WEBVTT - Three Historic Heatwaves 0:00:01.320 --> 0:00:04.240 Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production 0:00:04.400 --> 0:00:10.920 of iHeartRadio. 0:00:11.920 --> 0:00:14.360 Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Tracy V. 0:00:14.520 --> 0:00:16.400 Wilson and I'm Holly Frye. 0:00:16.760 --> 0:00:20.840 For a while now, like years, in the wake of 0:00:21.640 --> 0:00:26.200 years of rising temperatures, seemingly every summer being hotter than 0:00:26.239 --> 0:00:30.000 the one before, or at least as hot heat waves 0:00:30.080 --> 0:00:32.600 all over the world, I've really wanted to do some 0:00:32.720 --> 0:00:36.880 kind of episode about a historical heat wave. And I've 0:00:36.920 --> 0:00:39.920 written episodes over the years of doing this show about 0:00:40.000 --> 0:00:45.000 other weather phenomena and other natural disasters like Hurricane San Seriaco, 0:00:45.440 --> 0:00:48.920 the Schoolhouse Blizzard, the Long Winter, the Vanport flood, the 0:00:49.000 --> 0:00:52.120 year without a Summer, various earthquakes and fires and tsunamis 0:00:52.159 --> 0:00:54.120 and volcanic eruptions. We've got a lot of this in 0:00:54.160 --> 0:00:57.280 the archive, but never anything about a heat wave. 0:00:58.560 --> 0:00:59.440 In a lot of the. 0:00:59.360 --> 0:01:02.840 World today, Hey, heat waves just don't get as much 0:01:02.880 --> 0:01:07.520 attention as blizzards and floods and hurricanes, even though extreme 0:01:07.600 --> 0:01:11.280 heat is one of the deadliest weather events on average, 0:01:11.840 --> 0:01:14.080 and that is actually true in a lot of historical 0:01:14.080 --> 0:01:17.360 writing as well. I had a wealth of resources to 0:01:17.480 --> 0:01:20.880 draw from on all of those other episodes that I 0:01:21.000 --> 0:01:25.080 just mentioned, but getting the information together about heat waves 0:01:25.120 --> 0:01:28.679 from the past turned out to be a lot trickier. 0:01:29.560 --> 0:01:33.480 So instead of doing one episode about one heat wave, 0:01:33.480 --> 0:01:35.880 which is what I was planning when I started this, 0:01:36.400 --> 0:01:38.759 we are going to take a shorter look at three 0:01:38.840 --> 0:01:45.120 of them. As a note, it is very possible that 0:01:45.640 --> 0:01:50.280 when we mentioned specific temperatures in this episode, your first 0:01:50.280 --> 0:01:56.040 thought might be that is not that hot. H It's 0:01:56.080 --> 0:01:57.720 not that hot for some of the places that I 0:01:57.760 --> 0:02:02.240 have lived. It was unusually hot for the places that 0:02:02.280 --> 0:02:05.320 we are talking about in the time that those temperatures 0:02:05.480 --> 0:02:09.760 were happening. It's not a contest. We do not need 0:02:09.800 --> 0:02:12.760 to one up each other over the weather we have endured. 0:02:13.520 --> 0:02:17.120 And our first historical heat wave was not just heat wave. 0:02:17.280 --> 0:02:20.280 It was part of a massive severe drought that affected 0:02:20.360 --> 0:02:25.120 much of central Europe as well as northern Italy. Perhaps surprisingly, 0:02:25.280 --> 0:02:28.280 this was during the period of regional cooling known as 0:02:28.320 --> 0:02:31.200 the Little Ice Age, during which parts of the world, 0:02:31.360 --> 0:02:36.120 including parts of Europe, generally saw cooler, wetter weather, including 0:02:36.160 --> 0:02:40.240 the expansion of glaciers. Depending on the source and what 0:02:40.280 --> 0:02:43.480 criteria they're using to define it, the Little Ice Age 0:02:43.560 --> 0:02:47.720 lasted from about fifteen hundred to eighteen fifty, or from 0:02:47.760 --> 0:02:50.840 the end of the medieval warming period, so from about 0:02:50.840 --> 0:02:53.000 thirteen hundred to eighteen fifty. 