From the vault: Solar eclipses of the past

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In case you haven’t heard, there’s an eclipse on Monday afternoon. Here, a look back at solar eclipses of the past.

It was a swelteringly hot day on Aug. 31, 1932, when the partial eclipse covered Baltimore. Those who dared venture out in the heat looked at the sky through smokey glass and overdeveloped camera film to protect their eyes. The Sun reporter who covered it said the event cast the city in a “strange pale twilight,” similar to “that condition which sometimes precedes a thunderstorm.” However, it was all downhill from there. “Watching the moon slide off, as it appeared, into space was a tedious anticlimax.”