One of history’s strangest recorded events — The Dark Day of 1780.

Transcript

May 19th, 1780. New England turned night at noon. No eclipse, just [music] panic. Eyewitnesses wrote of flowers folding, cows returning to barns, and even George Washington noting the strange day. People feared judgment day.

One legislator, Abraham Davenport, [music] famously declared, "I am against adjournment." Centuries later, scientists solved the [music] mystery by reading tree rings. Rings charred wood point to massive wildfires up in what's now Algangquin Park. A low pressure system funneled dense smoke hundreds of miles south. Ambakes do in Bren B, blanketing New England in choking darkness. Sound familiar? In 2023, Canadian wildfire smoke turned New York's sky copper, showing how heat and wind can turn daytime into night.

>> [groaning] >> Science turned folklore into evidence. Tree rings don't lie. So next time the sky looks wrong, check the air. Sometimes history is just smoke on the wind.