Venus in Sole Visa

In 1761, with the world at war on five continents, 171 men from over a dozen countries were dispatched about the globe to observe a rare celestial event: the passage of the planet Venus between the Earth and Sun.

The mission was conceived by British Royal Astronomer Edmond Halley nearly half a century earlier. Halley, who knew he would not live to see the transit, believed that if the event could be timed by observers placed at different points on the globe, it would solve a riddle that had ...