The heat wave that made America legalize shorts

People often say that a country is going to hell. And the summer of 1936 was certainly infernal. Over the course of the summer, over 11,000 Americans and 1,000 Canadians either perished in the heat, or because of the heat.

The heat can kill you in crazy ways. Even if it doesn’t destroy your body, you could be driving, and your tire might blow out, and suddenly you’re careering into a tree. That type of thing happened a lot during the summer of 1936.

The extremes of that summer also resulted in something less dire: T-shirts and shorts became widely popular.

Before then, people were used to dressing in a lot of layers. And while the materials in summer were lighter, they were still hot. That arrangement was tolerated most summers.Temperatures would climb, and everyone would grimace and bear it, sweating underneath coats and petticoats, vests and corsets, hats and gloves. But the summer of 1936 was too much. It was a summer when people perished because of their choice of clothing.

(Heat waves kill people—and climate change is making it much, much worse)

That year would have been a memorable one for weather, even without the diabolical summer. The winter of 1935-1936 brought almost-impossible-to-survive temperatures, like -60 degrees (in Parshall, North Dakota). Throughout the country, hundreds of Americans froze to death in their homes. And in early April, 14 tornadoes struck the southeastern United States overnight, killing at least 454 Americans.

And then, of course, there was the summer.

There were signs in the spring that the summer might be hot—people across the country were already collapsing from the heat and ending up in hospitals. By May, the first deaths started—but nobody knew what they were dealing with until the mercury and death toll started rising and never seemed to end. States and territories alike were under assault.

From Maine to Arizona, Alaska to Alabama, virtually no part of the country was untouched by the summer heat. A few places came out mostly unscathed—Wyoming and Colorado, thanks in part to mountain winds, fared pretty well. Most of Florida, due to its ocean breezes, came out fine, and it helped that its citizens were pretty accustomed to the heat. Hawaii, a U.S. territory at the time, had some schools shut down in August due to the heat, but otherwise, it was a tropical paradise. But just about everywhere else, Americans—and Canadians—were in a fight for survival.

In Wichita, Kansas, for instance, the high was 100 or more degrees for 20 days in a row. That same month, in August, Oklahoma City had 22 days in a row of 100 or more degrees. Earlier that summer, on July 14, it was as if Mother Nature placed the entire continent underneath a giant magnifying glass: more than 1,000 people officially were killed by the heat.

That number was likely far more, however, due to indirect deaths, like the aforementioned tire blowout. After all, if the heat causes you to seek cooler air in your basement, and then you fall down the stairs, as happened to Frank Cress, a 74-year-old man in Cincinnati, was it the heat that did him in, or bad luck and gravity? Coroners weren’t always certain what to put down on the death certificate.

On July 14, 1936, at one Detroit hospital, a doctor performed 150 autopsies of heat victims in a 36-hour period (the day before, the Associated Press reported that over a 14-hour period in Detroit, the heat was killing residents at a rate of one every 10 minutes). In the Twin Cities, newspapers said that the deaths were coming in at three per minute.

(These tried-and-true tips will help you stay cool on a hot day)

In Kentucky, Arkansas, Missouri, Michigan, Oklahoma, Ohio, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Indiana, Nebraska and North Dakota, the mercury ranged between 100 and 110 degrees. It hit 113 degrees in several cities like Cedar Rapids, Iowa, and Fredonia, Kansas. In Brawley, California, it reached  122 degrees.

And yet if you wore shorts in the wrong city, or if you were a male taking off your shirt at the beach, you might be arrested.

How extreme heat transformed America

You can argue that every season, or even every day, brings some changes that affect the historical timeline. But the summer of 1936 made a profound impact on the country’s future, starting with air-conditioning.

That summer was practically a three-month advertisement for the fledgling air-conditioning industry. Minneapolis hospitals were soon promising their community that they’d have cool air in the operating rooms before the year was up. Harvard’s School of Public Health quickly produced a study that determined that a newborn’s chance of survival shot up by 26 percent if they were born in an air-conditioned room. If it weren’t for World War II, throttling its progress, air-conditioning would have certainly become more mainstream earlier than the 1950s and 1960s.

