On Aug. 2, 1153, Jerusalem — one of the oldest cities in the world — experienced a total solar eclipse for the last time until Aug. 6, 2241, according to the book Totality by the late Fred Espenak, NASA's eclipse calculator extraordinaire. That's a gap of 1,108 years. Meanwhile, people living in a quadrant covering about 32,400 square miles (52,200 square kilometers) in Illinois, Missouri, and Kentucky experienced totality twice in just 6 years, 7 months, and 18 days.
Why are generation after generation of people in Jerusalem so unlucky, while those in Perryville, Cape Girardeau, Paducah, Carbondale, Makanda, Harrisburg and Metropolis are overfamiliar with totality from their backyards? Why do some locations on Earth never see a total solar eclipse within multiple human lifetimes, while others have a path of totality — typically about 100 miles wide — cross their home regularly?
