The
ancients thought auroras
foretold war – or reflected
awful fires
People have known about the Northern Lights since ancient times.
When a deep-red aurora filled the sky, many took it as an omen
of bloodshed and war. In 37 AD., the Romans saw what they thought
was a terrible fire reflected in the sky. Emperor Tiberius sent
an army to Ostia to help victims of the fire. The reflection was
really a great red aurora. This same confusion also happened during
the revolutionary war and civil war.
 Red
Aurora
A red aurora like this one over Boulder, Colorado streaked the sky before the
Battle of Fredericksburg in 1862. The Civil War coincided with a time of enormous
sunspot activity.
Peoples
of the far north developed
colorful stories to explain
the odd lights
The
Vikings of 1000 thought
auroras were caused by
sunlight reflecting off
ice crystals high in the
sky. This explanation was
still used seven centuries
later in a Norwegian publication
from 1724.
Like many Europeans, the native peoples of the Arctic saw the aurora
as cause for concern. They had many explanations for the northern
lights. One idea was that the aurora represented the spirits of
the dead, playing ball with a walrus head. The shimmering lights
showed the struggles of the contending players.
 Ben
Franklin thought lightning
was the key
His theory linked auroras
to electricity. He thought
as Earth’s
atmosphere circulated, it spawned thunderstorms at the poles. The associated
lightning produced the aurora.
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