer of two thousand and three, which
when it happened was described as the hottest summer in
parts of Europe in five hundred years. Different researchers have
concluded that the summer of fifteen forty was either below
or above the high temperatures that were recorded in the
summer of two thousand and three. Sort of depends on
(10:55):
exactly how they're modeling. Some researchers have also noted that
the summer of fifteen forty was so extreme that typical
climate models can't really replicate it without changing the parameters
in a way that go way beyond other known extreme
weather events. It is also difficult to determine how many
(11:16):
people died or became disabled as a result of this
heat wave and drought, but it seems like the regions
that were affected recovered fairly quickly after it subsided, in
part because people already preferred to grow crops that could
be drought tolerant, So once the weather started to cool
and new crops were planted and water levels returned toward normal,
(11:38):
people were able to grow, harvest, and mill much like
they could before. We'll move on to another heat wave
after a sponsor break. Our next heat wave took place
in the UK and western Europe in seventeen fifty seven.
(12:02):
By that point there were thermometers that could be used
to more precisely measure the temperature. This built on the
work of Philo of Byzantium. It's believed that Galileo developed
a thermoscope that was somewhat similar to Pelos in the
early sixteen hundreds. Other seventeenth century scholars did this as well,
(12:22):
and some also developed a calibration system for their thermoscopes
to approximate some kind of measurement. One was Italian physiologist
Santorio Centorio, who made a thermoscope that was designed to
go in the mouth. He could then use that to
measure a person's body temperature. Physician and instrument maker Gabriel
(12:45):
Fahrenheit developed the mercury in glass thermometer in seventeen fourteen,
and he developed his Fahrenheit temperature scale ten years later.
Swedish astronomer and physicist Under Celsius and others started at
advocating for an internationally recognized temperature scale in the seventeen forties,
leading to the Celsius or Centigrade scale. Celsius is often
(13:09):
credited with inventing this scale, but his original seventeen forty
two version placed the freezing point of water at one
hundred degrees and the boiling point at zero, so opposite
of how we know it today. Others flipped those values
so that the boiling point was one hundred and made
mercury thermometers that were calibrated to that scale. Yeah, it's
(13:32):
not fully clear whether some of the people who were
writing about temperature measurement around this time were working from
Celsius's work or if they independently arrived at the idea
of a scale that goes from the boiling point to
the freezing point of water. Right, it could be either one.
Speaker 1 (13:51):
While we have more.
Speaker 2 (13:52):
Specific information about how hot it was in the summer
of seventeen fifty seven. That information is still somewhat sparac
Attic mercury thermometers and the fahrenheit and Celsius scales were
obviously very new, and it was new enough that a
lot of the English language writing about this heat wave
does not just say that people were using a thermometer.
(14:15):
They all say fahrenheit's thermometer Specifically. People understood that they
would get the most accurate readings on this thermometer if
it was in the shade rather than in direct sunlight.
Speaker 1 (14:26):
But it's not always.
Speaker 2 (14:27):
Clear how well people protected their thermometer from the sun,
or whether their readings were inflated because the thermometer was
not adequately protected, or maybe was very close to something
that was getting more direct sunlight.
Speaker 1 (14:41):
There was also no way to continuously record the temperature.
People had to look at the thermometer and write it down.
Some of the people who wrote about the heat in
July of seventeen fifty seven noted that they took their
measurement at three in the afternoon. That was probably during
the hottest part of the but it's not possible to
(15:01):
know whether it got hotter before or after someone took
their measurement. Regular reliable official temperature records didn't start in
much of the world until the mid to late nineteenth century.
A lot of the written documentation of the fifteen forty
drought and heat wave is in the form of personal
(15:22):
and business letters, diaries, chronicles, and, in the case of
those arson allegations, court records. By the eighteenth century, though,
the European scientific community had started establishing scientific journals. The
first was Philosophical Transactions, which was established in March of
sixteen sixty five by Henry Oldenberg, who was Secretary of
(15:43):
the Royal Society. Philosophical Transactions documented the Royal Society's activities,
including letters and papers that were read before Royal Society meetings.
Some of these letters were between John Hucksam and William Watson,
who were both medical doss and Royal Society fellows. Huxham
wrote to Watson on July nineteenth, seventeen fifty seven, saying,
(16:07):
in part quote, from the seventh to the fourteenth of
this month, the heat was violent, greater indeed than has
been known here in the memory of man. I have
talked with several persons who have lived considerable time in Jamaica, Gibraltar,
and Minorca, and they generally assert that they never felt
such intense heat in any of those places. Huxham went
(16:29):
on to say that in the Shade, Fahrenheit's thermometer read
eighty seven degrees at three in the afternoon on the
eleventh and thirteenth of July, and that it was above
eighty eight on the twelfth. That's about thirty point five
and thirty one point one degrees celsius. Huxham continued, quote,
abundance of people have suffered very feverishly from these excessive heats. Putrid, bilious,
(16:53):
particial nervous fevers are exceedingly common everywhere. Dysenteries, hemorrhages at
most profuse sweats affect not only those in fevers, but
of vast many others. He described both the days and
the nights as intolerably hot, with people unable to sleep,
and the wind even blowing hot so that it brought
(17:16):
no relief. This publication in Philosophical Transactions also included a
note from Watson with a table of temperatures recorded in
Plymouth using Fahrenheit's thermometer. The temperatures were in the eighties
from July tenth to fifteenth, with a peak of eighty
five on July fourteenth. That's about twenty nine point four
(17:37):
degrees celsius.
Speaker 2 (17:39):
Yeah, the temperatures that people would have been expecting in
these areas at this point would have been more in
the high seventies. On July twelfth, past podcast subject Horace
Walpole wrote a letter to his friend John Shoot about
his willingness to visit Shoot at his estate in Hampshire
known as the Vine. Quote, I say nothing of the
(18:00):
heat of this magnificent weather, with the glass yesterday up
to three quarters of sultry. In all English probability, this
will not be a hindrance long though at present so
far from traveling. I have made the tour of my
own garden, but once these three days before eight at night,
and then I thought I should have died of it.
