This week America witnessed a total solar eclipse. While most of us were like, “that’s kind of cool I guess,” some Americans were expecting something more than just the moon blotting out the sun and day turning into night—people wanted action. So in the days leading up to the solar eclipse, those folks frantically spread eclipse predictions to all their friends on social media. Now that the dust has settled, let’s take a look at whether their predictions came true, and examine other common eclipse-related myths, both old and new.
Myth 1: “The eclipse’s path of totality runs through all the places in the U.S. named ‘Nineveh’ and this is bad/important”
The ancient Assyrian city of Nineveh in Upper Mesopotamia was described as a place of wickedness in the Bible’s Book of Jonah, so some Christians thought that the eclipse passing through all seven (or five) places in the U.S. with that name means that God is up to something, I guess? It’s hard to tell.
Depending on what sources you consult and what you mean by “places called Nineveh,” there are either nine, seven, or six of them in the U.S. They’re mostly very small rural communities—the largest Nineveh has a population of 3,987—and they don’t seem especially wicked (but I’ve never visited, so who knows). Only two Ninevehs were actually in the path of totality anyway. Did the people who live in those two townships repent and follow God like the Nineveh citizens did in the Bible when Jonah showed up to yell at them? It doesn’t seem like it.
Verdict: Busted
Myth 2: The stock market falls after a solar eclipse
This one is technically true, but not in the way some people think. There have been seven total solar eclipses in the U.S. since we started keeping accurate records of stock prices, and the markets dipped slightly after five of them. But this is not a large enough sample size to draw any meaningful conclusion. That said, it makes sense that an eclipse would have some effect on the economy—more people travel and buy paper sunglasses, everyone stops working for an hour, and feels some kind of way about the sun being swallowed, etc.—but it’s not possible to say how it affects the Dow Jones because there are too many other variables.
Verdict: Not enough information
Myth 3: Rays from the eclipse are harmful and will blind you
Understandably, responsible people with platforms bang the “don’t look directly at an eclipse, you impossible idiots!” drum pretty hard in the days leading up to an eclipse. It doesn’t seem to work that well—searches for “why do my eyes hurt” spiked after the eclipse—and it may also lead to the belief that there is something especially harmful and blinding about eclipse rays. There isn’t. It’s just sunlight. But staring at the sun for too long will damage your eyes, whether there’s an eclipse or not.
The competing conspiracy theory: “It’s actually OK to stare at an eclipse, but THEY are trying to hide something from you” is also untrue. I think it’s mostly a joke, but I can’t really tell any more.
Verdict: Partially true
Myth 4: The government will use the eclipse to invoke fear in the populace or as a distraction to further its mad quest for power
Many variations on these theories come from comments generated on a lazy Alex Jones shitpost on X. There’s a tiny speck of truth in this one: some states did mobilize national guard and FEMA units during the eclipse, but it’s because a lot of tourists were expected or it was for traffic control. The same thing happened in 2017 too. As far as I can tell, there were no mass round-ups of patriots conducted under the moon’s shadow.
Verdict: Busted
Myth 5: The Rapture will coincide with the eclipse.
As described in the Book of Revelation, The Rapture will come in the final days of man, when believers, both living and dead, will ascend into heaven. This actually happened on Monday! The good people flew into the sky with all the angels and skeletons, and everyone went to heaven and met God. It was pretty cool. I’m surprised you’re still on Earth.
Verdict: Confirmed
Myth 6: “Zeus, the father of the Olympian, has turned midday into black night by shielding light from the blossoming sun, and now dark terror hangs over mankind. Anything may happen.”
This golden oldie comes from the poet Archilochus who wrote those words in the seventh century B.C.E. after seeing an eclipse on a Greek island. Eclipses are an interaction between the moon, the Earth, and the sun, not Zeus’s shield, but dark terror really does hang over mankind, and anything may happen. So Archilochus gets partial credit here.
“Anything may happen” is similar to modern radical Christians seeing the eclipse as a sign of man’s final days, and to countless other variations on the theme from other cultures. It’s common to see eclipses as bad omens foretelling terrible future events. I guess a lot of people are downers. You can’t really say they’re wrong though, because terrible events are definitely on the way, as they always have been. But you can’t draw any meaningful correlation between eclipses and catastrophes either. It’s more realistic to say that bad shit always happens eventually, and eclipses happen sometimes too.
Verdict: Mixed
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