Huffington Post Science: "The Roaringest Eclipse"

My guest column for The Huffington Post on The Day the World Discovered the Sun. Anexcerpt:

On one summer day 243 years ago, the heavens became much larger than anyone had dared to imagine. And that same summer day had made them dare and imagine quite a bit.

The day was June 3, 1769, when some of the age’s top explorers and scientists had scattered themselves across the Earth to witness a rare celestial event. Like other wild, breakthrough moments in human history — think of the radio and the roaring 1920s or the fledgling Internet and the go-go 1990s — great minds of the time dared to think big and venture beyond the bounds of the merely acceptable to bring their visionary ideas to life.