The Planets align
On February 26th, in the year 1953 BCE, the tightest conjunction of planets ever witnessed by civilization happened. Mercury, Venus, Mars, and Saturn could be seen inside a circle with the same area as a pea held at arms length, while Jupiter was only a cherry's diameter away. This is suspected to be the beginning of the Chinese calendar.
Source: Tyson, Neil deGrasse, and Avis Lang. Accessory to War: The Unspoken Alliance Between Astrophysics and the Military. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2018.
Public Domain
Back to archive
Full disclosure, I may occasionally borrow a sentence from Will Durant's Story of Civilization. I absolutely love that collection!