0:02:53.880 --> 0:02:57.520 Yeah, the Little Ice Age was complicated, though. I feel 0:02:57.560 --> 0:03:00.120 like even twenty years ago it was kind of being 0:03:00.240 --> 0:03:03.760 described as this global period of cooling, but it really 0:03:03.800 --> 0:03:07.000 did not mean that the whole world, or even just 0:03:07.080 --> 0:03:10.440 all of Europe, was consistently colder. It would be more 0:03:10.520 --> 0:03:12.760 accurate to say that a lot of the world saw 0:03:12.880 --> 0:03:18.800 more variable and sometimes more extreme weather overall in multiple 0:03:18.840 --> 0:03:22.320 directions during the Little Ice Age. In some areas, the 0:03:22.400 --> 0:03:26.040 cooler weather was accompanied by periods of drought rather than 0:03:26.040 --> 0:03:29.760 being wetter, But in central Europe and northern Italy the 0:03:29.800 --> 0:03:34.760 weather was both warmer and drier, particularly from fifteen thirty 0:03:34.800 --> 0:03:38.680 one to fifteen forty. There were multiple summer droughts during 0:03:38.720 --> 0:03:43.240 those ten years. An intense period of drought started in 0:03:43.320 --> 0:03:47.800 February of fifteen forty and it lasted for about eleven months. 0:03:48.240 --> 0:03:51.400 There are hundreds of written accounts of the weather and 0:03:51.440 --> 0:03:54.920 its effects during that year, but since they're overwhelmingly written 0:03:54.960 --> 0:03:57.440 in other languages, we're not going to try to read 0:03:57.480 --> 0:04:01.960 directly from them. In part of the affected regions. Surviving 0:04:02.000 --> 0:04:05.960 accounts from fifteen forty describe no rain at all or 0:04:06.120 --> 0:04:09.360 negligible rain for weeks or even months at a time. 0:04:10.280 --> 0:04:13.920 Water became scarce as Wells and springs dried up, and 0:04:14.040 --> 0:04:18.800 water levels fell in lakes, rivers, and streams. Accounts from 0:04:18.839 --> 0:04:22.880 all over Central Europe describe the ground becoming desiccated. 0:04:24.120 --> 0:04:28.520 This lack of water had far reaching effects. Of course, 0:04:28.640 --> 0:04:31.760 there were crop failures and trees and other plants lost 0:04:31.800 --> 0:04:35.200 all of their leaves. Livestock had to be driven a 0:04:35.240 --> 0:04:38.880 lot farther to find water sources that weren't totally depleted, 0:04:39.040 --> 0:04:42.120 and there were shortages of fodder to feed those animals 0:04:42.160 --> 0:04:45.800 because the fodder crops failed. So all of that contributed 0:04:45.800 --> 0:04:47.719 to a lot of livestock deaths. 0:04:48.440 --> 0:04:52.279 Water was also a major source of power, with rivers 0:04:52.360 --> 0:04:56.159 powering water wheels that were used to mill grain. Without 0:04:56.279 --> 0:04:58.719 enough water in the rivers, people turned to mills that 0:04:58.760 --> 0:05:02.680 were powered by horses, but those horses also needed food 0:05:02.760 --> 0:05:07.039 and water and could become overheated as they worked. People 0:05:07.200 --> 0:05:10.400 could grind grain for their own use using hand mills, 0:05:10.720 --> 0:05:13.560 but that wasn't really something that worked at large scale, 0:05:13.839 --> 0:05:17.400 especially with people facing the same heat and water shortages 0:05:17.720 --> 0:05:21.640 that these stock animals were. Rivers were also a major 0:05:21.680 --> 0:05:24.520 transportation route for people and goods, and in a lot 0:05:24.560 --> 0:05:27.839 of areas that whole transportation system just shut down. 0:05:28.960 --> 0:05:31.800 While the drought led a lot of crops to die 0:05:31.880 --> 0:05:34.719 in the fields. In some parts of Europe, fifteen forty 0:05:34.760 --> 0:05:39.200 became an exceptionally good wine. Here, a lot of vineyards 0:05:39.360 --> 0:05:42.440 tried to adjust their harvest based on the weather conditions. 0:05:42.480 --> 0:05:45.760 They either harvested early or they left fruit on the 0:05:45.839 --> 0:05:49.200 vine later than normal, hoping that another rainfall would come 0:05:49.240 --> 0:05:53.560 and would make the fruit juicier. At some vineyards around 0:05:53.600 --> 0:05:57.000 the Alsace region, the harvest was partial because some of 0:05:57.000 --> 0:05:59.960 the grapes had basically dried into raisins and just couldn't 0:06:00.080 --> 0:06:04.360 be salvaged. In places that delayed the harvest but did 0:06:04.480 --> 0:06:08.799 wind up with harvestable fruit, the resulting overly mature grapes 0:06:08.800 --> 0:06:12.320 turned into a wine that was very sweet, and fifteen 0:06:12.480 --> 0:06:17.000 forty wound up being described as a millennium vintage. It's 0:06:17.240 --> 0:06:20.440 likely that the lack of water contributed to the spread 0:06:20.520 --> 0:06:24.040 of illness. People did not have enough water to wash 0:06:24.080 --> 0:06:28.800 themselves or their environments. Some places actually banned doing laundry. 