Go back and tell the king that at that hour I will smother the whole world in the dead blackness of midnight; I will blot out the sun, and he shall never shine again; the fruits of the earth shall rot for lack of light and warmth, and the peoples of the earth shall famish and die, to the last man!

• Mark Twain, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court

Twain's fictional Yankee predicting an eclipse to save himself from being burned at the stake may sound silly in the late 20^th century, but eclipses have a long history as omens or portents of evil.

Even Christopher Columbus predicted a lunar eclipse on Feb 29, 1504 to get the inhabitants of Jamaica to cooperate with him during one of his visits to the New World.

The islanders refused to supply him and his sailors with food, so Columbus recalled an upcoming lunar eclipse and told the natives he would make the moon change color and lose its light.

The eclipse astonished the natives. Food and support was forthcoming. Columbus was even raised to a rank of a god.

Columbus didn't have supernatural powers, but may have based his predictions on a copy of the New Theory of Planets by Georg Peurbach, which Columbus is rumored to have carried with him on his fourth voyage to the New World.

Babylonian writings from the 21^st century BC contain the earliest mention of lunar and solar eclipses. A series of astrological tablets written at the time correlate occurrences with eclipses and natural disasters. One eclipse coincided with a murder of a king and another with the start of a famine.

Even though astronomers have been able to predict solar and lunar eclipses reliably since about 700 BC, that hasn't stopped doomsayers, astrologers and the superstitious from reading meaning into these routine celestial events.

In ancient China, an eclipse was thought to have been caused by a hungry dragon trying to devour the Sun or Moon. The Chinese word "chih" means eat and is also the term for an eclipse.

About 413 BC, the Peloponnesian War was marked by several eclipses. One lunar eclipse in particular had a drastic effect on the Athenian forces.

At one point the Athenian army was doing so poorly that it decided to evacuate so it could fight another day. Unfortunately for the commander, a lunar eclipse occurred the night before the retreat. Astrologers told him to stay put, which probably pleased his opponent, the Spartan commander.

The Spartan army promptly destroyed most of the Athenian fleet and slaughtered the opposing general along with his army.

Historical records of eclipses are important to modern historians regardless of tales of dragons or portents of evil. Because eclipses are so predictable, scientists can use observation records of ancient eclipses to determine dates for historical events that happened in the same time frame.