Greece, 648 B.C.: A poem by Archilochus contains the line, Zeus “made night from mid-day, hiding the shining Sun… “–a clear reference to a total eclipse, which occurred on April 6 of that year.
India, A.D. 498: Astronomer Aryabhata describes numeric and geometric rules for eclipse calculations.
Europe, 800: Annals begin to include accounts of eclipses and other celestial mysteries.
Byzantium, 968: Chronicler Leo the Deacon provides the first description of the corona.
Baghdad, 1061: Annalist Ibn al-Jawz writes that “the Sun was eclipsed totally” and “the birds fell whilst flying,” a phenomenon also noticed in medieval Europe.
China, 1600: Jesuit missionaries teach the Chinese how to use eclipse observations to calculate longitude.
Italy, 1608: Galileo becomes the first person to use a telescope to study the nighttime sky.
Europe, 1700s: Thanks to the work of Galileo, Newton and Johannes Kepler, the mechanics of eclipses are explained.
Austria, 1887: Astronomer Theodor von Oppolzer publishes a list detailing the specifics of all eclipses from 1208 B.C. to 2162 A.D.
Germany, 1905: The Munich observatory takes some of the world’s first color photos of a solar eclipse.
France, 1912: In some press accounts, the spectacular April 17 eclipse over Paris is linked to the sinking of the Titanic.
Hawaii, 1991: Sun worshipers celebrate July’s total eclipse with special solar haircuts.
