The year 1707 was that in which Scotland and England were united under the Westminster parliament, thereby providing a framework to partially undo again in 1999.
The Act of Union, which came into force on May 1st, 1707, had stirred up enormous apathy in Scotland, and antipathy in London, where visions of uncouth, highland Scots descending on the capital to represent their nation did little to reassure the genteel inhabitants of that city that any useful purpose was being served.
Besides, the weather was atrocious. England was in the middle of the Little Ice Age, when winters were much harder and harsher than we know today, and the summers were wet, windy and chilly with poor harvests. It is partly for this reason that the one fine spell that came along that year is so vividly recorded, but more so perhaps for the one particular day that was its climax.
"Hot Tuesday" was 292 years ago today, on July 19th, 1707. We do not know how hot it really was, but the very great number of deaths from excessive heat in the south of England were sufficient for that day to acquire a name that has survived the centuries.
Many other days have similar associations. "Hot Wednesday", for example, was July 13th, 1808, when temperatures of 35C were experienced in many places in the English Home Counties, with 37 C being reported in Suffolk.
In the United states, there are several references in contemporary writings to the famous "Hot Sunday" of June 18th, 1749.
In one of them, Dr Edward Holyoke declared this day to have produced "the greatest heat known in this country at least for the last 40 years", while Benjamin Franklin noted that his thermometer climbed to an even 100F at Philadelphia that day.
Other weekdays are remembered for being at the other end of the meteorological scale. "Black Monday" was Easter Monday, 1360; on that day the army of Edward III of England was laying siege to Paris and it was so dark, windy and bitterly cold that many men and horses died. "Windy Friday" was January 24th, 1868, when savage gales demolished many stone buildings in Edinburgh to the extent that their memory lives on.
"Black Saturday", August 4th, 1621, is also of Scottish origin. On that day the Edinburgh parliament had met to reimpose epi scopal authority on Scotland, but - god-sent or not - a violent storm disrupted the proceedings, and the measure had to be postponed. Back in America again, "Blizzard Monday" was Monday, March 12th, 1888, when "the great white hurricane" threw the eastern seaboard of the United States into chaos and confusion.