Hey everyone. This is Gary. I'm off this week traveling and attending a conference and while I'm away I've lined up some vintage episodes and deep cuts that most of you probably haven't heard before and even if you have heard them, a refresher never hurts.

I'll be back again with brand new episodes on January 30th.

On September 1st and 2nd of 1859, people all over the world were treated as something quite rare.

Aroras were seen in the skies as far south as the Caribbean and as far north as Brisbane

Australia.

However, some astronomers and telegraph operators

experienced something totally different. And if this same event were to

happen today, it might bring society to its knees. Learn more about the

Carrington event and what it means for our modern world on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. The events of September 1st and 2nd, 1859 began with two amateur British astronomers,

Richard Carrington and Richard Hodson.

On the morning of September 1st, they were making observations of the sun.

Solar astronomy was always a difficult thing to do at best because her eyes can't handle looking

directly at it, and looking at it through a telescope would only make things worse. They were both

working independently of each other when they observed something that up until that

point no human had ever seen before. Each astronomer later recorded their

observations and had them published side by side in the monthly notices of the Royal Astronomical Society that November.

Carrington described what he saw as, quote, two patches of intensely bright white light, unquote. The two astronomers

saw the first recorded solar flare in human history. Sunspots had been seen long before

and for very brief periods during a total solar eclipse people saw the corona of the sun

but no one had ever been able to see a solar flare before.

What drove them to look at the sun was strange activity going on the days before their observation, starting on August 29th.

Unusual Aurora activity was taking place with Aurora's being seen much closer to the equator than usual.

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