Druids danced, Moslems prayed, Hindus bathed and Europeans stopped work and took to the streets as an eerie twilight followed by darkness covered their capitals at about noon.

Although cloud and rain obscured the view for many, those who fully saw the three-hour long global eclipse were awestruck.

``Imagine what our ancestors must have felt like when it happened to them 2,000 years ago,'' said astronomer David Hughes as the eclipse snuffed out the light at Land's End in southern England, where the eclipse first cast its shadow on land.

Pope John Paul, a keen astral watcher, peered at the last solar eclipse of the millennium through a square of tinted glass and cut short his weekly general audience to be sure not to miss the event.

In Isfahan, where the U.S. space agency NASA said there was the best viewing, Moslems performed the ``namaz-e ayat,'' a special prayer offered at times of natural phenomena to celebrate God's glory and power.

Thousands of Iranians and tourists poured into the majestic central square of the trading city erupting in whistles, applause and shouts of ``Allahu Akbar'' (God is Greatest).

The eclipse began over the Atlantic Ocean nearly three hours earlier when the shadow of the moon completely covered the sun at 0931 GMT off Canada's east coast near Nova Scotia.

It set off a 1,500 miles per hour (2,400 kph) race across the eclipse's path that ended in the Bay of Bengal off India three hours later.

The final homage to nature came from around 700,000 devout Hindus who took a ``lucky dip'' in a gigantic pond in the northern Indian city of Kurukshetra, a sacred city because it is where the Bhagwad Gita, the Hindu holy book, appeared.

``According to Hindu mythology, if you take a dip during the solar eclipse or do a nice deed on this day, the benefit is a thousand times more,'' Holy man Manu Kumar Sharma explained.

At 1010 GMT its shadow first appeared on land at Britain's Scilly Isles and then within a minute swept ashore on the English mainland at the county of Cornwall.

People cheered, wept and popped champagne corks as an eerie shadow crept across the sun, darkness fell and the horizon glowed. The temperature plummeted by up to 20 degrees Fahrenheit.

The phenomenon was repeated in the eclipse's 70-mile (110-km) wide path of totality across Europe.

In Paris, traffic stopped and office blocks emptied as hundreds of thousands poured into avenues, parks and open spaces under the Eiffel Tower and Tuileries gardens.

Many laughed at fashion designer Paco Rabanne's apocalyptic predictions that the Russian space station Mir would crash into the French capital at the time of the eclipse.

Not only did Mir not plunge to earth, it also got the first view of the moon's shadow from space.

The point of greatest eclipse -- as the moon's axis passes closest to earth -- fell on the Romanian town of Rimnicu Vilcea for two minutes and 27 seconds but clouds spoiled the view.

At the Bucharest zoo, birds and monkeys returned to their quarters preparing for the night. But minutes later, they went out again, disoriented as a sliver of sun reappeared.

Ponies at the zoo, misled by the darkness, tried to mate.

``Ponies in our zoo usually mate after dark,'' the zoo keeper told Reuters. ``Those two males were fooled by the eclipse and thought it was time for sex.''

Romania's state news agency said tourists in Black Sea resorts used their bare hands to catch thousands of disoriented fish swimming in shallow waters.

There were huge traffic jams in Europe -- some as long as 50 km (30 miles) -- as motorists stopped to look at the eclipse.

In Berlin, a 24-year-old German was a victim of the eclipse when he was severely burned after he climbed a power pylon to get a good view and touched the 20,000-volt cable.

British hospital authorities said 200 calls were received from people who looked at the eclipse with the naked eye.

Phones went unanswered at financial trading rooms throughout Europe as dealers joined in the rush to see the eclipse.