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Pennsylvania Gazette - April 30, 1752

Eighteenth century newspaper accounts of solar eclipses are relatively rare and when they do show up they're usually just short blurbs about local circumstance details taken from the almanacs of the day. However, the brief notice printed in the Pennsylvania Gazette about the total eclipse of May 13, 1752, which ran through Spanish-controlled Mexico and Florida, is unusual. The notice was submitted to the paper by a T. Fox, a Philadelphia carpenter, who claims that the times published for the 50 percent partial eclipse in Philadelphia by Benjamin Franklin's Poor Richard's Almanack are incorrect and that he himself has calculated the correct times. And indeed, with the benefit of today's precise eclipse predictions, we can see that Franklin's times were off by about 15 minutes and Fox's times are just about perfect (although it's unclear why Fox's chart doesn't correspond to the correct times he references in his opening paragraph). Incidentally, the newspaper refers to the eclipse as occuring on May 2, not May 13, because Great Britain and her colonies wouldn't finally switch from the Julian calendar to today's Gregorian calendar for another four months.

(Any information about eclipse viewing procedures provided in historical articles should be considered unsafe)

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Pennsylvania Gazette - April 30, 1752

(Any information about eclipse viewing procedures provided in historical articles should be considered unsafe)


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