0:06:28.880 --> 0:06:33.039 During the driest weeks as wells dried up. People got 0:06:33.080 --> 0:06:36.920 water from sources that were likely to be contaminated, including 0:06:37.040 --> 0:06:40.960 rivers that had become sluggish and stagnant. The lack of 0:06:41.120 --> 0:06:43.920 rain meant that contaminants that would have been washed away 0:06:44.040 --> 0:06:47.200 or at least diluted in a typical year, stayed around. 0:06:48.000 --> 0:06:50.920 There was an epidemic of dysentery, and it is possible 0:06:50.960 --> 0:06:53.520 that as many as half a million people in Europe 0:06:53.960 --> 0:06:57.560 died of disease during this period, Much of it spread 0:06:57.600 --> 0:07:03.280 through Contaminated water was also a serious problem. In July, 0:07:03.760 --> 0:07:06.719 Martin Luther wrote a letter to his wife about forest 0:07:06.760 --> 0:07:09.720 fires in Germany that had burned at that time more 0:07:09.760 --> 0:07:12.760 than one thousand acres, and he thought that would probably 0:07:12.800 --> 0:07:16.960 make timber more expensive. There were also forest fires in 0:07:17.040 --> 0:07:20.640 the Voges Mountains in eastern France and in Hungary and Poland. 0:07:21.440 --> 0:07:25.200 Fires also struck villages and towns, and some of them 0:07:25.240 --> 0:07:30.200 burned down entire communities. That included Einbeck in central Germany, 0:07:30.480 --> 0:07:34.240 which was entirely destroyed on July twenty sixth fifteen. Forty 0:07:35.160 --> 0:07:38.440 hundreds of people were killed in that fire. Estimates range 0:07:38.440 --> 0:07:43.560 from one hundred to five hundred, especially in towns and villages. 0:07:43.680 --> 0:07:48.400 This spike in fires led to accusations of arson, and 0:07:48.480 --> 0:07:51.440 at least some of those accusations were connected to the 0:07:51.520 --> 0:07:55.560 changes that European societies were going through in the sixteenth century. 0:07:56.240 --> 0:07:59.840 The start of the Protestant Reformation is generally marked as 0:08:00.040 --> 0:08:03.880 Martin Luther posting his ninety five theses at the Castle 0:08:03.960 --> 0:08:08.320 Church in Wittenberg, Germany, on October thirty first, fifteen seventeen. 0:08:09.040 --> 0:08:13.960 Conflict between Protestants and Catholics was ongoing in fifteen forty 0:08:14.080 --> 0:08:18.480 and in Germany, Duke Einrich the Younger was accused of 0:08:18.640 --> 0:08:24.240 hiring arsonists to burn down Protestant communities in other areas, 0:08:24.280 --> 0:08:27.400 and a Baptists, who were facing religious persecution were the 0:08:27.400 --> 0:08:30.760 ones who were blamed for starting the fires. Most of 0:08:30.800 --> 0:08:35.520 these fires were probably accidental and just a byproduct of 0:08:35.520 --> 0:08:38.920 how dry everything was and how little water there was 0:08:38.960 --> 0:08:42.920 to fight them. There are lots of written records describing 0:08:43.000 --> 0:08:46.720 the lack of water, the crop failures, illnesses, and fires 0:08:46.760 --> 0:08:51.559 in fifteen forty, and there are written descriptions of the heat. 0:08:51.920 --> 0:08:54.640 Another letter from Martin Luther to his wife that summer 0:08:55.000 --> 0:08:59.679 describes the heat as unspeakable and unrelenting, and reads as 0:08:59.679 --> 0:09:03.080 though he is praying for the last day, meaning judgment day, 0:09:03.480 --> 0:09:06.200 so that that heat will be over. But we don't 0:09:06.200 --> 0:09:07.600 have anyone's first. 0:09:07.240 --> 0:09:11.360 Hand accounts of the actual temperature because modern thermometers did 0:09:11.400 --> 0:09:12.480 not exist yet. 0:09:13.160 --> 0:09:18.320 The earliest known thermometer like device was described by Philo 0:09:18.440 --> 0:09:22.360 of Byzantium in the third century BCE. This was a 0:09:22.440 --> 0:09:25.800 hollow lead bulb attached to a tube, with the end 0:09:25.840 --> 0:09:29.520 of the tube submerged in water. When the bulb was heated, 0:09:29.720 --> 0:09:32.319 the air in it would expand and bubbles would come 0:09:32.360 --> 0:09:33.840 out of the end of the tube. 0:09:33.480 --> 0:09:34.120 Through the water. 