Some interesting eclipse trivia from former NASA astronomer Fred Espenak in his booklet Get Eclipsed. :
Myths in many cultures claimed animals such as dragons, frogs, snakes or jaguars devoured the sun during a solar eclipse, then regurgitated or excreted it back out, said astronomy historian Steve Ruskin, author of the book America's First Great Eclipse. "Early words for eclipses in China were to eat or devour."
Vikings thought eclipses were caused by two great wolves chasing the sun and moon across the sky, while Mayans imagined snakes were eating them.
The moment the sun was totally eclipsed, "people would do all kinds of things to make the sun return," Espenak said. "In China, they would light fires or shoot arrows at the sun to try to make it catch fire again."
In cultures across Europe, India and Indonesia, Espanak said people would bang on pots and pans or drums and make all kinds of noise to try to scare the "monster" that ate the sun away.
Several deaths of famous people have occurred around eclipses, fueling the fear: Charlemagne’s son, Emperor Louis the Pious, may have died in the aftermath of the terror he felt due to an eclipse on May 5, 840, Gibelyou said.
An eclipse on Jan. 27, 632, coincided with the death of the Prophet Mohammad's son Ibrahim. And in England, King Henry I died shortly after an eclipse that produced "hideous darkness" on Aug. 2, 1133, prompting the spread of the superstition that eclipses were bad omens for rulers.
Some cultures saw eclipses as a good thing, such as the Tahitians, or the Warlpiri people of the Australian Aborigines, according to Gibelyou. Those groups thought an eclipse "involves an amorous encounter between sun and moon," he said.
Better predictions of eclipses began during the Renaissance. Christopher Columbus, during his final voyage to the New World in March 1504, used his knowledge of an upcoming lunar eclipse to basically blackmail what he considered to be uncooperative natives in Jamaica.
Columbus told the Jamaicans that soon his god would take away the moon. And when the eclipse occurred as predicted, the Jamaicans "came running with food" to Columbus and his crew, according to Ruskin.