(18:22):
For how many years we shall have to talk of
the summer of fifty seven.
Speaker 1 (18:27):
A few days later, on the sixteenth, Walpole wrote a
letter to George Montague saying, quote, the weather has been
so hot, and we are so unused to it that
nobody knew how to behave themselves. Even mister Bentley has
done shivering. That was writer Richard Bentley, who was part
of Walpole's Committee of Taste along with Shoot. A letter
(18:48):
Walpole sent to Shoot ten days later described Bentley as
suffering from sweating sickness quote, which I now firmly believe
was only a hot summer like this, and England, being
so unused to it, took it for a melody. The
heat returned that August, and John Huxam wrote to William
Watson again. This letter was also published in Philosophical Transactions.
(19:11):
This time Huxam said that his thermometer read almost eighty
six degrees or thirty celsius from August eighth through the tenth.
This time, he wrote, quote, the consequences of this extremely
hot season were hemorrhages from several parts of the body,
the nose, especially in men and children, and the uterus
in women. Sudden and violent pains of the head and vertigo,
(19:35):
profuse sweats, great debility and oppression of the spirits affected many.
There were putrid fevers in great abundance, and a vast
quantity of fluxes of the belly, both bilious and bloody,
with which the fevers also were commonly attended. Husam described
these fevers as accompanied by severe pains in the back
(19:57):
and stomach, vomiting, chest pain, anxiety, and an inability to sleep.
At this point, medicine in Europe was still largely dominated
by the idea of the four humors, and from there
he describes the quality of the pulse in people who
were affected and their blood which was quote oftentimes florid,
but loose, sometimes livid, very rarely fizzy. He thought blood
(20:22):
letting was always beneficial, especially if it was done early
in people who developed this heat related fever. It seems
as though the weather was milder off the southern coast
of the UK. John Smeaton also wrote a letter that
was read before the Royal Society about conditions at Eddystone Lighthouse,
south of Plymouth. He said that the weather had been
(20:45):
very moderate there in July, sometimes even cold for the season.
Speaker 2 (20:50):
I read this letter as like weirdly braggy and doubting
the accuracy of other people's reports of intense, un terrible heat.
Speaker 1 (21:01):
Gosh, it's terrific here. We actually need to wear sweaters.
Scottish physician James Lynde, who is most well known for
his recommendation that citrus could be used to prevent scurvy
in Sailors published an Essay on the Most Effectual Means
of Preserving the Health of Seamen in the Royal Navy
(21:21):
in seventeen forty four. A section of its appendix is
called Comparative Degrees of Heat and Cold in different latitudes,
and among other things, it describes typical temperatures in Edinburgh
and what it was like in the summer of seventeen
fifty seven. He wrote quote in the warmest weather in June,
July and August, the mercury was commonly at seventy in
(21:43):
the middle of the day and sixty four in the night.
But during uncommon heats it has risen to seventy three
and seventy five, perhaps once or twice in a year,
and sometimes not in two years. The greatest heat observed
by the instrument there was on the twelfth July seventeen
fifty seven, when in the middle of the day and
well shaded, it mounted to eighty degrees. The heat was
(22:07):
then quite stifling. Seventy degrees fahrenheit is about twenty one
point one degree celsius, seventy five is about twenty three
point eight, and eighty fahrenheit is roughly twenty six point
six degrees celsius. Temperatures spiked in France in the summer
of seventeen fifty seven as well, with a recorded high
(22:28):
of ninety nine point five degrees fahrenheit or thirty seven
point five celsius that was reported in Paris on July fourteenth.
But beyond the general description repeated in a lot of
places of the hottest summer since fifteen forty, I just
did not find a lot of specific information about the
(22:48):
heat wave's death toll or other effects. It does seem
like on average, temperatures in Europe started to cool after
seventeen fifty seven, and that cooling trend cantinued until just
after the start of the twentieth century. One model shows
nineteen oh two as the coolest European summer in the
(23:08):
last five hundred years. But then, of course things really
started to heat up again, and we will talk about
some of that heat after we pause for a sponsor break.
Speaker 2 (23:28):
Our last heat wave today is more recent than what
we typically talk about on the show. When I started
working on this episode, my whole plan was for it
to be only about the July heat wave of seventeen
fifty seven and then I realized I just did not
have enough information to do a whole episode only on that.
(23:49):
But that summer is usually described as the hottest one
from fifteen forty to two thousand and three. Sometimes fifteen
forty and two thousand and three are presented almost like
brackets around the summer of seventeen fifty seven. So once
I decided to talk about fifteen forty, it made sense
to talk about that more recent one as well. And
(24:12):
there is of course way more data about the two
thousand and three heat wave than the other two that
we've talked about today. Thanks to a massive network of
weather monitoring stations and the ability to process and evaluate data,
we know that the summer of two thousand and three
saw temperatures in Europe that were often between twenty and
thirty percent higher than average. Overnight temperatures were often higher
(24:35):
than the typical high during the day, and these conditions
lasted from June to mid August. The highest recorded temperature
in the UK during this heat wave was thirty eight
point one celsius or one hundred point fifty eight fahrenheit,
and that was at the time the highest temperature ever
(24:55):
recorded in the UK. Switzerland set a record of forty
one points five celsius or one hundred and six point
seven fahrenheit. Temperatures in central and western Europe were around
thirty five to forty degrees celsius or ninety five to
one hundred and four fahrenheit repeatedly over the course of
this heat wave. According to the UN Environment Program, this
(25:19):
heat wave was Europe's worst natural disaster in fifty years,
and one of the ten deadliest over the previous century.
Its Environment Alert bulletin about the heat wave estimated that
the death hole would be more than thirty thousand people.
There were more than fourteen thousand deaths in France alone,
disproportionately in Paris. Many of the people who died were elderly,
(25:43):
and the most vulnerable group in France was elderly women
who were living alone. So many people died in France
that temporary morgues had to be set up using refrigerated trucks.
Some other sources report even higher numbers for the total
death hole, as many as seventy thousand across Europe. A
major factor was the fact that a lot of homes
(26:05):
and public buildings in this part of Europe are not
air conditioned. Especially if they're historic structures rather than newly built.