0:09:34.960 --> 0:09:38.560 When the bulb cooled down, water would then be drawn 0:09:38.720 --> 0:09:41.360 up into the tube from the vessel. But there was 0:09:41.400 --> 0:09:44.800 not any kind of a scale attached to this. It 0:09:44.840 --> 0:09:47.520 was just a way to illustrate that the volume of 0:09:47.679 --> 0:09:51.160 air expands when it's heated and contracts when it cools, 0:09:51.520 --> 0:09:55.520 and then that corresponds to changes in temperature. It was 0:09:55.640 --> 0:10:00.000 not a precise method of measuring air temperature by any stretch. 0:10:00.880 --> 0:10:03.880 So while we do have lots of general descriptions of 0:10:03.880 --> 0:10:07.280 what life was like, we don't have exact numbers of 0:10:07.280 --> 0:10:11.280 how hot the summer of fifteen forty was in Central Europe. 0:10:11.320 --> 0:10:14.560 Our knowledge of that comes from proxy data things like 0:10:14.640 --> 0:10:19.680 ice cores, tree rings, and pollen samples, combined with modeling techniques. 0:10:20.320 --> 0:10:22.920 But even with those sources of data, there is debate 0:10:23.040 --> 0:10:26.199 about exactly how high the temperatures reached during this event, 0:10:26.760 --> 0:10:30.280 specifically whether they were higher or lower than more modern 0:10:30.360 --> 0:10:32.160 day temperature records. 0:10:32.640 --> 0:10:36.120 A frequently used benchmark in a lot of writings about 0:10:36.120 --> 0:10:38.839 this is the summer of two thousand and three, which 0:10:38.960 --> 0:10:42.200 when it happened was described as the hottest summer in 0:10:42.280 --> 0:10:46.480 parts of Europe in five hundred years. Different researchers have 0:10:46.600 --> 0:10:49.800 concluded that the summer of fifteen forty was either below 0:10:50.040 --> 0:10:52.640 or above the high temperatures that were recorded in the 0:10:52.640 --> 0:10:55.440 summer of two thousand and three. Sort of depends on 0:10:55.480 --> 0:10:59.640 exactly how they're modeling. Some researchers have also noted that 0:10:59.640 --> 0:11:03.760 the summer of fifteen forty was so extreme that typical 0:11:03.920 --> 0:11:08.880 climate models can't really replicate it without changing the parameters 0:11:08.880 --> 0:11:12.319 in a way that go way beyond other known extreme 0:11:12.440 --> 0:11:16.080 weather events. It is also difficult to determine how many 0:11:16.120 --> 0:11:19.560 people died or became disabled as a result of this 0:11:19.640 --> 0:11:22.800 heat wave and drought, but it seems like the regions 0:11:22.800 --> 0:11:26.840 that were affected recovered fairly quickly after it subsided, in 0:11:26.920 --> 0:11:30.120 part because people already preferred to grow crops that could 0:11:30.160 --> 0:11:33.800 be drought tolerant, So once the weather started to cool 0:11:33.920 --> 0:11:37.959 and new crops were planted and water levels returned toward normal, 0:11:38.440 --> 0:11:42.320 people were able to grow, harvest, and mill much like 0:11:42.400 --> 0:11:45.400 they could before. We'll move on to another heat wave 0:11:45.440 --> 0:11:57.920 after a sponsor break. Our next heat wave took place 0:11:58.000 --> 0:12:01.680 in the UK and western Europe in seventeen fifty seven. 0:12:02.600 --> 0:12:05.800 By that point there were thermometers that could be used 0:12:05.840 --> 0:12:09.880 to more precisely measure the temperature. This built on the 0:12:09.920 --> 0:12:14.559 work of Philo of Byzantium. It's believed that Galileo developed 0:12:14.600 --> 0:12:17.720 a thermoscope that was somewhat similar to Pelos in the 0:12:17.720 --> 0:12:22.520 early sixteen hundreds. Other seventeenth century scholars did this as well, 0:12:22.679 --> 0:12:27.280 and some also developed a calibration system for their thermoscopes 0:12:27.720 --> 0:12:32.640 to approximate some kind of measurement. One was Italian physiologist 0:12:32.880 --> 0:12:37.120 Santorio Centorio, who made a thermoscope that was designed to 0:12:37.160 --> 0:12:40.240 go in the mouth. He could then use that to 0:12:40.440 --> 0:12:45.440 measure a person's body temperature. Physician and instrument maker Gabriel 0:12:45.520 --> 0:12:49.760 Fahrenheit developed the mercury in glass thermometer in seventeen fourteen, 0:12:50.200 --> 0:12:54.040 and he developed his Fahrenheit temperature scale ten years later. 