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6 votes
0 answers
466 views

Were auroras a rare occurrence before the 18th Century?

Wikipedia's page on auroras says: A mid 19th-century British source says auroras were a rare occurrence before the 18th century. It quotes Halley as saying that before the aurora of 1716, no such ...
Shadow's user avatar
  • 257
1 vote
1 answer
824 views

Was Thales the first to show that the year contained 365 days?

The philosopher Sir Anthony Kenny, in his 2004 book A New History of Western Philosophy v. 1, Ancient Philosophy claims that Thales of Miletus, an ancient Greek astronomer, was the first to show ...
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6 votes
0 answers
1k views

Did the story of Columbus and the lunar eclipse take place?

In eclipse season, it’s bound to happen that someone will quote the story of Columbus fooling the settlers into believing that his god was upset with them and therefore eclipsed the moon. But as ...
DonielF's user avatar
  • 349
3 votes
1 answer
408 views

Did Babylonians in BCE used geometrical methods in mathematical astronomy to calculate planet positions and its motions?

A recent (2016) study, Ancient Babylonian astronomers calculated Jupiter’s position from the area under a time-velocity graph examines a cuneiform script and gives evidence that that Babylonians in ...
kenorb's user avatar
  • 512
6 votes
1 answer
741 views

Can the events of the Ramayana and Mahabharata be astronomically dated to around 7300 BCE and 5561 BCE respectively?

The Ramayana is one of Hinduism's greatest epics. Nobody appears to know with certainty when the poem was composed or when the events in it occurred. However, while some scholars claim that the events ...
serendip.in's user avatar
4 votes
1 answer
582 views

Kim Il-Sung's birthday present: a solar eclipse?

I heard this story, where they celebrated the birthday of the now defunct North Korean dictator Kim Il-sung in the 1970s and as a birthday present they created through some very complex artillery ...
Count Zero's user avatar