So before anybody gets on their high horse about air
conditioning discourse, which there has been a lot of this summer,
a lot of it with Americans making it sound like
we're superior because of our very prevalent air conditioning. Heat
(26:28):
waves are a significant cause of death, especially in elderly
people in the United States too. Those deaths disproportionately affect
the most vulnerable people. Extreme heat causes more fatalities on
average than any other type of weather in the United States,
and those numbers in the US are rising, not falling.
(26:50):
But after the two thousand and three heat wave, which
was so devastating in France, the French government established an
emergency plan for extreme heat events, which include providing cooling
spaces and water checking on vulnerable people, and there's also
been ongoing work to plant more trees and provide more
shade in public places, and to get more air conditioning installed,
(27:13):
including in medical facilities. More broadly, France is legally bound
to reach carbon neutrality by twenty fifty, which is of
course part of the effort to slow the rate of
global warming. So the number of heat related deaths in
France has been much smaller in heat waves that have
taken place since two thousand and three and since these
(27:34):
plans were created. In addition to the deaths that were
directly related to the heat, another major cause of death
in some parts of Europe during the two thousand and
three heat wave was drowning. This has been true in
other heat waves as well. Authorities in Germany reported that
nearly one hundred people drowned in June of twenty twenty six,
(27:54):
while France reported forty deaths from drowning in that heat wave.
Official in both countries compared that number to the number
of people who had drowned during the heat wave of
two thousand and three. Yeah, there was a lot of
We have not seen numbers like this since two thousand
and three. Unlike the people who were most at risk
of like direct heat related causes, who tended to be
(28:17):
older people, a lot of the people who drowned were
young people, especially boys and young men, who of course
were just trying to cool off. The heat wave and
the drought that it was part of in two thousand
and three also of course affected agriculture and industry, and
a lot of that was really similar to what we
talked about happening back in fifteen forty. Central Europe faced
(28:39):
fodder shortages as those crops were depleted. Production also dropped
for poultry and potatoes and grains. Forest fires were widespread
and they were exacerbated by the dry conditions and water
stress on the trees. There were more than twenty thousand
fires across the affected parts of Europe and that burned
(29:00):
almost six hundred and fifty thousand hectares of forest. According
to the World Glacier Monitoring Service, Alpine glaciers decreased by
up to ten percent in two thousand and three. Thawing
in mountainous areas also destabilized the landscape and that led
to landslides and rock slides. We talked about how the
(29:20):
fifteen forty drought affected things like grain mills, which were
powered by water wheels, although fewer industries are powered in
this way today. Water is critical to the production of electricity,
both through hydropower plants and in providing cooling for the
other types of power plants. In France, some nuclear reactors
(29:41):
had to be shut down in two thousand and three
because there wasn't enough water available to cool them, and
others had to keep running even though the temperature of
the available water exceeded safe levels.
Speaker 1 (29:54):
This led to power shortages, which remained worse by the
spike in demand for things like refrigerator and air conditioning.
As we said earlier, there's some debate about whether the
two thousand three heat wave and drought were worse than
the one in fifteen forty. I read multiple papers on
this when preparing this episode. We do know, however, that
(30:17):
subsequent years have been hotter than two thousand and three.
Was The UK record from the two thousand and three
heat wave was broken in twenty twenty two when temperatures
in England reached forty point three celsius or one hundred
and four point five fahrenheit. On June twenty eighth, twenty nineteen,
temperatures in France reached forty five point nine celsius or
(30:39):
one hundred and fourteen point six fahrenheit. That broke its
two thousand and three heat wave record by almost two
degrees celsius. This was the first time a temperature higher
than forty five celsius was ever recorded in France. According
to the World Meteorological Association, the last eleven years have
(31:02):
been the eleven warmest years on record, and June of
twenty twenty six, which of course was part of the
inspiration for this episode, was the hottest June on record
ever in Western Europe. We will end with a passage
from John Scott from his poem written in the Hot
Weather July seventeen fifty seven. This was published in his
(31:25):
seventeen sixty four Elegies Descriptive and Moral, And this is
from the end of the poem, when the heat wave
is about to break even now behold the grateful change
at hand. Hark in the east. Loud, blustering gales arise
wide and more wide. The darkening clouds expand, and distant
lightnings slash along the skies. Oh, in the awful concert
(31:49):
of the storm, while hail and rain, and wind and
thunder join. Let the great rulers praise my song in form.
Let wonder, reverence, gratitude be mine.
Speaker 2 (32:01):
I picked that part from the whole poem because it's
the part that has a sense of relief from the
heat coming, and that is three historic heat waves. Do
you have a sense of listener mail coming? I do
have some listener mail. This listener mail is from Katie.
Katie wrote after we talked about the Bunker Hill monument
(32:25):
and the Battle of Bunker Hill, and said, hello, ladies,
I just listened to your Bunker Hill episode and was
so happy that you said Bill Ricca correctly. I've been
waiting for the perfect moment to send a note to you,
and this was perfect. I grew up in Boston and
have always been a revolutionary war nerd maybe not by
choice but by environment. Anyways, with all that is happening
(32:47):
with the country, I have to say it makes it
hard for me to be excited for the two fiftieth.
When I saw this episode, I said, yay Boston, and
I think listening to pods like yours and being conscious
of how I am acknowledging the two fiftieth is the
way to go. So current plan for the fourth listening
to Hamilton, making a green reflecting pool cocktail and making
(33:08):
crafts that incorporate my new mantra, crush garlic and the patriarchy.
For my pet tax I present to you my two boys,
Maverick Cat and Fetucini Snake. Maverick is a wild goblin
that shreds my boxes and my sanity, but redeems himself
with very good snuggles Fetichini. My yellow noodle is a
ball python and much more of a laid back little guy.
(33:31):
Maverick would love to be friends, but my tank is
incredibly catproof. Thank you for being the best moral compass
and saying what I'm thinking about the state of things.
And then we have just some adorable animal pictures.