0:12:55.120 --> 0:12:59.880 Swedish astronomer and physicist Under Celsius and others started at 0:13:00.000 --> 0:13:04.520 advocating for an internationally recognized temperature scale in the seventeen forties, 0:13:04.960 --> 0:13:09.800 leading to the Celsius or Centigrade scale. Celsius is often 0:13:09.840 --> 0:13:13.800 credited with inventing this scale, but his original seventeen forty 0:13:13.840 --> 0:13:17.560 two version placed the freezing point of water at one 0:13:17.640 --> 0:13:21.920 hundred degrees and the boiling point at zero, so opposite 0:13:21.960 --> 0:13:25.440 of how we know it today. Others flipped those values 0:13:25.480 --> 0:13:27.840 so that the boiling point was one hundred and made 0:13:27.880 --> 0:13:32.319 mercury thermometers that were calibrated to that scale. Yeah, it's 0:13:32.360 --> 0:13:34.480 not fully clear whether some of the people who were 0:13:34.480 --> 0:13:38.760 writing about temperature measurement around this time were working from 0:13:39.160 --> 0:13:43.720 Celsius's work or if they independently arrived at the idea 0:13:43.960 --> 0:13:47.400 of a scale that goes from the boiling point to 0:13:47.440 --> 0:13:51.480 the freezing point of water. Right, it could be either one. 0:13:51.520 --> 0:13:52.800 While we have more. 0:13:52.720 --> 0:13:56.079 Specific information about how hot it was in the summer 0:13:56.120 --> 0:13:59.960 of seventeen fifty seven. That information is still somewhat sparac 0:14:00.000 --> 0:14:04.679 Attic mercury thermometers and the fahrenheit and Celsius scales were 0:14:04.720 --> 0:14:08.560 obviously very new, and it was new enough that a 0:14:08.600 --> 0:14:11.800 lot of the English language writing about this heat wave 0:14:11.920 --> 0:14:15.000 does not just say that people were using a thermometer. 0:14:15.760 --> 0:14:21.360 They all say fahrenheit's thermometer Specifically. People understood that they 0:14:21.360 --> 0:14:24.240 would get the most accurate readings on this thermometer if 0:14:24.240 --> 0:14:26.640 it was in the shade rather than in direct sunlight. 0:14:26.720 --> 0:14:28.200 But it's not always. 0:14:27.960 --> 0:14:31.920 Clear how well people protected their thermometer from the sun, 0:14:32.440 --> 0:14:35.640 or whether their readings were inflated because the thermometer was 0:14:35.680 --> 0:14:39.120 not adequately protected, or maybe was very close to something 0:14:39.120 --> 0:14:40.760 that was getting more direct sunlight. 0:14:41.440 --> 0:14:45.400 There was also no way to continuously record the temperature. 0:14:45.800 --> 0:14:48.800 People had to look at the thermometer and write it down. 0:14:49.760 --> 0:14:51.560 Some of the people who wrote about the heat in 0:14:51.680 --> 0:14:54.720 July of seventeen fifty seven noted that they took their 0:14:54.760 --> 0:14:59.120 measurement at three in the afternoon. That was probably during 0:14:59.200 --> 0:15:01.760 the hottest part of the but it's not possible to 0:15:01.880 --> 0:15:05.320 know whether it got hotter before or after someone took 0:15:05.360 --> 0:15:11.120 their measurement. Regular reliable official temperature records didn't start in 0:15:11.280 --> 0:15:14.320 much of the world until the mid to late nineteenth century. 0:15:15.400 --> 0:15:18.840 A lot of the written documentation of the fifteen forty 0:15:18.960 --> 0:15:21.960 drought and heat wave is in the form of personal 0:15:22.000 --> 0:15:25.640 and business letters, diaries, chronicles, and, in the case of 0:15:25.680 --> 0:15:30.520 those arson allegations, court records. By the eighteenth century, though, 0:15:30.600 --> 0:15:35.880 the European scientific community had started establishing scientific journals. The 0:15:35.960 --> 0:15:40.120 first was Philosophical Transactions, which was established in March of 0:15:40.160 --> 0:15:43.920 sixteen sixty five by Henry Oldenberg, who was Secretary of 0:15:43.960 --> 0:15:49.920 the Royal Society. Philosophical Transactions documented the Royal Society's activities, 0:15:50.280 --> 0:15:54.640 including letters and papers that were read before Royal Society meetings. 