The multitude groaned with horror

It was a fictional 6th Century solar eclipse that rescued the Connecticut Yankee from a rather dire predicament in Mark Twain's novel of that name.

It got to be pitch dark, at last, and the multitude groaned with horror to feel the cold uncanny night breezes fan through the place and see the stars come out and twinkle in the sky. At last the eclipse was total, and I was very glad of it, but everybody else was in misery; which was quite natural.

But this (real) 21st Century repetition has become the biggest tourist event since the Super Bowl, according to this piece in the Washington Post:

Eclipse viewing parties are everywhere, from alpaca farms in Texas to ski slopes in Vermont