Speaker 1 (33:45):
I love a ball python. I think they have the
cutest faces. Yeah, yeah, they just look sort of sweet.
Speaker 2 (33:51):
There are a lot of snakes that have very cute faces,
and I have recently this doesn't have anything to do
with the episode or even the email. I have recently
learned that there are people who work in areas that
have a lot of venomous snakes to help train dogs
to detect and avoid those snakes, And so they put
(34:12):
a little muzzle on the rattlesnake. It's a very soft thing.
The snake can still drink, still use their tongue, but
they cannot open their mouth enough for their fangs to
pop out. Gotcha. So then that way the dog can
smell and see and react to the snake without either
of them being in danger. And then people who do
(34:34):
this in a reputable way also only do this for
a limited amount of time so that they're not stressing
the snake out too much, right, and then the dogs
learn not to go snifit that thing and then get
bitten on the nose and you're at the veterinary emergency
room to get snake bite treatment. Anyway, I have to say,
Fetacini is a brilliant name. It's a great name. And
(34:56):
now has anyone ever named.
Speaker 1 (34:58):
A snake Alfredo Lingui maybe to get a little a
little ratitude reference in maybe thinking about it.
Speaker 2 (35:06):
And then we do also have a picture of this
craft project of crush some garlic and the patriarchy.
Speaker 1 (35:12):
I love it.
Speaker 2 (35:14):
Thank you so much, Katie. If you would like to
send us a note where at History podcast at iHeartRadio
dot com, if you would like to find the show
notes to our episodes where you can read all of
the research that I use to prepare this. That is
at our website which is Missed Inhistory dot com. And
you can subscribe to the show on the iHeartRadio app
(35:37):
or anywhere else you like to get your podcasts.
Speaker 1 (35:44):
Stuff you Missed in.
Speaker 2 (35:45):
History Class is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts
from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app Apple podcasts, or wherever
you listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Tracy V.
Speaker 1 (00:14):
Wilson and I'm Holly Frye.
Speaker 2 (00:16):
For a while now, like years, in the wake of
years of rising temperatures, seemingly every summer being hotter than
the one before, or at least as hot heat waves
all over the world, I've really wanted to do some
kind of episode about a historical heat wave. And I've
(00:36):
written episodes over the years of doing this show about
other weather phenomena and other natural disasters like Hurricane San Seriaco,
the Schoolhouse Blizzard, the Long Winter, the Vanport flood, the
year without a Summer, various earthquakes and fires and tsunamis
and volcanic eruptions. We've got a lot of this in
the archive, but never anything about a heat wave.
Speaker 1 (00:58):
In a lot of the.
Speaker 2 (00:59):
World today, Hey, heat waves just don't get as much
attention as blizzards and floods and hurricanes, even though extreme
heat is one of the deadliest weather events on average,
and that is actually true in a lot of historical
writing as well. I had a wealth of resources to
draw from on all of those other episodes that I
(01:21):
just mentioned, but getting the information together about heat waves
from the past turned out to be a lot trickier.
So instead of doing one episode about one heat wave,
which is what I was planning when I started this,
we are going to take a shorter look at three
of them. As a note, it is very possible that
(01:45):
when we mentioned specific temperatures in this episode, your first
thought might be that is not that hot. H It's
not that hot for some of the places that I
have lived. It was unusually hot for the places that
we are talking about in the time that those temperatures
were happening. It's not a contest. We do not need
(02:09):
to one up each other over the weather we have endured.
Speaker 1 (02:13):
And our first historical heat wave was not just heat wave.
It was part of a massive severe drought that affected
much of central Europe as well as northern Italy. Perhaps surprisingly,
this was during the period of regional cooling known as
the Little Ice Age, during which parts of the world,
including parts of Europe, generally saw cooler, wetter weather, including
(02:36):
the expansion of glaciers. Depending on the source and what
criteria they're using to define it, the Little Ice Age
lasted from about fifteen hundred to eighteen fifty, or from
the end of the medieval warming period, so from about
thirteen hundred to eighteen fifty.
Speaker 2 (02:53):
Yeah, the Little Ice Age was complicated, though. I feel
like even twenty years ago it was kind of being
described as this global period of cooling, but it really
did not mean that the whole world, or even just
all of Europe, was consistently colder. It would be more
accurate to say that a lot of the world saw
more variable and sometimes more extreme weather overall in multiple
(03:18):
directions during the Little Ice Age. In some areas, the
cooler weather was accompanied by periods of drought rather than
being wetter, But in central Europe and northern Italy the
weather was both warmer and drier, particularly from fifteen thirty
one to fifteen forty. There were multiple summer droughts during
those ten years. An intense period of drought started in
(03:43):
February of fifteen forty and it lasted for about eleven months.
There are hundreds of written accounts of the weather and
its effects during that year, but since they're overwhelmingly written
in other languages, we're not going to try to read
directly from them. In part of the affected regions. Surviving
accounts from fifteen forty describe no rain at all or
(04:06):
negligible rain for weeks or even months at a time.
Speaker 1 (04:10):
Water became scarce as Wells and springs dried up, and
water levels fell in lakes, rivers, and streams. Accounts from
all over Central Europe describe the ground becoming desiccated.
Speaker 2 (04:24):
This lack of water had far reaching effects. Of course,
there were crop failures and trees and other plants lost
all of their leaves. Livestock had to be driven a
lot farther to find water sources that weren't totally depleted,
and there were shortages of fodder to feed those animals
because the fodder crops failed. So all of that contributed
(04:45):
to a lot of livestock deaths.
Speaker 1 (04:48):
Water was also a major source of power, with rivers
powering water wheels that were used to mill grain. Without
enough water in the rivers, people turned to mills that
were powered by horses, but those horses also needed food
and water and could become overheated as they worked. People
could grind grain for their own use using hand mills,
(05:10):
but that wasn't really something that worked at large scale,
especially with people facing the same heat and water shortages
that these stock animals were. Rivers were also a major
transportation route for people and goods, and in a lot
of areas that whole transportation system just shut down.
