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Date	Original Topic
23rd July 2001	Solar eclipse at Isandhlwana??? By Mike D HUMOR:But there wasn't an eclipse in the movie! I recently watched the PBS special that examined the Battle of Isandhlwana from a forensic point of view. There were several historical facts that were revealed to me that I didn't know. For example, the solar eclipse. I had no idea that the Zulus attacked under almost total darkness. And the reliability of the Martini-Henry? The thing that I find fault with the show was the belief that there were sixteen hundred soldiers at the Isandhlwana camp and all of them were armed with rifles or were in charge of the artillery (cannon, rockets?) I read that, yes there were about 1600 men there, serving as a guard for Chelmsford advancing colums. But NOT all of them were redcoated British soldiers. Almost half of them were native soldiers, armed with spear and shield. Of these, only a small percentage had rifles. I think it was one rifle to five men, or something close to that.
Date	Replies
23rd July 2001	Martin Everett Someone told me that the eclipse happened on the 23rd January not the 22nd January - the day after the battle. Can anyone check this out?
23rd July 2001	Diana Blackwell I emailed a solar eclipse website (http://webhome.idirect.com/~kmalicki) about this issue. The reply follows. "The eclipse of Jan. 22, 1879 did happen, *but* the event was annular, not total. The battle scene was south of the path of annularity and looked like about 75% of the Sun was covered from there. That is not enough to make much of a difference in light level."