Why People Used to Be Afraid of Solar Eclipses

Americans eagerly anticipating the first total solar eclipse visible in the contiguous U.S. since 1979 — and the first to cross the country from coast to coast in 99 years — may know well know that what they’re watching is the moon simply passing in front of the sun. But even so, as long as eclipses have occurred, humans have interpreted them as a sign of something. As TIME editor-at-large Jeffrey Kluger explains in the above video, the Lydians and the Medes ended a war in 585 B.C. because they took a solar eclipse eclipse as a sign of heavenly disapproval. The Roman author Pliny the elder drew a line from the eclipse of 59 A.D. to towns being struck by lightning. Eclipses were even thought to have influenced tragic events that happened years later, as was the case with the death of King Henry I in 1135, two years after an eclipse. Some may also have considered a 1652 total solar eclipse to be partly responsible for the Great Plague of London and the Great Fire of London about a decade later, says John Dvorak, a planetary geophysicist and author of Mask of the Sun: The Science, History, and Forgotten Lore of Eclipses. Harvard’s Commencement Day in 1684 was moved up a day because a total solar eclipse would be visible from Martha’s Vineyard, though university president John Rogers said that the decision was a matter of convenience rather than superstition. The 52-year-old administrator would, eerily, end up dying on the day of the eclipse from wh...
Source: TIME.com: Top Science and Health Stories - Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Tags: Uncategorized eclipse Science space space 2017 Source Type: news