Speaker 2 (05:28):
While the drought led a lot of crops to die
in the fields. In some parts of Europe, fifteen forty
became an exceptionally good wine. Here, a lot of vineyards
tried to adjust their harvest based on the weather conditions.
They either harvested early or they left fruit on the
vine later than normal, hoping that another rainfall would come
(05:49):
and would make the fruit juicier. At some vineyards around
the Alsace region, the harvest was partial because some of
the grapes had basically dried into raisins and just couldn't
be salvaged. In places that delayed the harvest but did
wind up with harvestable fruit, the resulting overly mature grapes
turned into a wine that was very sweet, and fifteen
(06:12):
forty wound up being described as a millennium vintage. It's
likely that the lack of water contributed to the spread
of illness. People did not have enough water to wash
themselves or their environments. Some places actually banned doing laundry.
During the driest weeks as wells dried up. People got
(06:33):
water from sources that were likely to be contaminated, including
rivers that had become sluggish and stagnant. The lack of
rain meant that contaminants that would have been washed away
or at least diluted in a typical year, stayed around.
There was an epidemic of dysentery, and it is possible
that as many as half a million people in Europe
(06:53):
died of disease during this period, Much of it spread
through Contaminated water was also a serious problem. In July,
Martin Luther wrote a letter to his wife about forest
fires in Germany that had burned at that time more
than one thousand acres, and he thought that would probably
make timber more expensive. There were also forest fires in
(07:17):
the Voges Mountains in eastern France and in Hungary and Poland.
Fires also struck villages and towns, and some of them
burned down entire communities. That included Einbeck in central Germany,
which was entirely destroyed on July twenty sixth fifteen. Forty
hundreds of people were killed in that fire. Estimates range
(07:38):
from one hundred to five hundred, especially in towns and villages.
This spike in fires led to accusations of arson, and
at least some of those accusations were connected to the
changes that European societies were going through in the sixteenth century.
The start of the Protestant Reformation is generally marked as
(08:00):
Martin Luther posting his ninety five theses at the Castle
Church in Wittenberg, Germany, on October thirty first, fifteen seventeen.
Conflict between Protestants and Catholics was ongoing in fifteen forty
and in Germany, Duke Einrich the Younger was accused of
hiring arsonists to burn down Protestant communities in other areas,
(08:24):
and a Baptists, who were facing religious persecution were the
ones who were blamed for starting the fires. Most of
these fires were probably accidental and just a byproduct of
how dry everything was and how little water there was
to fight them. There are lots of written records describing
the lack of water, the crop failures, illnesses, and fires
(08:46):
in fifteen forty, and there are written descriptions of the heat.
Another letter from Martin Luther to his wife that summer
describes the heat as unspeakable and unrelenting, and reads as
though he is praying for the last day, meaning judgment day,
so that that heat will be over. But we don't
have anyone's first.
Speaker 1 (09:07):
Hand accounts of the actual temperature because modern thermometers did
not exist yet.
Speaker 2 (09:13):
The earliest known thermometer like device was described by Philo
of Byzantium in the third century BCE. This was a
hollow lead bulb attached to a tube, with the end
of the tube submerged in water. When the bulb was heated,
the air in it would expand and bubbles would come
out of the end of the tube.
Speaker 1 (09:33):
Through the water.
Speaker 2 (09:34):
When the bulb cooled down, water would then be drawn
up into the tube from the vessel. But there was
not any kind of a scale attached to this. It
was just a way to illustrate that the volume of
air expands when it's heated and contracts when it cools,
and then that corresponds to changes in temperature. It was
(09:55):
not a precise method of measuring air temperature by any stretch.
Speaker 1 (10:00):
So while we do have lots of general descriptions of
what life was like, we don't have exact numbers of
how hot the summer of fifteen forty was in Central Europe.
Our knowledge of that comes from proxy data things like
ice cores, tree rings, and pollen samples, combined with modeling techniques.
But even with those sources of data, there is debate
(10:23):
about exactly how high the temperatures reached during this event,
specifically whether they were higher or lower than more modern
day temperature records.
Speaker 2 (10:32):
A frequently used benchmark in a lot of writings about
this is the summer of two thousand and three, which
when it happened was described as the hottest summer in
parts of Europe in five hundred years. Different researchers have
concluded that the summer of fifteen forty was either below
or above the high temperatures that were recorded in the
summer of two thousand and three. Sort of depends on
(10:55):
exactly how they're modeling. Some researchers have also noted that
the summer of fifteen forty was so extreme that typical
climate models can't really replicate it without changing the parameters
in a way that go way beyond other known extreme
weather events. It is also difficult to determine how many
(11:16):
people died or became disabled as a result of this
heat wave and drought, but it seems like the regions
that were affected recovered fairly quickly after it subsided, in
part because people already preferred to grow crops that could
be drought tolerant, So once the weather started to cool
and new crops were planted and water levels returned toward normal,
(11:38):
people were able to grow, harvest, and mill much like
they could before. We'll move on to another heat wave
after a sponsor break. Our next heat wave took place
in the UK and western Europe in seventeen fifty seven.
(12:02):
By that point there were thermometers that could be used
to more precisely measure the temperature. This built on the
work of Philo of Byzantium. It's believed that Galileo developed
a thermoscope that was somewhat similar to Pelos in the
early sixteen hundreds. Other seventeenth century scholars did this as well,
(12:22):
and some also developed a calibration system for their thermoscopes
to approximate some kind of measurement. One was Italian physiologist
Santorio Centorio, who made a thermoscope that was designed to
go in the mouth. He could then use that to
measure a person's body temperature. Physician and instrument maker Gabriel
(12:45):
Fahrenheit developed the mercury in glass thermometer in seventeen fourteen,
and he developed his Fahrenheit temperature scale ten years later.
