Nationally, around 5,000 deaths were associated with the heat wave.
For example, in La Crosse, Wisconsin there were 14 consecutive days (July 5th-18th) where the high temperature was 90 degrees or greater, and 9 days that were at or above 100 degrees. In Decorah, Iowa the temperature hit 111 degrees on July 14, 1936.
Also that year the Baseball Hall of Fame was founded in Cooperstown, New York. Ty Cobb got more votes than Babe Ruth in the first inductees. Cobb was a great player, but during his career, he was a hated player who was involved in numerous fights on and off the field and profanity-laced shouting matches.
In June 196. he was taken to a hospital after falling into a diabetic coma; he died there on July 17, 1961, at age 74.
The year 1936 was significant in US, chess history because the first modern championship was held that year.
Organizers planned for preliminary round-robins to select eight qualifiers for the 16-man finals. Seeded into the finals were: Reshevsky, Fine, Dake, Kashdan, Kupchik, Steiner, Horowitz and Kevitz.
However, there were so few advance entries for the preliminaries that the organizers had to drop the registration fee from $10 (about $221 today) to $5 and eventually 48 players entered.
It was interesting because of two unheralded New Yorkers (George N. Treysman and Albert C. Simonson) and a frequent visitor to the city were in the finals (Arthur Dake).
The 55-year old Treysman was well known He was a professional coffeehouse player who earned dimes playing speed chess, often at upto and including Queens (!) at the rundown East Side chess clubs that at the time were located all over Manhattan.
The youngest contestant was Albert C. (Buddy) Simonson and his result came as a huge surprise. Even though he had played on the US
World Championship Team at Folkestone in 1933, his record was not all that great, but there had been a steady increase in his playing
strength since then. He was also recognized as one of th city’s best bridge and backgammon players.
The other player to watch was a merchant seaman from Portland, Oregon which is 2,900 miles from New York. Arthur Dake already already had an international reputation as a result of his play in the Olympiad team tournament held the previous year in Warsaw. There he achieved a remarkable score of +13 -0 =5.
The tournament started with Kashdan going 4-0 followed by Treysman with 3.5. But then in the 5th round they both lost and Dake assumed the lead and by round 9 he had scored +5 -0 =5.
For the favorite, Reshevky, the tournament was, to use his words, “something of a nightmare."
He started out win and a draw, but the blundered badly against the
Sidney Bernstein and was completely outplayed by Al Horowitz in Round 4.
One of his main rivals was Isaac Kashdan and when they met in round 8 Reshevsky’s opening play lead to Kashdan getting a good advantage, but later he underestimated Reshevsky’s threats and played too passively. As a result, Reshevsky got compensation for the exchange he had lost earlier and ended up catching Kashdan in a cheapo. After that, Reshevsky became invigorated and won nine and drew only once in the next ten games.
Another favorite was Reuben Fine, but he was stuck in a quagmire of draws. As for Dake, he suddenly fell apart and only scored two points in his last six games which started with a loss to Reshevsky.
In all the excitement of major tournament one tends ot concentrate on the play of the leaders, but other players were participating aod they sometimes produced exciting games.
One such game was the next to last round game between Dake and the eccentric and erratic Weaver dams. In this game Adams unsuccessfully played the aggressive Falkbeer Counter ambit.
Arthur Dake–Weaver Adams1–0C31US Championship, New York13.05.1936Stockfish 15.1
Falkbeer Counter Gambit 1.e4 e5 2.f4 d5 An aggressive defense in which
black opens up the center in an attempt to exploit white's weakened K-side. In
my database 8 our of 10 games are decisive with the results being almost
equally distributed between white wins and black wis! 3.exd5 3.fxe5
is a gross blunder. h4+ 4.g3 4.e2 xe4+ 5.f2 c5+ 6.g3 g6+ 7.f4 7.f3 g4# 7...f5+ 8.g3 f2# 4...xe4+ 3...e4 This is the old main
line. Nimzovich favored 3...c6 which fares quite well in my database with
black winning 2/3s of the games. 3...exf4 is occasionally seen. 4.f3 f6 4...xd5 5.d4 g4 6.xf4 Now black should probably play 6...Nc6 xf3 7.xf3 xf3 8.gxf3 Unclear. 5.c4 c6 6.d4 the chances are equal. 4.d4 f5 4...f6 5.c4 b5 6.cxb5 bd7 7.c3 b6 8.b3 d6 Black is slightly
better. Fernandez Rubio,U-Campora,D (2549) Seville 2005 4...xd5 5.c4 b4+ 6.d2 xd2+ 7.xd2 d6 8.c3 f6 9.0-0-0 0-0 equals. Van den Heever,D
(2274)-Bhawoodien,S (2135) Cape Town RSA 2014 5.c4 f6 6.c3 a6 7.h3
b5 Aggressive play. If black does not play aggressively white will
certainly get the better of it. 8.e3 The immediate 8.Ng5 was also good. bxc4 9.xc4 d6 Black probably should have played 9...h6 here to stop the N
from improving its position. Better is 9...h6! 10.g5= e7 11.0-0 0-0 12.e6 A bone in black's throat! e8 12...xe6 13.dxe6 c6 14.d5 White naturally avoids closing the Bs diagonal with 11.d5 xd5 15.xd5 with a fine position. 13.h3 bd7 Adams does not sense the
danger or he would have played 13...Kh8 Black should try 13...h8 14.xc7 b6 14...xc7 15.d6+ 15.xe8 xe8 Black plays on out
of inertia. It's unlikely that Dake would somehow manage to lose from this
position. 16.b3 f6 17.f2 b7 18.h4 f7 19.xf6 xf6 20.a4 a5 21.b5 b7 22.c1 Dake has baited a trap into which Adams falls...not that it
matters because he is quite lost xd5 Of course...materially black now has a
B vs a R+P 23.xd6 23.c7 really smashes black! xc7 24.xc7 b6 25.d7 c6 26.xd5 23...xd6 24.c5 h8 25.xd5 xd5 26.d2 Seeing no reason
to play on, Adams resigned. 1–0
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