Scorching Heat Baking Big Apple

Don't sweat it, New York.

While this month's sizzling weather may feel unbearable, with the temperature hitting a high of 97 degrees yesterday, tying a record, it pales in comparison to the heat wave that city residents endured in the summer of '96 -- 1896, that is.

In his new book, "Hot Time in the Old Town," historian Edward Kohn details how New Yorkers faced hellish conditions over 10 brutally hot days in early August. Over that time, 1,300 people died in Manhattan alone, making it the worst urban heat-related disaster in US history.

With the city's heat index routinely surpassing 120 degrees and nighttime temperatures never once dropping below 70, the city was transformed into what one local newspaper described as "an inferno of brick and stone.

Without air conditioning or even reliable deliveries of ice, tenements became ovenlike death traps. Almost the entire Lower East Side, around 250,000.....Read more