Millions Watch Spain's First Total Eclipse in Century

"It's simply impossible to imagine," said Rosa Celiberti, a language teacher who watched from Medinaceli, a Roman-era hilltop town in northeast Spain, with tears in her eyes. "No matter how many photos or videos you've seen, nothing comes even close to what it actually feels like."

Off eastern Greenland, Sverre Rud, captain of the MS Spitsbergen, circled the waters of Rypefjord to position his 126 passengers under clear sky. "I will do my best," he said. "I will pull out my superman powers." The passengers, most of a 17-day cruise spent north of the Arctic Circle in 24-hour daylight, got about two minutes of darkness.

Steinthor Jonsson, owner of the fully booked 70-room Hotel Keflavik in Iceland, said he had seen nothing like the crush since the hotel opened in 1986, the year President Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev held their Reykjavik summit. "Besides Reagan and Gorbachev, the eclipse is the biggest," he said.

In Greenwich Park, Veronica Orozco opened champagne for her neighbors while watching the second eclipse of her life. "I was in Venezuela and I was young and I thought that the sun would not come back. My dad said, 'It is science, of course it will come back,'" she said. "Now sitting here at the age of 41, it is still magical."