Today at Ya’lla Tours HQ in Portland, Oregon, we have just come in from viewing the solar eclipse. It was awesome! Just north of the path of totality, we saw the sun 99% covered.

Some 2500 years ago, the Greek philosopher/scientist Thales of Miletus was the first person ever to predict an eclipse, according to the ancient historian Herodotus. If this is true, it’s a mystery how the prediction was made, as it was another 200 years before the Greeks understood what causes solar eclipses, the moon passing between the earth and the sun.

Legend tells that the Eclipse of Thales occurred during a battle in a long running war between the Medes and the Lydians near the Halys River in what is now Anatolian Turkey. Taking the eclipse as an admonition by the gods, the combatants dropped their weapons and called a truce. Both sides accepted the Halys River as the border between their lands and peace ensued. Based on modern scientific dating, that eclipse, and hence the battle, happened in 585 BCE.