Swedish astronomer and physicist Under Celsius and others started at
advocating for an internationally recognized temperature scale in the seventeen forties,
leading to the Celsius or Centigrade scale. Celsius is often
(13:09):
credited with inventing this scale, but his original seventeen forty
two version placed the freezing point of water at one
hundred degrees and the boiling point at zero, so opposite
of how we know it today. Others flipped those values
so that the boiling point was one hundred and made
mercury thermometers that were calibrated to that scale. Yeah, it's
(13:32):
not fully clear whether some of the people who were
writing about temperature measurement around this time were working from
Celsius's work or if they independently arrived at the idea
of a scale that goes from the boiling point to
the freezing point of water. Right, it could be either one.
Speaker 1 (13:51):
While we have more.
Speaker 2 (13:52):
Specific information about how hot it was in the summer
of seventeen fifty seven. That information is still somewhat sparac
Attic mercury thermometers and the fahrenheit and Celsius scales were
obviously very new, and it was new enough that a
lot of the English language writing about this heat wave
does not just say that people were using a thermometer.
(14:15):
They all say fahrenheit's thermometer Specifically. People understood that they
would get the most accurate readings on this thermometer if
it was in the shade rather than in direct sunlight.
Speaker 1 (14:26):
But it's not always.
Speaker 2 (14:27):
Clear how well people protected their thermometer from the sun,
or whether their readings were inflated because the thermometer was
not adequately protected, or maybe was very close to something
that was getting more direct sunlight.
Speaker 1 (14:41):
There was also no way to continuously record the temperature.
People had to look at the thermometer and write it down.
Some of the people who wrote about the heat in
July of seventeen fifty seven noted that they took their
measurement at three in the afternoon. That was probably during
the hottest part of the but it's not possible to
(15:01):
know whether it got hotter before or after someone took
their measurement. Regular reliable official temperature records didn't start in
much of the world until the mid to late nineteenth century.
A lot of the written documentation of the fifteen forty
drought and heat wave is in the form of personal
(15:22):
and business letters, diaries, chronicles, and, in the case of
those arson allegations, court records. By the eighteenth century, though,
the European scientific community had started establishing scientific journals. The
first was Philosophical Transactions, which was established in March of
sixteen sixty five by Henry Oldenberg, who was Secretary of
(15:43):
the Royal Society. Philosophical Transactions documented the Royal Society's activities,
including letters and papers that were read before Royal Society meetings.
Some of these letters were between John Hucksam and William Watson,
who were both medical doss and Royal Society fellows. Huxham
wrote to Watson on July nineteenth, seventeen fifty seven, saying,
(16:07):
in part quote, from the seventh to the fourteenth of
this month, the heat was violent, greater indeed than has
been known here in the memory of man. I have
talked with several persons who have lived considerable time in Jamaica, Gibraltar,
and Minorca, and they generally assert that they never felt
such intense heat in any of those places. Huxham went
(16:29):
on to say that in the Shade, Fahrenheit's thermometer read
eighty seven degrees at three in the afternoon on the
eleventh and thirteenth of July, and that it was above
eighty eight on the twelfth. That's about thirty point five
and thirty one point one degrees celsius. Huxham continued, quote,
abundance of people have suffered very feverishly from these excessive heats. Putrid, bilious,
(16:53):
particial nervous fevers are exceedingly common everywhere. Dysenteries, hemorrhages at
most profuse sweats affect not only those in fevers, but
of vast many others. He described both the days and
the nights as intolerably hot, with people unable to sleep,
and the wind even blowing hot so that it brought
(17:16):
no relief. This publication in Philosophical Transactions also included a
note from Watson with a table of temperatures recorded in
Plymouth using Fahrenheit's thermometer. The temperatures were in the eighties
from July tenth to fifteenth, with a peak of eighty
five on July fourteenth. That's about twenty nine point four
(17:37):
degrees celsius.
Speaker 2 (17:39):
Yeah, the temperatures that people would have been expecting in
these areas at this point would have been more in
the high seventies. On July twelfth, past podcast subject Horace
Walpole wrote a letter to his friend John Shoot about
his willingness to visit Shoot at his estate in Hampshire
known as the Vine. Quote, I say nothing of the
(18:00):
heat of this magnificent weather, with the glass yesterday up
to three quarters of sultry. In all English probability, this
will not be a hindrance long though at present so
far from traveling. I have made the tour of my
own garden, but once these three days before eight at night,
and then I thought I should have died of it.
(18:22):
For how many years we shall have to talk of
the summer of fifty seven.
Speaker 1 (18:27):
A few days later, on the sixteenth, Walpole wrote a
letter to George Montague saying, quote, the weather has been
so hot, and we are so unused to it that
nobody knew how to behave themselves. Even mister Bentley has
done shivering. That was writer Richard Bentley, who was part
of Walpole's Committee of Taste along with Shoot. A letter
(18:48):
Walpole sent to Shoot ten days later described Bentley as
suffering from sweating sickness quote, which I now firmly believe
was only a hot summer like this, and England, being
so unused to it, took it for a melody. The
heat returned that August, and John Huxam wrote to William
Watson again. This letter was also published in Philosophical Transactions.
(19:11):
This time Huxam said that his thermometer read almost eighty
six degrees or thirty celsius from August eighth through the tenth.
This time, he wrote, quote, the consequences of this extremely
hot season were hemorrhages from several parts of the body,
the nose, especially in men and children, and the uterus
in women. Sudden and violent pains of the head and vertigo,
(19:35):
profuse sweats, great debility and oppression of the spirits affected many.
There were putrid fevers in great abundance, and a vast
quantity of fluxes of the belly, both bilious and bloody,
with which the fevers also were commonly attended. Husam described
these fevers as accompanied by severe pains in the back
(19:57):
and stomach, vomiting, chest pain, anxiety, and an inability to sleep.
At this point, medicine in Europe was still largely dominated
by the idea of the four humors, and from there
he describes the quality of the pulse in people who
were affected and their blood which was quote oftentimes florid,
but loose, sometimes livid, very rarely fizzy. He thought blood
(20:22):
letting was always beneficial, especially if it was done early
in people who developed this heat related fever. It seems
as though the weather was milder off the southern coast
of the UK. John Smeaton also wrote a letter that
was read before the Royal Society about conditions at Eddystone Lighthouse,
south of Plymouth. He said that the weather had been
(20:45):
very moderate there in July, sometimes even cold for the season.