0:15:55.360 --> 0:15:58.800 Some of these letters were between John Hucksam and William Watson, 0:15:58.880 --> 0:16:03.400 who were both medical doss and Royal Society fellows. Huxham 0:16:03.440 --> 0:16:06.960 wrote to Watson on July nineteenth, seventeen fifty seven, saying, 0:16:07.000 --> 0:16:09.840 in part quote, from the seventh to the fourteenth of 0:16:09.880 --> 0:16:13.720 this month, the heat was violent, greater indeed than has 0:16:13.800 --> 0:16:16.720 been known here in the memory of man. I have 0:16:16.800 --> 0:16:21.160 talked with several persons who have lived considerable time in Jamaica, Gibraltar, 0:16:21.280 --> 0:16:24.840 and Minorca, and they generally assert that they never felt 0:16:24.880 --> 0:16:29.240 such intense heat in any of those places. Huxham went 0:16:29.280 --> 0:16:32.520 on to say that in the Shade, Fahrenheit's thermometer read 0:16:32.560 --> 0:16:35.200 eighty seven degrees at three in the afternoon on the 0:16:35.240 --> 0:16:38.280 eleventh and thirteenth of July, and that it was above 0:16:38.400 --> 0:16:41.840 eighty eight on the twelfth. That's about thirty point five 0:16:42.000 --> 0:16:47.160 and thirty one point one degrees celsius. Huxham continued, quote, 0:16:47.240 --> 0:16:53.880 abundance of people have suffered very feverishly from these excessive heats. Putrid, bilious, 0:16:53.960 --> 0:17:01.200 particial nervous fevers are exceedingly common everywhere. Dysenteries, hemorrhages at 0:17:01.280 --> 0:17:05.159 most profuse sweats affect not only those in fevers, but 0:17:05.240 --> 0:17:09.560 of vast many others. He described both the days and 0:17:09.600 --> 0:17:13.159 the nights as intolerably hot, with people unable to sleep, 0:17:13.440 --> 0:17:16.639 and the wind even blowing hot so that it brought 0:17:16.760 --> 0:17:22.639 no relief. This publication in Philosophical Transactions also included a 0:17:22.760 --> 0:17:26.159 note from Watson with a table of temperatures recorded in 0:17:26.200 --> 0:17:30.960 Plymouth using Fahrenheit's thermometer. The temperatures were in the eighties 0:17:31.000 --> 0:17:33.919 from July tenth to fifteenth, with a peak of eighty 0:17:33.960 --> 0:17:37.560 five on July fourteenth. That's about twenty nine point four 0:17:37.600 --> 0:17:38.920 degrees celsius. 0:17:39.600 --> 0:17:42.240 Yeah, the temperatures that people would have been expecting in 0:17:42.280 --> 0:17:44.919 these areas at this point would have been more in 0:17:44.960 --> 0:17:49.800 the high seventies. On July twelfth, past podcast subject Horace 0:17:49.880 --> 0:17:53.240 Walpole wrote a letter to his friend John Shoot about 0:17:53.240 --> 0:17:56.880 his willingness to visit Shoot at his estate in Hampshire 0:17:57.160 --> 0:18:00.199 known as the Vine. Quote, I say nothing of the 0:18:00.240 --> 0:18:04.000 heat of this magnificent weather, with the glass yesterday up 0:18:04.040 --> 0:18:08.360 to three quarters of sultry. In all English probability, this 0:18:08.440 --> 0:18:11.600 will not be a hindrance long though at present so 0:18:11.760 --> 0:18:14.480 far from traveling. I have made the tour of my 0:18:14.600 --> 0:18:18.440 own garden, but once these three days before eight at night, 0:18:18.880 --> 0:18:21.560 and then I thought I should have died of it. 0:18:22.040 --> 0:18:24.840 For how many years we shall have to talk of 0:18:24.880 --> 0:18:26.399 the summer of fifty seven. 0:18:27.040 --> 0:18:29.960 A few days later, on the sixteenth, Walpole wrote a 0:18:30.040 --> 0:18:33.640 letter to George Montague saying, quote, the weather has been 0:18:33.760 --> 0:18:36.359 so hot, and we are so unused to it that 0:18:36.520 --> 0:18:40.360 nobody knew how to behave themselves. Even mister Bentley has 0:18:40.400 --> 0:18:44.400 done shivering. That was writer Richard Bentley, who was part 0:18:44.440 --> 0:18:48.080 of Walpole's Committee of Taste along with Shoot. A letter 0:18:48.119 --> 0:18:51.200 Walpole sent to Shoot ten days later described Bentley as 0:18:51.240 --> 0:18:55.439 suffering from sweating sickness quote, which I now firmly believe 0:18:55.560 --> 0:18:58.720 was only a hot summer like this, and England, being 0:18:58.760 --> 0:19:01.960 so unused to it, took it for a melody. The 0:19:02.040 --> 0:19:06.160 heat returned that August, and John Huxam wrote to William 0:19:06.200 --> 0:19:10.920 Watson again. This letter was also published in Philosophical Transactions. 