It was 120 degrees Fahrenheit the day residents of Altus, Oklahoma, believed Jasper Pendleton was wearing shorts while riding his bicycle. Thankfully for Pendleton, they were mistaken. In an effort to beat the historic mid-August heat, he had merely rolled up his pants.
It was a close call with a major faux pas, depending on where you were in the country in 1936, as the continent baked in a series of record-breaking heat domes that became known as the 1936 North American heat wave.
“Lots of cities throughout the country had anti-shorts laws, although they often didn’t call them that,” says Geoff Williams, author of the 2026 book The Summer of Death: The Great Heat Wave of 1936 and the Making of Modern-Day America.
By today’s standards, it seems quaint for modesty to have been on the minds of sweltering Americans, but the dangerous conditions pitted long-held fashion standards against a boiling desire to cool off at all costs.
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