The 1936 heat wave also was an early clarion call for climate change. Clarence Mills, professor of experimental medicine at the University of Cincinnati, was at the forefront of the climate change conversation, though “climate change” as a term was rarely, if ever, used. But that summer in a column that he wrote for the Associated Press, Milles wrote of “irregularly rising world temperatures” and observed that “the rise has been proceeding with irregular relapses into colder periods, since about 1850. And as earth temperatures rise, summer heat and aridity grow more severe in portions of continents far inland from the source of moisture, such as the great plains area.”

A lasting change in the weather weighed on the public’s mind. This was the Dust Bowl era, after all, and the summer of 1934 had also been quite deadly. Throughout 1936, ordinary citizens kept asking meteorologists if the weather had changed permanently— and received a variety of answers, ranging from ‘it’s possible’ to ‘no way’.

Shrinking sleeves—and hemlines

The most durable change wrought by the heat wave of 1936, though, was in fashion. Everyone tends to think of the 1960s as the decade when American fashion truly became modern with young Americans’ tie-dye T-shirts and cut-off shorts. It’s certainly true that fashion dramatically shifted in those years. But the hippies of the ‘60s had parents growing up in the 1930s—and that was the decade when a lot of people, young and old, were pushing their peers to embrace wearing short sleeves and short pants in hot weather.

While the fashion changes in the 1960s were countercultural, the shifts in 1936 received establishment support. Dr. Herman N. Bundesen, president of the Chicago Board of Health, said in a newspaper interview that the public should wear just enough clothes to satisfy the police. He said that women were pretty “sensible” with their clothing choices, but the men were “very silly.” Bundesen complained: “Who but a man would wear four layers of starched clothes around his neck and then tie a wool rag under his chin, just to make sure he choked to death? Shorts and a soft shirt would be sensible dress for men in a heat wave."

(How cities are fighting back against the 'heat island effect')

In Yonkers, on June 21, two reporters from the New York Daily News —hoping to test the city's anti-shorts law—were arrested for wearing shorts in Yonkers after a hike. They were given the choice to leave the city or put on more appropriate clothing. They refused and were eventually brought forth before city judge Charles W. Boote. The judge was probably sweating underneath his robe when he made his decision on July 10, when the high was 102. Boote was sympathetic to the journalists, fining them $10 (adjusted for inflation about $240) but suspending the fines.

In the New York area, everybody had an opinion on whether shorts should be allowed. In the Bronx, people were hiking in shorts and halter tops freely. But about 40 miles away, in Westport, Connecticut, city officials discussed creating their own modesty law that would forbid shorts. In Farmingdale, a village of Long Island, the police chief declared that shorts were okay—unless citizens complained, and then he might have to rethink that.

But these discussions were happening all over the country, in backyards, parks, the workplace and even in church, where a young woman on Long Island made headlines for being ejected by a priest for not being appropriately covered up. In Covington, Kentucky, police officers were told to cite any teenage girls or women dressed in shorts and halter tops for indecent exposure. In Ann Arbor, Michigan, when a business owner allowed his male employees to wear shorts in the store, he confided to the Detroit Free Press that he was worried about the public reaction and was relieved that nobody seemed to object. There were also heated arguments over whether to ban nudist colonies, which first appeared in the United States in 1931 and were quickly gaining favor, especially during a summer when everyone wanted to take their clothes off.

A forgotten summer

Eventually, fall arrived, and the temperature ticked down, and cooler heads somewhat prevailed. In 1937, the anti-shorts law in Yonkers was overturned, and while T-shirts and shorts were more broadly accepted, at least with some people, the hats, gloves and layers generally stayed on. Time passed, the nation entered WWII, and people began to forget about fighting about climate change and arguing for a new wardrobe, until the 1960s, when once again, a generation tired of wearing gloves, hats, and layers of clothing said enough is enough—and this time, the clothes stayed off. Meanwhile, the heat wave became relegated to the occasional news story in the summer when old-timers would say, “You think this is hot? You should have been here back in 1936.”

But the 1936 heat wave shouldn’t be forgotten. There have been a lot of extreme weather events in American history. Floods like Johnstown (1889). Hurricanes like Galveston (1900) and Katrina (2005). The 1978 blizzard. The summer of 1936 belongs on that list and deserves to come out of the shadows and back into the sunlight. Because maybe if we remembered our hot sweaty past a little more, we might do more to fix our planet and avoid an even hotter, sweaty future. But if not, at least we’ll be comfortable in T-shirts and shorts.