0:19:11.560 --> 0:19:15.000 This time Huxam said that his thermometer read almost eighty 0:19:15.080 --> 0:19:19.040 six degrees or thirty celsius from August eighth through the tenth. 0:19:19.640 --> 0:19:22.520 This time, he wrote, quote, the consequences of this extremely 0:19:22.600 --> 0:19:26.080 hot season were hemorrhages from several parts of the body, 0:19:26.480 --> 0:19:30.760 the nose, especially in men and children, and the uterus 0:19:30.760 --> 0:19:35.200 in women. Sudden and violent pains of the head and vertigo, 0:19:35.400 --> 0:19:40.600 profuse sweats, great debility and oppression of the spirits affected many. 0:19:41.160 --> 0:19:44.679 There were putrid fevers in great abundance, and a vast 0:19:44.760 --> 0:19:48.440 quantity of fluxes of the belly, both bilious and bloody, 0:19:48.960 --> 0:19:54.119 with which the fevers also were commonly attended. Husam described 0:19:54.119 --> 0:19:57.359 these fevers as accompanied by severe pains in the back 0:19:57.440 --> 0:20:02.919 and stomach, vomiting, chest pain, anxiety, and an inability to sleep. 0:20:03.800 --> 0:20:07.199 At this point, medicine in Europe was still largely dominated 0:20:07.240 --> 0:20:10.240 by the idea of the four humors, and from there 0:20:10.359 --> 0:20:12.919 he describes the quality of the pulse in people who 0:20:12.960 --> 0:20:17.400 were affected and their blood which was quote oftentimes florid, 0:20:17.440 --> 0:20:22.840 but loose, sometimes livid, very rarely fizzy. He thought blood 0:20:22.920 --> 0:20:26.040 letting was always beneficial, especially if it was done early 0:20:26.200 --> 0:20:30.600 in people who developed this heat related fever. It seems 0:20:30.600 --> 0:20:33.959 as though the weather was milder off the southern coast 0:20:34.040 --> 0:20:37.159 of the UK. John Smeaton also wrote a letter that 0:20:37.280 --> 0:20:41.560 was read before the Royal Society about conditions at Eddystone Lighthouse, 0:20:41.600 --> 0:20:45.280 south of Plymouth. He said that the weather had been 0:20:45.400 --> 0:20:49.439 very moderate there in July, sometimes even cold for the season. 0:20:50.800 --> 0:20:55.320 I read this letter as like weirdly braggy and doubting 0:20:56.240 --> 0:21:00.640 the accuracy of other people's reports of intense, un terrible heat. 0:21:01.080 --> 0:21:04.520 Gosh, it's terrific here. We actually need to wear sweaters. 0:21:06.720 --> 0:21:10.199 Scottish physician James Lynde, who is most well known for 0:21:10.320 --> 0:21:13.640 his recommendation that citrus could be used to prevent scurvy 0:21:13.720 --> 0:21:17.760 in Sailors published an Essay on the Most Effectual Means 0:21:18.000 --> 0:21:20.960 of Preserving the Health of Seamen in the Royal Navy 0:21:21.160 --> 0:21:25.119 in seventeen forty four. A section of its appendix is 0:21:25.160 --> 0:21:29.280 called Comparative Degrees of Heat and Cold in different latitudes, 0:21:29.640 --> 0:21:33.520 and among other things, it describes typical temperatures in Edinburgh 0:21:33.600 --> 0:21:35.840 and what it was like in the summer of seventeen 0:21:35.920 --> 0:21:39.760 fifty seven. He wrote quote in the warmest weather in June, 0:21:39.840 --> 0:21:43.520 July and August, the mercury was commonly at seventy in 0:21:43.560 --> 0:21:45.960 the middle of the day and sixty four in the night. 0:21:46.760 --> 0:21:50.040 But during uncommon heats it has risen to seventy three 0:21:50.080 --> 0:21:53.240 and seventy five, perhaps once or twice in a year, 0:21:53.359 --> 0:21:57.680 and sometimes not in two years. The greatest heat observed 0:21:57.720 --> 0:22:00.680 by the instrument there was on the twelfth July seventeen 0:22:00.760 --> 0:22:03.160 fifty seven, when in the middle of the day and 0:22:03.280 --> 0:22:07.560 well shaded, it mounted to eighty degrees. The heat was 0:22:07.600 --> 0:22:12.560 then quite stifling. Seventy degrees fahrenheit is about twenty one 0:22:12.560 --> 0:22:16.320 point one degree celsius, seventy five is about twenty three 0:22:16.320 --> 0:22:19.840 point eight, and eighty fahrenheit is roughly twenty six point 0:22:19.920 --> 0:22:24.679 six degrees celsius. Temperatures spiked in France in the summer 0:22:24.680 --> 0:22:28.320 of seventeen fifty seven as well, with a recorded high 0:22:28.359 --> 0:22:32.280 of ninety nine point five degrees fahrenheit or thirty seven 0:22:32.320 --> 0:22:37.000 point five celsius that was reported in Paris on July fourteenth. 