The last solar eclipse of the 20th century swung across Europe and the Middle East Wednesday, giving billions of people their last chance to witness one of nature's great spectaculars.
The eclipse began at 2:31 a.m. PDT when the shadow of the moon completely covered the sun off Canada's east coast near Nova Scotia and started its 1,500 miles per hour race across the Atlantic Ocean. At 6:10 a.m. PDT, it reached Britain's Scilly Isles, and then within a minute swept ashore on the English mainland.
The Scilly Isles' population of 2,000 quadrupled for the event and more than 1 million people crammed into the toe of England -- the picturesque county of Cornwall -- to see the eclipse.
Weather forecasters had been gloomy about the prospects of witnessing the phenomenon in Cornwall, but at the very last moment the clouds parted to produce 2 minutes and 6 seconds of pure magic. People cheered, wept and popped champagne corks as they enjoyed the spectacular light and darkness show.
An eerie shadow crept across the sun, darkness fell abruptly, and the horizon glowed. The temperature plummeted up to 20 degrees. Birds flew back to trees to roost only to rise again when light again appeared. It felt like the end of the world as the last total eclipse seen in Western Europe until 2081 put on its show.
"Imagine what our ancestors must have felt like when it happened to them 2,000 years ago," said astronomer David Hughes as the eclipse snuffed out the light.
Prisoners at Exeter prison in southwestern England were confined to their cells and their morning exercise period switched to the afternoon for security reasons. The governor did not want warders left in the dark. But London's Old Bailey Court ground to a halt so that lawyers and judges could enjoy the partial eclipse in southeast England.
Phones went unanswered at many financial trading rooms as dealers joined tens of thousands of Londoners who congregated on street corners to look at the spectacle.
France and Germany were next to go into darkness. In Berlin, a 24-year-old German was the first victim of the eclipse when he was taken to hospital with severe burns after he climbed a power pylon to get a good view and then touched the 20,000-volt electricity cable.
Then came Hungary, and Romania, where Bucharest was the only European capital directly in the eclipse's 70 mile wide path of totality. The point of greatest eclipse -- as the moon's axis passes closest to earth -- fell on the Romanian town of Rimnicu Vilcea for two minutes and 27 seconds.
There were huge traffic jams on major roads throughout Europe as motorists stopped to look at the eclipse.
In the Middle East, US and British warplanes patrolled the skies of northern Iraq as normal despite a request by Iraq to put the flights on hold for a day so Iraqis and scientists from Egypt, Libya, and Syria could watch the eclipse in safety.
Streets from Beirut to the Israeli-occupied south were empty as most Lebanese heeded government warnings to stay at home during the four-minute eclipse, which has generated widespread panic in Lebanon where it has been described as a precursor to the apocalypse.
Some devout Muslims flocked into mosques for special eclipse prayers to ward off the event's dire consequences while others said they had barricaded themselves in their homes to avoid even looking at the sun's rays.
In the Iranian city of Isfahan, where the US space agency NASA says the best viewing is possible, Iran's religious establishment directed pious Muslims to perform the "namaz-e ayat," a special prayer offered at times of natural phenomena to celebrate God's glory and power.
The eclipse would end when the sun set in the Bay of Bengal off India later Wednesday morning, by which time an estimated 2 billion people were expected to have cautiously gazed skywards.
