“Almost, if not altogether alone as the most mysterious and as yet
unexplained phenomenon of its kind in nature’s diversified range
of events during the last century, stands the dark day of May 19,
1780, a most unaccountable darkening of the whole visible heavens
and atmosphere in New England, which brought intense alarm and
distress to multitudes of minds, as well as dismay to the brute
creation, the fowls fleeing, bewildered, to their roosts, and the
birds to their nests, and the cattle returning to their stalls.
Indeed thousands of the good people of that day became fully
convinced that the end of all things terrestrial had come; many
gave up, for the time, their secular pursuits, and betook
themselves to religious devotions.”—“_Our First Century._”