Speaker 2 (20:50):
I read this letter as like weirdly braggy and doubting
the accuracy of other people's reports of intense, un terrible heat.
Speaker 1 (21:01):
Gosh, it's terrific here. We actually need to wear sweaters.
Scottish physician James Lynde, who is most well known for
his recommendation that citrus could be used to prevent scurvy
in Sailors published an Essay on the Most Effectual Means
of Preserving the Health of Seamen in the Royal Navy
(21:21):
in seventeen forty four. A section of its appendix is
called Comparative Degrees of Heat and Cold in different latitudes,
and among other things, it describes typical temperatures in Edinburgh
and what it was like in the summer of seventeen
fifty seven. He wrote quote in the warmest weather in June,
July and August, the mercury was commonly at seventy in
(21:43):
the middle of the day and sixty four in the night.
But during uncommon heats it has risen to seventy three
and seventy five, perhaps once or twice in a year,
and sometimes not in two years. The greatest heat observed
by the instrument there was on the twelfth July seventeen
fifty seven, when in the middle of the day and
well shaded, it mounted to eighty degrees. The heat was
(22:07):
then quite stifling. Seventy degrees fahrenheit is about twenty one
point one degree celsius, seventy five is about twenty three
point eight, and eighty fahrenheit is roughly twenty six point
six degrees celsius. Temperatures spiked in France in the summer
of seventeen fifty seven as well, with a recorded high
(22:28):
of ninety nine point five degrees fahrenheit or thirty seven
point five celsius that was reported in Paris on July fourteenth.
But beyond the general description repeated in a lot of
places of the hottest summer since fifteen forty, I just
did not find a lot of specific information about the
(22:48):
heat wave's death toll or other effects. It does seem
like on average, temperatures in Europe started to cool after
seventeen fifty seven, and that cooling trend cantinued until just
after the start of the twentieth century. One model shows
nineteen oh two as the coolest European summer in the
(23:08):
last five hundred years. But then, of course things really
started to heat up again, and we will talk about
some of that heat after we pause for a sponsor break.
Speaker 2 (23:28):
Our last heat wave today is more recent than what
we typically talk about on the show. When I started
working on this episode, my whole plan was for it
to be only about the July heat wave of seventeen
fifty seven and then I realized I just did not
have enough information to do a whole episode only on that.
(23:49):
But that summer is usually described as the hottest one
from fifteen forty to two thousand and three. Sometimes fifteen
forty and two thousand and three are presented almost like
brackets around the summer of seventeen fifty seven. So once
I decided to talk about fifteen forty, it made sense
to talk about that more recent one as well. And
(24:12):
there is of course way more data about the two
thousand and three heat wave than the other two that
we've talked about today. Thanks to a massive network of
weather monitoring stations and the ability to process and evaluate data,
we know that the summer of two thousand and three
saw temperatures in Europe that were often between twenty and
thirty percent higher than average. Overnight temperatures were often higher
(24:35):
than the typical high during the day, and these conditions
lasted from June to mid August. The highest recorded temperature
in the UK during this heat wave was thirty eight
point one celsius or one hundred point fifty eight fahrenheit,
and that was at the time the highest temperature ever
(24:55):
recorded in the UK. Switzerland set a record of forty
one points five celsius or one hundred and six point
seven fahrenheit. Temperatures in central and western Europe were around
thirty five to forty degrees celsius or ninety five to
one hundred and four fahrenheit repeatedly over the course of
this heat wave. According to the UN Environment Program, this
(25:19):
heat wave was Europe's worst natural disaster in fifty years,
and one of the ten deadliest over the previous century.
Its Environment Alert bulletin about the heat wave estimated that
the death hole would be more than thirty thousand people.
There were more than fourteen thousand deaths in France alone,
disproportionately in Paris. Many of the people who died were elderly,
(25:43):
and the most vulnerable group in France was elderly women
who were living alone. So many people died in France
that temporary morgues had to be set up using refrigerated trucks.
Some other sources report even higher numbers for the total
death hole, as many as seventy thousand across Europe. A
major factor was the fact that a lot of homes
(26:05):
and public buildings in this part of Europe are not
air conditioned. Especially if they're historic structures rather than newly built.
So before anybody gets on their high horse about air
conditioning discourse, which there has been a lot of this summer,
a lot of it with Americans making it sound like
we're superior because of our very prevalent air conditioning. Heat
(26:28):
waves are a significant cause of death, especially in elderly
people in the United States too. Those deaths disproportionately affect
the most vulnerable people. Extreme heat causes more fatalities on
average than any other type of weather in the United States,
and those numbers in the US are rising, not falling.
(26:50):
But after the two thousand and three heat wave, which
was so devastating in France, the French government established an
emergency plan for extreme heat events, which include providing cooling
spaces and water checking on vulnerable people, and there's also
been ongoing work to plant more trees and provide more
shade in public places, and to get more air conditioning installed,
(27:13):
including in medical facilities. More broadly, France is legally bound
to reach carbon neutrality by twenty fifty, which is of
course part of the effort to slow the rate of
global warming. So the number of heat related deaths in
France has been much smaller in heat waves that have
taken place since two thousand and three and since these
(27:34):
plans were created. In addition to the deaths that were
directly related to the heat, another major cause of death
in some parts of Europe during the two thousand and
three heat wave was drowning. This has been true in
other heat waves as well. Authorities in Germany reported that
nearly one hundred people drowned in June of twenty twenty six,
(27:54):
while France reported forty deaths from drowning in that heat wave.
