“From the time the blackout started (about 2:30 p.m.) and for two hours afterward, phones in the offices of the police department, the telephone company, the radio station and The Era rang almost constantly.”
The difference between the “dark day” happening today and this one mentioned above from an article that appeared in The Era on Monday, Sept. 25, 1950 is that everyone knows there is a solar eclipse today. On Sept. 24, 1950, everyone was in the dark — literally and figuratively — about what was happening.
An Associate Press article in the Sept. 25, 1950, edition explained, “The smog — product of forest fires smouldering in Canada — which struck Bradford and vicinity yesterday afternoon, blacking out the sun gave rise to more speculation among the citizenry than anything that has occurred in years.”
We asked residents who remembered that day to share their recollection.
By the next day’s newspaper, people had the explanation, but that uncertainty stuck, with residents today still questioning that explanation.
Ron Swanson of Kane was a child on Sept. 24, 1950.
“I was just 10 years old at the time, and I remember very well,” Swanson said. “It was just around midday, I think it was. It almost turned to night. I never heard an explanation for it. The rumor at the time was there was a big forest fire in Canada. I think that was a bunch of hooey.”
Swanson explained that people were really scared.
“And it wasn’t just for a few minutes. It was for most of the day. Toward the evening it started to clear up and brighten up for a little bit. It was scary and it was eerie — I don’t know how else to explain it — It just shook everybody up.”
Swanson described how his young age affected his reaction.
“Being 10 years old, I didn’t talk to anybody about it,” he said, noting that he later talked with his friends about it. “They didn’t come up with any reason for it.”
Another woman said, “I was in grade school up in Cyclone, probably about fourth or fifth grade. I can remember that day because it got really black; it was just like night.”
She remembered believing at the time what she was told — that it was a forest fire — but shared some doubt now, saying that children believe everything adults tell them.
The Era reported at that time that people had many theories for the daytime darkness, including an atomic explosion, a violent storm or an eclipse.
In fact, what no locals mentioned, was there was an eclipse — a lunar eclipse — the day after the “dark day” of Sept. 24, 1950. But people couldn’t see it.
Local woman Rita Costello said, “I was 20 years old at the time. We were getting ready to put furniture into our apartment on Williams Street, and all at once everything started getting dark — I believe it was toward the west.”
Costello said people at the time heard the darkness was from a fire in Canada, but said, “We were never really told what had happened.”
“It was scary. People thought it was a bomb,” said Costello.
Fear and confusion seemed to be universal emotions for people experiencing the 1950 dark day.
One person stated, “My grandmother was swearing up and down the world was going to end. In reality, a giant forest fire from Canada blocked out the sun that day.”
Dick Matha of Ridgway was in his mid-teens, and he recalls the blackout occurring around 2 p.m. At that time, he was setting up bowling pins at an alley in town and ran out of the establishment when he heard the news.
Some people claim the blackout had been from a wildfire in Canada, he said. “Everybody wondered what it was,” he said.
One local woman who called noted, “I think it might have happened twice back when I was a teenager.”
She wasn’t the only one who recalled another “dark day” in the mid-19th century in Bradford besides Sept. 24, 1950.
Phillis Smith, who lived on U.S. Route 6 in Smethport at the time, recalled a time she sat with her aunt and sister on a porch and watched the sky go “totally black in the middle of the day.” However, “I remember it being earlier than in the ’50s,” she said. “I remember it being, perhaps, in the mid- to late ’40s.”
Smith explained, “I’m going to be 80 years old in January, and I remember it well. I was probably about 9 years old. It got pitch black in the middle of the day.”
On an interesting side note, Smith recalled her aunt saying she would never live to see something like that again — but her aunt is alive today, staying with a relative in California.
According to www.eclipsewise.com, there was a total solar eclipse on July 9, 1945, with a path of totality that touched part of the northwestern United States, then traveled into Canada. She may have seen the partial eclipse.
As for the lunar eclipse on Sept. 25, 1950, an article in the Sept. 26, 1950, Era, stated, “A total eclipse of the moon played second fiddle last night to a phenomenon — closer to home—a haze of smoke from forest fires 2,000 miles away.
“The total eclipse began, according to experts, at 8:20 p.m. (EST) last night. It lasted until 2:13 a.m. today.”
In fact, the article, by the Associated Press, noted that the American Association of Lunar and Planetary Observers had set up to watch the eclipse through “a big telescope on the 87th floor of the Empire State building,” but couldn’t.
Other symptoms of the Canadian fires were a lavender-colored sun in Philadelphia, a blue sun with a yellow aura in Grand Rapids, Mich., and reports of a sun in shades varying from purple and pink to yellow and brown to the Chicago Weather Bureau.
In fact, “A pilot landing at La Guardia field in New York reported that the smoke cloud’s lower rim was at 14,000 feet and it extended at least as high as 17,000 feet,” an article in The Era read.
No matter what causes a midday bout of darkness, it is an unusual event to see.
According to NASA, there are about 635 total solar eclipses every 1,000 years, or about two every three years.
However, the path of totality is relatively thin, and it can be hundreds or thousands of years between the times a total solar eclipses is visible in any given spot. The last that was visible anywhere in the contiguous United States was 1979 — 38 years ago.
————
(Era reporter Alex Davis contributed to this article.)
