Britain sweltered through its hottest day on record Sunday and Alpine glaciers melted as the heat wave that has baked much of Europe for days sizzled relentlessly on. The heat and drought-driven fires across the continent prompted Pope John Paul II to urge people to pray for rain. "It is just miserable. You can't get any respite from it," said Londoner Ranald Davidson, squinting in the late afternoon sun as Britain surpassed 100 degrees for the first time. The national weather service recorded a reading of 100.22 degrees on the Fahrenheit scale at Heathrow Airport, outside a parched and baking London, and 100.58 degrees at Gravesend in southern England. Northern parts of the country were cooler, and torrential rain created problems in North Yorkshire. Germans, too, have had record heat. In the Bavarian city of Roth, the temperature hit nearly 105 degrees Saturday. The previous record of 104 was also in Bavaria, set in 1983. More than 40 deaths - including a 3-year-old French girl who died in a parked car on Sunday - have been blamed on temperatures that have hovered in the 100-degree range for days.

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