Science: Eclipse

For the 56th time in 100 years and the 17th time since 1900, the moon's course last week intersected the imaginary line between the earth and the sun at a point close enough to the earth, so that the sun was blotted from the sight of earth-dwellers. The moon's shadow, an oval patch of twilight some 40 miles wide, fell first on the Atlantic Ocean southwest of Ireland, sweeping across Liverpool and Hartlepool to the North Sea, across Scandinavia and Siberia, disappearing over the Aleutian Islands off Alaska.

A few moments before—as the moon's age is reckoned—such an event would have caused...

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