Title: Hot time in the old town
Subtitle: the catastrophic heat wave that devastated Gilded Age New York
Description: The 1896 New York heat wave that killed almost 1,500 people in ten oppressively hot days coincided with a pitched presidential contest between William McKinley and the upstart Democrat William Jennings Bryan, who arrived in New York City at the height of the catastrophe. As historian Edward P. Kohn shows, Bryan's hopes for the presidency began to flag amidst the abhorrent heat just as a bright young police commissioner named Theodore Roosevelt was scrambling to mitigate the dangerously high temperatures.
Subjects: History, Heat waves (Meteorology), Environmental conditions, Social aspects of Heat waves (Meteorology), Mortality, Social conditions, Biography, State & Local, General, Middle Atlantic (DC, DE, MD, NJ, NY, PA), New England (CT, MA, ME, NH, RI, VT), Ecology, Social aspects, Heat Stroke, Gastrointestinal Diseases, Cholera
Places: New York (N.Y.), New York (State), New York
People: William Jennings Bryan (1860-1925), Theodore Roosevelt (1858-1919)
Time periods: 19th century, 1865-1898