First Recorded Total Solar Eclipse: According to NASA, "historians and astronomers believe that the legendary eclipse that two Chinese astrologers Hsi and Ho failed to forecast occurred on October 22, 2134 B.C.E, making it the oldest solar eclipse ever recorded in human history. The Babylonian eclipse on May 3, 1375 BCE is the oldest successfully predicted and recorded in the western world, and there is evidence that the Babylonians knew about the Saros Cycle (18 years 11 days) and could use it to predict the approximate years of eclipses."
First Photograph of a Solar Eclipse: According to NASA, "On July 28, 1851 the Royal Prussian Observatory at Königsberg (now Kaliningrad, in Russia) commissioned one of the city's most skilled daguerreotypists, Johann Julius Friedrich Berkowski, to record a still image of the event."
Solar Eclipses in the United States: According to Weather Underground, "there have been 15 total eclipse events to affect at least a portion of the continental U.S. over the past 150 years (since the year 1867). These were in 1869, 1878, 1889, 1900, 1918, 1923, 1925, 1930, 1932, 1945, 1954, 1959, 1963, 1970, and 1979. Of these, only one traversed the entire country coast-to-coast: the event of 1918." The next solar eclipse to cross the Unites States will occur in April 2024.
Next Total Solar Eclipse: The next total solar eclipse will occur on July 2, 2019. It the total eclipse will be visible in portions of South America, including Chile and Argentina.
If you miss the Solar Eclipse, there are two other celestial events in 2017 to light up our skies. On November 13, Venus and Jupiter will be seen together in the sky in the low horizon (morning twilight). On the night of December 13 the Geminid Meteors will reach peak activity with 60 to 120 shooting stars an hour. Best viewing of the meteor shower will occur during the pre-dawn hours of December 14.