In the Spring of 1875, in Colorado, Kansas, Minnesota, Missouri, and Nebraska, the thing that darkened the sun was not an eclipse, but a massive swarm of Rocky Mountain Locusts that, based on a telegraph survey done at the time, was 1,800 miles long and at least 110 miles wide.
The swarm of locusts is estimated to have contained at least 12.5 TRILLION grasshoppers. A swarm of Rocky Mountain locusts passed over Plattsmouth, Nebraska for 5 days. The locusts ate everything -- fence posts, laundry hung out to dry, each other, and blankets people used to cover their gardens.
Less than 30 years later, the species was apparently extinct. The last recorded sighting of a live Rocky Mountain Locust was in 1902 in southern Canada.
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