HUB History - Our Favorite Stories from Boston History

Eclipses happen when the moon passes between the sun and the earth during the daytime, briefly blocking the light of the sun from the face of the earth. Over the past few years, observers in the US have been treated to every flavor of solar eclipse: a partial in 2021 when part of the sun’s disc remains unobscured; a total eclipse in 2017, when viewers in the narrow path of totality experienced daytime darkness, and an annular eclipse just last fall, when a ring of fire hung in the cold, bright sky. In honor of the April 2024 total eclipse, I’m sharing a clip that cohost emerita Nikki and I recorded within the first year of this podcast about some of the earliest experiences of eclipses here in Boston, most notably in 1780 and 1806. I’ll also share a clip about an unrelated phenomenon that darkened the skies over Boston for a second time in 1780, then again in 1881, 1950, and several times in the past 5 years. This was no eclipse however, but rather a much more terrestrial effect.

Full show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/298/

Support us: http://patreon.com/HUBhistory/

Eclipse Fever 2023 Annular Eclipse 2021 Partial Eclipse 2017 Total Eclipse 2017 Total Eclipse Stupid cloud!! 2017 Total Eclipse 2015 Supermoon Eclipse June 2023 smoke event July 2021 smoke event September 2020 smoke event Total Eclipse

• Viewing details for the 2017 eclipse in Boston
• In an article on Quaker martyr Mary Dyer, Christy K Robertson tipped me off to the 1659 eclipse.
• Thomas Jefferson misses the 1778 Eclipse.
• More on the 1779 Massachusetts expedition against the British on Penobscot Bay in Episode 25.
• The 1780 expedition to view an eclipse at Penobscot Bay.
• Putting that expedition in the context of the Revolution.
• A letter ordering the state to outfit a ship for the 1760 expedition.
• The New York Times reports on why the 1806 eclipse was particularly good for viewers in Boston.
• Cows on Boston Common were disturbed by the 1806 total eclipse.
• The path of the 1806 eclipse.

When Darkness Veiled the Sky

• A 1912 Forest Service report explaining what causes Boston’s dark days.
• Professor Samuel Williams’ contemporaneous scientific account of the 1780 dark day.
• Abigail Adams describes the 1780 dark day.
• Cotton Tufts describes the 1780 dark day.
• George Washington’s account of the 1780 dark day in faraway New Jersey.
• Abraham Davenport prefers to be found at his desk if the 1780 dark day is actually the end of the world.
• Modern analysis reveals the source of the smoke in 1780.
• Sidney Perley’s history of storms and weather in New England, including descriptions of dark days.
• A letter from Emily Dickinson on the 1881 yellow day.
• Ryan W Owen’s article about Boston’s yellow day.
• The first photograph of a comet, made in 1881 just weeks before the yellow day.
• An artist’s rendering of comet C/1888 K1.
• Wild conspiracy theories about a dark day in 1950.