Millions of Americans converged on a narrow corridor stretching from Oregon to South Carolina to watch the moon blot out the midday sun today for a wondrous couple of minutes in the first total solar eclipse to sweep coast to coast in 99 years.
Veteran eclipse watchers warned the uninitiated to get ready to be blown away.
Planetariums and museums posted “Sold out of eclipse glasses” on their front doors. Signs along highways reminded motorists of Solar Eclipse Monday, while cars bore the message Eclipse or bust.
With 200 million people within a day’s drive of the path of totality, towns and parks braced for monumental crowds.
It’s expected to be the most observed, most studied and most photographed eclipse ever. Not to mention the most festive, what with all the parties.
In Salem, Ore., a field outside the state fairgrounds was transformed into a campground in advance of an eclipse-watching party for 8,500.
“It’s one of those ‘check the box’ kind of things in life,” said Hilary O’Hollaren, who drove 30 miles from Portland with her two teenagers and a tent, plus a couple friends.
Astronomers consider a full solar eclipse the grandest of cosmic spectacles.
Stockholm
Fascist groups are moving forward their positions “step by step,” Lofven said in a speech in Eskilstuna, Sweden, highlighting local demonstrations across the Nordic country as well as “Nazi groups, the Ku Klux Klan and white power protesters in Charlottesville.”
“It may be easy to try to laugh away these angry men with big words, small hearts and closed fists,” he said.
“But all fascist movements were small when they were founded and were able to quickly gain followers during difficult times.”
Lofven, who leads Sweden’s Social Democratic Party, said it could be easy in times like these to “get lost” and “start tolerating the unacceptable.”
“It’s a slippery slope where the border between the Nazis, the xenophobic and the decent people is erased,” he said.
Freetown, Sierra Leone
More than 600 people remain missing and rescue officials have warned that the chances of finding survivors are decreasing each day. The death toll earlier stood at 450.
The Inter-Religious Council called for the services to be held Sunday in honor of the deceased, as special prayers and recitals were offered in mosques Friday and Sunday.
The preacher at Buxton Memorial Methodist Church in Freetown, the capital, offered a sermon that looked at mankind’s contribution to the disaster, as a gospel band rendered the song “Papa God Sorry for Salone (Sierra Leone).”
Large-scale-burials took place all last week amid rainy weather that threatened further mudslides.
— Wire reports