“At first no one believed Edison when he said he'd made an electric bulb. They dismissed it as a filament of his imagination.”
Total eclipseIn 1999, the last total eclipse of the millenium occurred. Because it travelled across many populated areas, it was perhaps the most-watched eclipse of all time, seen by possibly 350 million people. Totality occurred first over the mid-Atlantic Ocean. The first land crossed by the moon's shadow was the Isles of Scilly, then the far south-west of England, in Cornwall. Although the sun was obscured by clouds there, a dramatic darkness fell, and the temperature dropped, during the totality lasting 1-min 30-sec. From there the path of totality tracked across Europe, India and Iran. In Egypt, Muslims were ordered by clerics to shut themselves away, but Jordan and Syria declared a national holiday.«[Image: total eclipse viewed from an airplane above the clouds in Cornwall.] |