Official in both countries compared that number to the number
of people who had drowned during the heat wave of
two thousand and three. Yeah, there was a lot of
We have not seen numbers like this since two thousand
and three. Unlike the people who were most at risk
of like direct heat related causes, who tended to be
(28:17):
older people, a lot of the people who drowned were
young people, especially boys and young men, who of course
were just trying to cool off. The heat wave and
the drought that it was part of in two thousand
and three also of course affected agriculture and industry, and
a lot of that was really similar to what we
talked about happening back in fifteen forty. Central Europe faced
(28:39):
fodder shortages as those crops were depleted. Production also dropped
for poultry and potatoes and grains. Forest fires were widespread
and they were exacerbated by the dry conditions and water
stress on the trees. There were more than twenty thousand
fires across the affected parts of Europe and that burned
(29:00):
almost six hundred and fifty thousand hectares of forest. According
to the World Glacier Monitoring Service, Alpine glaciers decreased by
up to ten percent in two thousand and three. Thawing
in mountainous areas also destabilized the landscape and that led
to landslides and rock slides. We talked about how the
(29:20):
fifteen forty drought affected things like grain mills, which were
powered by water wheels, although fewer industries are powered in
this way today. Water is critical to the production of electricity,
both through hydropower plants and in providing cooling for the
other types of power plants. In France, some nuclear reactors
(29:41):
had to be shut down in two thousand and three
because there wasn't enough water available to cool them, and
others had to keep running even though the temperature of
the available water exceeded safe levels.
Speaker 1 (29:54):
This led to power shortages, which remained worse by the
spike in demand for things like refrigerator and air conditioning.
As we said earlier, there's some debate about whether the
two thousand three heat wave and drought were worse than
the one in fifteen forty. I read multiple papers on
this when preparing this episode. We do know, however, that
(30:17):
subsequent years have been hotter than two thousand and three.
Was The UK record from the two thousand and three
heat wave was broken in twenty twenty two when temperatures
in England reached forty point three celsius or one hundred
and four point five fahrenheit. On June twenty eighth, twenty nineteen,
temperatures in France reached forty five point nine celsius or
(30:39):
one hundred and fourteen point six fahrenheit. That broke its
two thousand and three heat wave record by almost two
degrees celsius. This was the first time a temperature higher
than forty five celsius was ever recorded in France. According
to the World Meteorological Association, the last eleven years have
(31:02):
been the eleven warmest years on record, and June of
twenty twenty six, which of course was part of the
inspiration for this episode, was the hottest June on record
ever in Western Europe. We will end with a passage
from John Scott from his poem written in the Hot
Weather July seventeen fifty seven. This was published in his
(31:25):
seventeen sixty four Elegies Descriptive and Moral, And this is
from the end of the poem, when the heat wave
is about to break even now behold the grateful change
at hand. Hark in the east. Loud, blustering gales arise
wide and more wide. The darkening clouds expand, and distant
lightnings slash along the skies. Oh, in the awful concert
(31:49):
of the storm, while hail and rain, and wind and
thunder join. Let the great rulers praise my song in form.
Let wonder, reverence, gratitude be mine.
Speaker 2 (32:01):
I picked that part from the whole poem because it's
the part that has a sense of relief from the
heat coming, and that is three historic heat waves. Do
you have a sense of listener mail coming? I do
have some listener mail. This listener mail is from Katie.
Katie wrote after we talked about the Bunker Hill monument
(32:25):
and the Battle of Bunker Hill, and said, hello, ladies,
I just listened to your Bunker Hill episode and was
so happy that you said Bill Ricca correctly. I've been
waiting for the perfect moment to send a note to you,
and this was perfect. I grew up in Boston and
have always been a revolutionary war nerd maybe not by
choice but by environment. Anyways, with all that is happening
(32:47):
with the country, I have to say it makes it
hard for me to be excited for the two fiftieth.
When I saw this episode, I said, yay Boston, and
I think listening to pods like yours and being conscious
of how I am acknowledging the two fiftieth is the
way to go. So current plan for the fourth listening
to Hamilton, making a green reflecting pool cocktail and making
(33:08):
crafts that incorporate my new mantra, crush garlic and the patriarchy.
For my pet tax I present to you my two boys,
Maverick Cat and Fetucini Snake. Maverick is a wild goblin
that shreds my boxes and my sanity, but redeems himself
with very good snuggles Fetichini. My yellow noodle is a
ball python and much more of a laid back little guy.
(33:31):
Maverick would love to be friends, but my tank is
incredibly catproof. Thank you for being the best moral compass
and saying what I'm thinking about the state of things.
And then we have just some adorable animal pictures.
Speaker 1 (33:45):
I love a ball python. I think they have the
cutest faces. Yeah, yeah, they just look sort of sweet.
Speaker 2 (33:51):
There are a lot of snakes that have very cute faces,
and I have recently this doesn't have anything to do
with the episode or even the email. I have recently
learned that there are people who work in areas that
have a lot of venomous snakes to help train dogs
to detect and avoid those snakes, And so they put
(34:12):
a little muzzle on the rattlesnake. It's a very soft thing.
The snake can still drink, still use their tongue, but
they cannot open their mouth enough for their fangs to
pop out. Gotcha. So then that way the dog can
smell and see and react to the snake without either
of them being in danger. And then people who do
(34:34):
this in a reputable way also only do this for
a limited amount of time so that they're not stressing
the snake out too much, right, and then the dogs
learn not to go snifit that thing and then get
bitten on the nose and you're at the veterinary emergency
room to get snake bite treatment. Anyway, I have to say,
Fetacini is a brilliant name. It's a great name. And
(34:56):
now has anyone ever named.
Speaker 1 (34:58):
A snake Alfredo Lingui maybe to get a little a
little ratitude reference in maybe thinking about it.
Speaker 2 (35:06):
And then we do also have a picture of this
craft project of crush some garlic and the patriarchy.
Speaker 1 (35:12):
I love it.
Speaker 2 (35:14):
Thank you so much, Katie. If you would like to
send us a note where at History podcast at iHeartRadio
dot com, if you would like to find the show
notes to our episodes where you can read all of
the research that I use to prepare this. That is
at our website which is Missed Inhistory dot com. And
you can subscribe to the show on the iHeartRadio app
(35:37):
or anywhere else you like to get your podcasts.
Speaker 1 (35:44):
Stuff you Missed in.
Speaker 2 (35:45):
History Class is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts
from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app Apple podcasts, or wherever
you listen to your favorite shows.
Stuff You Missed in History Class News
Hosts And Creators
Holly Frey
Tracy Wilson
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