Atlas Obscura’s Wondersky columnist Rebecca Boyle is an award-winning science journalist and author of the upcoming Our Moon: How Earth’s Celestial Companion Transformed the Planet, Guided Evolution, and Made Us Who We Are (January 2024, Random House). She regularly shares the stories and secrets of our wondrous night sky. The ancient Chinese Shu Ching, or Book of Documents, includes what may be the oldest written account of a solar eclipse. It records that, on Oct. 22, 2134 BC, “the Sun and Moon did not meet harmoniously.” People believed that during…
