These are among the eclipses that have gone down in history. The one in 585 BC, according to Herodotus, stopped a battle between the Medes and the Lydians. The lunar eclipse of 1504 helped Columbus get the people of Jamaica to bring him food again. In 1715, Edmond Halley described the ring of light around the Moon. In 1868 a yellow line appeared in the Sun’s spectrum that ended up giving helium its name. And the eclipse of 1919 confirmed that the Sun’s gravity bends the light of the stars, as Einstein had predicted. Spain has its own, which we cover in another article.
763 BC: a line in an Assyrian chronicle
NASA’s catalogue of historical eclipses, by Fred Espenak, includes an Assyrian record of an insurrection in the city of Assur and, in the month of Simanu, an eclipse of the Sun. NASA identifies it with the eclipse of 15 June 763 BC and calls it the Assyrian eclipse. It is one of the first on its list, which begins more than a millennium earlier.
585 BC: Thales and the battle that stopped
Herodotus tells how the Medes and the Lydians had been at war for five years when, in the sixth, in the middle of a battle, day suddenly turned into night. Seeing the change, both armies stopped fighting and sought peace. Wikipedia notes that modern astronomical calculations link the story to the solar eclipse of 28 May 585 BC, the one that best fits the place, the period and the visibility. Herodotus doesn’t give the site of the battle; some scholars place it by the river Halys, on the border between the two kingdoms.
The name comes from Thales of Miletus. According to Herodotus, as quoted by NASA, Thales had foretold this loss of daylight to the Ionians, fixing it within the year. Modern historians doubt it: Wikipedia explains that no cycle was known at the time that would allow an eclipse to be predicted for a specific place, so getting it right would have been a matter of luck.
1504: Columbus and the red Moon over Jamaica
On his fourth voyage, Christopher Columbus was stranded in Jamaica after his last two ships ran aground. The islanders fed the crew for months, but after six they stopped bringing supplies. Columbus knew that a total lunar eclipse was coming, which in the Americas was seen on the evening of 29 February 1504 (in Europe it was already 1 March). He credited the prediction to Abraham Zacuto’s Almanach; others argue that he used Regiomontanus’s calendar.
The Moon darkened and turned red when he had said it would, and the people, impressed and frightened, came back to the ships laden with provisions. According to Wikipedia, totality ended after 48 minutes. The eclipse also helped him work out where he was, although he was well off the mark: he noted that Jamaica was seven and a quarter hours from Cádiz, when in fact it is four hours and 44 minutes.
Like every lunar eclipse, that one could be watched without any protection. Why the same isn’t true of the Sun is explained in solar and lunar eclipses.
1715: Halley and the ring of light
On 3 May 1715 there was a total solar eclipse that NASA calls “Halley’s eclipse”. Halley described it like this, in the account Espenak quotes: a few seconds before the Sun was completely hidden, a luminous ring appeared around the Moon. Wikipedia also credits him with the first recorded observations of Baily’s beads, which are named after Francis Baily because he described them to the Royal Astronomical Society in December 1836. What those beads and the diamond ring are is explained in our learn section.
1868: the yellow line that became helium
On 18 August 1868 totality crossed India, and NASA lists that eclipse as “the King of Siam’s eclipse”. From Guntur, in British India, the French astronomer Pierre Janssen saw a bright yellow line in the spectrum of the solar prominences, at 587.49 nanometres, according to Wikipedia. The British astronomer Norman Lockyer found the same thing independently. NASA tells how Lockyer identified that line in the Sun and later named it helium, after helios, Greek for the Sun. That is how helium was discovered, says Wikipedia.
What will be seen around the Sun on 2 August 2027 is in our learn section.
1919: Eddington, Einstein and light that bends
Einstein’s general relativity predicted that the light of a star passing close to the Sun is deflected by about 1.75 arcseconds, twice what Newtonian physics gave. Measuring it meant seeing stars next to the Sun, and that is only possible during totality. For the eclipse of 29 May 1919 two British expeditions were organised: Arthur Eddington and Edwin Cottingham went to the island of Príncipe, off West Africa; Andrew Crommelin and Charles Davidson to Sobral, in Brazil. Frank Dyson coordinated it from Britain.
They compared the position of the stars during the eclipse with their normal position. Eddington presented the results on 6 November 1919 in London, at a joint meeting of the Royal Society and the Royal Astronomical Society, and after some debate they were accepted. The British press gave it enormous coverage, the American and German press followed, and Einstein became an international celebrity. NASA calls it “Einstein’s eclipse”.
And Spain’s own
Spain has its own list: the eclipses of 1842, 1860 and 1900 and the early-20th-century one that filled the streets, which we cover in the history of eclipses in Spain (in Spanish). Those that came later, the 1959 total eclipse in the Canary Islands and the 2005 annular one, are in the last eclipses in Spain.
The 2027 eclipse already holds a record: with 6 min 23 s in Egypt, it has the second-longest totality of the century. Why it is called “the eclipse of the century” is in this article.
Sources: Solar Eclipses of Historical Interest — NASA, Fred Espenak (the Assyrian eclipse of 763 BC and its record, Thales, Halley’s eclipse and his account, the 1868 eclipse with Lockyer and the naming of helium, Einstein’s eclipse in 1919); Eclipse of Thales — Wikipedia (Herodotus’s account, the date of 585 BC, the river Halys and the doubts about the prediction); March 1504 lunar eclipse — Wikipedia (Columbus in Jamaica, Zacuto and Regiomontanus, the supplies, totality and the longitude error); Baily’s beads — Wikipedia (Halley in 1715 and Francis Baily in 1836); Solar eclipse of August 18, 1868 — Wikipedia (Janssen in Guntur, the 587.49 nm line, Lockyer); Eddington experiment — Wikipedia (the two expeditions, the deflection of 1.75 arcseconds, the presentation in November 1919 and the press); maximum duration in 2027: Path of the Total Solar Eclipse of 2027 Aug 02 — NASA, Fred Espenak.
If you would like something to keep from the eclipse, the shop prints T-shirts, mugs and posters with the name of your town, the time of its maximum and its seconds of totality. See the merchandise →
Remember: never look at the Sun without proper eye protection (filters made to EN ISO 12312-2). The official reference for safe viewing in Spain is the IGN (in Spanish): eclipses.ign.es.