0:22:37.200 --> 0:22:40.919 But beyond the general description repeated in a lot of 0:22:41.000 --> 0:22:45.639 places of the hottest summer since fifteen forty, I just 0:22:45.760 --> 0:22:48.679 did not find a lot of specific information about the 0:22:48.720 --> 0:22:52.960 heat wave's death toll or other effects. It does seem 0:22:53.080 --> 0:22:56.880 like on average, temperatures in Europe started to cool after 0:22:56.960 --> 0:23:01.199 seventeen fifty seven, and that cooling trend cantinued until just 0:23:01.320 --> 0:23:04.920 after the start of the twentieth century. One model shows 0:23:05.119 --> 0:23:08.800 nineteen oh two as the coolest European summer in the 0:23:08.880 --> 0:23:12.520 last five hundred years. But then, of course things really 0:23:12.560 --> 0:23:15.880 started to heat up again, and we will talk about 0:23:16.359 --> 0:23:19.080 some of that heat after we pause for a sponsor break. 0:23:28.720 --> 0:23:32.399 Our last heat wave today is more recent than what 0:23:32.480 --> 0:23:35.960 we typically talk about on the show. When I started 0:23:35.960 --> 0:23:38.679 working on this episode, my whole plan was for it 0:23:38.720 --> 0:23:41.720 to be only about the July heat wave of seventeen 0:23:41.800 --> 0:23:44.960 fifty seven and then I realized I just did not 0:23:45.200 --> 0:23:48.879 have enough information to do a whole episode only on that. 0:23:49.840 --> 0:23:53.560 But that summer is usually described as the hottest one 0:23:53.760 --> 0:23:58.200 from fifteen forty to two thousand and three. Sometimes fifteen 0:23:58.320 --> 0:24:01.359 forty and two thousand and three are presented almost like 0:24:01.520 --> 0:24:05.400 brackets around the summer of seventeen fifty seven. So once 0:24:05.440 --> 0:24:08.639 I decided to talk about fifteen forty, it made sense 0:24:08.720 --> 0:24:12.040 to talk about that more recent one as well. And 0:24:12.119 --> 0:24:14.840 there is of course way more data about the two 0:24:14.880 --> 0:24:16.960 thousand and three heat wave than the other two that 0:24:17.000 --> 0:24:20.480 we've talked about today. Thanks to a massive network of 0:24:20.520 --> 0:24:24.679 weather monitoring stations and the ability to process and evaluate data, 0:24:25.200 --> 0:24:27.160 we know that the summer of two thousand and three 0:24:27.359 --> 0:24:30.040 saw temperatures in Europe that were often between twenty and 0:24:30.160 --> 0:24:35.040 thirty percent higher than average. Overnight temperatures were often higher 0:24:35.119 --> 0:24:38.399 than the typical high during the day, and these conditions 0:24:38.480 --> 0:24:43.440 lasted from June to mid August. The highest recorded temperature 0:24:43.520 --> 0:24:46.200 in the UK during this heat wave was thirty eight 0:24:46.240 --> 0:24:50.639 point one celsius or one hundred point fifty eight fahrenheit, 0:24:51.119 --> 0:24:55.280 and that was at the time the highest temperature ever 0:24:55.359 --> 0:24:59.439 recorded in the UK. Switzerland set a record of forty 0:24:59.520 --> 0:25:03.000 one points five celsius or one hundred and six point 0:25:03.080 --> 0:25:07.840 seven fahrenheit. Temperatures in central and western Europe were around 0:25:07.920 --> 0:25:11.119 thirty five to forty degrees celsius or ninety five to 0:25:11.200 --> 0:25:14.720 one hundred and four fahrenheit repeatedly over the course of 0:25:14.760 --> 0:25:19.360 this heat wave. According to the UN Environment Program, this 0:25:19.480 --> 0:25:23.480 heat wave was Europe's worst natural disaster in fifty years, 0:25:23.840 --> 0:25:27.080 and one of the ten deadliest over the previous century. 0:25:28.080 --> 0:25:31.399 Its Environment Alert bulletin about the heat wave estimated that 0:25:31.480 --> 0:25:34.320 the death hole would be more than thirty thousand people. 0:25:35.240 --> 0:25:38.800 There were more than fourteen thousand deaths in France alone, 0:25:38.840 --> 0:25:43.480 disproportionately in Paris. Many of the people who died were elderly, 0:25:43.680 --> 0:25:46.879 and the most vulnerable group in France was elderly women 0:25:46.920 --> 0:25:50.840