OVER the weekend I acquired an original copy of the Daily Mirror, dated Friday, July 30, 1948, priced one penny.

While the headline referred to Mr Molotov the Soviet Foreign Minister and a problem over Berlin, it was the small printed news in brief on the front page that caught my eye.

Among other items reporting events of the previous day, the following five are of special interest.

1. A bull ran wild in the heat at the Metropolitan Cattle Market, in East London, and injured a man 2. Two thousand girls at Cadbury’s Bournville factory had the day off – it was so hot the chocolate wouldn’t set.

3 Highest temperature was 93F at Kensington Palace. London’s midnight temperature was 74F.

4 The temperature on the roof of a chemical factory at Tenterden in Kent reached 110F – explosion point of the chemical. Firemen brought it down to 90F and hosed the iron roof all afternoon.

5. A three-hour thunderstorm flooded Cardiff streets.

This heatwave was 62 years ago when London held the Olympics.

If this happened today it would be blamed entirely on global warming or the beginning of the Apocalypse.

David Brown, Jordan Hill, Oxford