Paris, July 26 -- Even ice cream, Italian gelato or Popsicles couldn't help this time.

Temperature records that had stood for decades or even just hours fell minute by minute Thursday afternoon and Europeans and tourists alike jumped into fountains, lakes, rivers or the sea to escape a suffocating heat wave rising up from the Sahara.

On a day that no one on the continent will ever forget, two potential drug dealers in Belgium even called the police, begging to be rescued from the locked container they managed to get themselves trapped in.

It was nearly impossible to keep up with the falling records as temperatures climbed higher and higher under a brutal sun - in Paris and London, in Belgium, Germany, the Netherlands - all places where...