History shows French heatwaves used to be far deadlier. The year 1911 saw an uninterrupted scorching summer and tens of thousands of lives lost.
As is the case with modern reports claiming all-new “unprecedented events” written by the climate ambulance-chasing media, we usually find out days later that such events have in reality happened before and were in fact far worse.
This is the case with the last week’s French “record-breaking” heatwave.
“Crushing” heatwave of 1911
French online Le Parisien here looks back at the “crushing”, “almost uninterrupted” heatwave of 1911, which dragged 70 tortuous days from early July to mid-September.
Le Parisien writes how Paris “cooked” under the scorching heat and how “thousands of babies were lost.”
Not only Paris was “burning”, but so were other locations across western Europe. Le Parisien reports how temperatures soared to 40°C in Lyon, Bordeaux, and London.
For 15 days, the thermometer refused to go below 30°C
The French say that when July is hot, a cool August usually follows. But that was not the case in 1911. August was even worse: “For fifteen days in a row, the Parisian thermometer refused to go below 30°C!”
Le Parisien describes how the public turned sour against meteorologists, who had predicted the heat would soon recede and the heat nightmare would end. But that did not happen until mid-September.
41,072 dead, record mortality rate
In total the heatwave claimed more than 40,000 lives, Le Parisien reports. Parts of Paris ran out of water supplies and the dailies reported “the list of victims, mowed down by the heat or its consequences” and how “from July 23 to 29, then from August 13 to 19, mortality reached record highs.”
Le Parisien summarized: “In total, the 1911 heatwave, which lasted until mid-September, caused 41,072 deaths in France” and that most of the victims were either the elderly or babies under two years of age. Overall the tragedy saw infant mortality increase 20%.
“This year will have to be marked with a black cross,” wrote a doctor in his diary. In contrast, the French heatwave of 2003 killed 15,000.
500,000 dead in 1636
There were also other “murderous summers” in France, Le Parisien writes that thanks to the work of Emmanuel Le Roy-Ladurie, “we know that a terrible heatwave in 1636 killed 500,000 of King Louis XIII’s subjects.”
Many of the deaths resulted from epidemics of dysentery as water supplies dwindled and soured.
700,000 deaths, swarms of locusts in 1718-19
Le Parisien also cites the three-volume “Histoire humaine et comparée du climat” (Human and Comparative History of Climate), which describes how the summers of 1718-19 saw “700,000 deaths recorded” and how the Paris region had been “transformed into the Sahara” and even saw “the appearance of swarms of locusts!”
Read more at No Tricks Zone
I wonder what cars they drove in the 1600’s for it to be so hot?
I don’t care what anyone says. I’m glad we don’t have to wear suits all the time, even though they had lighter summer suits that picture looks uncomfortable.
Its been 50 years next month when Hurricane Camile hit the Gulf Coast and ended up dumping 27 inches of in North Carolina after it had devestated the Gulf Coast and that’s long before Al Gore was blabbering his mindless nonsense
Macron is going to find it getting even hotter as the global warmy promoter gets
run off .
Those stories about the 1636 and 1712-13 heat waves — must have been concocted by the “Deniers”, those not entrenched in the Global Warming faith. The Global Warming faithful will have to purge the history books of these heretical facts that contradicts their faith.
The Dust Bowl of the 1930’s. That would shake things up today. But it happened 85 years ago.
Without the concocted global average temperature, without the alarmist MSM, who would fret about the “Climate” ? Who would have thought something new was happening? It’s a panic implanted in the minds of the susceptible by the power – hungry elites. How long will it take for people to wake up?
But the Liberal Alarmist Media (LAMe) keeps pumping out the same message. How many times does someone have to hear something before they accept it as fact? Just to make sure, LAMe multiplies that number by 1,000.
They claim ‘climate change’ was studied long before the 1970’s because of some article in ‘Scientific American’ published in the 1910’s about Switzerland’s glaciers melting earlier than usual. They are grasping at strews at this point.