Definition: The Dark Day refers to a bizarre event that happened on May 19, 1780. Around midday an unexplained darkness fell over Boston and much of New England making it appear that it was night. In fact, the darkness was apparently so complete that candles had to be lit. The phenomenon reportedly lasted several hours and prompted widespread fear that it was Judgment Day or some cataclysmic event.
Scientists generally agree that the Dark Day was probably caused by smoke from a large forest fire in a neighboring state or Canada, possibly combined with a thick fog.
The poet John Greenleaf Whittier described the event in Abraham Davenport, an excerpt of which reads:
"...there fell
Over the bloom and sweet life of the Spring
Over the fresh earth and the heaven of noon,
A horror of great darkness, like the night
In day of which the Norland sagas tell,
The Twilight of the Gods. The low-hung sky
Was black with ominous clouds, save where its rim
Was fringed with a dull glow, like that which climbs
The crater's sides from the red hell below.
Birds ceased to sing, and all the barnyard fowls
Roosted; the cattle at the pasture bars
Lowed, and looked homeward; bats on leathern wings
Flitted abroad; the sounds of labor died;
Men prayed, and women wept; all ears grew sharp
To hear the doom-blast of the trumpet shatter
The black sky, that the dreadful face of Christ
Might look from the rent clouds, not as He looked
A loving guest at Bethany, but stern
As Justice and inexorable Law."
Also Known As: New England's Dark Day
