OTD in Space – August 21: Total Solar Eclipse Expedition Crashed by WWI

On Aug. 21, 1914, a total solar eclipse temporarily darkened skies across Europe and Asia.

A young German astronomer and friend of Albert Einstein's, Erwin Finlay-Freundlich, led an expedition to the Crimean Peninsula of Russia, where he hoped to record observations that would verify Albert Einstein's general relativity theory. This theory predicted that the light from distant stars appearing very close to the sun's edge should shift due to the curvature of space. Those stars would only be visible during a total solar eclipse, when the moon blocks out the sun's bright light. Unfortunately, the start of World War One just 20 days before the eclipse foiled the expedition. After Germany declared war on Russia, Freundlich and his colleagues were captured by the Russian army and their equipment was confiscated.