1504
Columbus and the eclipse, as imagined in Camille Flammarion’s Astronomie populaire, 1881.Image: Camille Flammarion · Public domainworld · Americas
Columbus borrows the Moon to win food in Jamaica
On his fourth voyage Christopher Columbus had been stranded on Jamaica for months, his worm-eaten ships beached, and the Taíno had stopped bringing food. From an astronomical almanac he knew that a total eclipse of the Moon was due, and he warned the local leaders that God was angry and would show it in the sky. On the evening of 29 February 1504 the Moon rose and darkened to a deep red, as he had foretold. The frightened Taíno promised to keep the Spaniards supplied, and Columbus’s party survived until a rescue ship arrived in June.
Source: NASA Goddard Space Flight Center: Lunar eclipses of history ↗
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