The 1936 North American heat wave was the most severe heat wave in the modern history of North America. It took place in the middle of the Great Depression and Dust Bowl of the 1930s, and caused catastrophic human suffering and an enormous economic toll. The death toll exceeded 5,000, and huge numbers of crops were destroyed by the heat and lack of moisture. Many state and city record high temperatures set during the 1936 heat wave still stand to this day. The heat wave followed one of the coldest winters on record.
Read more about 1936 North American Heat Wave: Events, Effect On The Environment
Famous quotes containing the words north, american, heat and/or wave:
“Biography is a very definite region bounded on the north by history, on the south by fiction, on the east by obituary, and on the west by tedium.”
—Philip Guedalla (1889–1944)
“There exists in a great part of the Northern people a gloomy diffidence in the moral character of the government. On the broaching of this question, as general expression of despondency, of disbelief that any good will accrue from a remonstrance on an act of fraud and robbery, appeared in those men to whom we naturally turn for aid and counsel. Will the American government steal? Will it lie? Will it kill?—We ask triumphantly.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“And suddenly, to be dying
Is not a little or mean or cheap thing,
Only wearying, the heat unbearable ...”
—John Ashbery (b. 1927)
“I don’t know a great deal about life in Washington for women—I spent a summer there once working in the White House, and my main memories of the experience have to do with a very bad permanent wave I have always been convinced kept me from having a meaningful relationship with President Kennedy ...”
—Nora Ephron (b. 1941)