Mercury over 100° F, death toll over 1,000
After visiting relatives down South, Lula Fields, 43, was driving home to Michigan with her husband when she appeared to doze off near Jackson, Tenn. He stopped their car to rouse her, but failed: she had died, soundlessly, of a heat stroke caused by the 100° F weather. In Atlanta, Willie Jones, 52, was discovered prostrate on the floor of his hot, airless apartment; half an hour after doctors packed him in ice, he was still unconscious, with an almost unheard-of body temperature of 116°. In...
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