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POPSHow a Lunar Eclipse Rescued Columbus Such a dramatic episode didn't escape the attention of novelists, who later used eclipse occurrences in a similar way to further their own plots. You'll find the device in H. Rider Haggard's King Solomon's Mines, Mark Twain's A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, and even in Hergé's Tintin adventure Prisoners of the Sun. In some cases, the event is a solar rather than a lunar eclipse. And the details of the eclipse aren't always astronomically correct, especially in the movie versions of the books. But it worked for Columbus.