Coldest in Years

In Brussels one morning last week, 130 taxicabs were stalled by the cold. In The Netherlands' southern Limburg, milk companies gave up their bottling because the milk froze and cracked all the bottles. In Vienna services at famed St. Stephen's Cathedral had to be moved into the crypt. The people of sunny Nice, all set to celebrate the city's annual carnival, opened their windows to find a blanket of snow covering streets and palm trees. In Rome at least one moppet, seeing Rome's first real snowfall in his lifetime (ten years), begged permission of his parents to go out and play in the farina (flour). Ice formed on the lagoon in Venice, and near Naples kids went skiing on Mount Vesuvius.

All of Europe shivered in the worst winter of the century. "Our temperature is lower than at the North Pole," one Moscow taxi driver told his fare proudly and accurately (Moscow thermometers registered -36.4DEG F., as opposed to the recordings of -7.6DEG at the pole). On Helgoland, in the North Sea, chilled islanders gathered together 8,000 cubic meters of firewood to build a gigantic bonfire.

Gourmets to the last, the newspapers of Paris printed up special menus "pour le grand froid." Their recommendation: plenty of red meat and fresh vegetables. Movie houses and theaters canceled their shows. The hydraulic elevators at the Eiffel Tower refused to work, and even the doughty and haughty clochards (the hobos of Paris) sought shelter in the stations of their ancient enemies, the police.

Britons were busy, as they usually are during any national crisis, taking care of their nation's animals. Rangers toured Wimbledon Common in a pony cart passing out food to wild birds. A fireman risked his life on the ice of a lake at Stanmore to save an Alsatian wolf dog that had fallen through. An R.A.F. helicopter winged its way across Suffolk to rescue icebound swans, and a Mrs. Phyllis Buckle, 57, of London did her bit by carrying 6 Ibs. of corn, two loaves of bread and a hot-water bottle to the pigeons huddling in Trafalgar Square.

One small Briton, two-year-old Abraham McKillop of Dumbartonshire, had a miraculous escape when he was found covered with snow after 16 hours in a frozen ditch, and thawed out unharmed. But not everybody was so fortunate. All in all, the cold weather claimed at least 140 lives.

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