Solar eclipse: North Americans celebrate with cheers, music and matrimony

Throngs of skywatchers across North America gazed upward at a blackened sun in the midday dusk on Monday, celebrating with cheers, music and matrimony the first total solar eclipse to darken the continent in seven years...

From a Mexican beach resort close to where the eclipse made landfall to the banks of the Ohio River and farther north beyond the roaring cascades of Niagara Falls at the US-Canadian border, spellbound crowds reacted to the sight of "totality" with jaw-dropping expressions of awe and joy...

A partial eclipse, in which the moon obscures only a portion of the sun, was visible across most of the continental United States outside the path of totality, where weather permitted...

Laura and Brian Uzzle awaited the eclipse on the banks of the Ohio River between Indiana and Kentucky on Monday after cloudy forecasts prompted the Denver-based couple to abandon initial plans to view it from Texas and book last-minute flights and rental cars several hundred miles (km) away.. Laura Uzzle, 56, said she was excited to experience the eclipse by a riverbank teeming with birds and insects...

Monday's total eclipse rolled through more densely populated regions than seven years ago, a corridor averaging 115 miles (185 km) wide encompassing such major cities as San Antonio, Austin and Dallas, Texas; Indianapolis, Indiana; Cleveland, Ohio; Erie, Pennsylvania; and Montreal, Quebec...

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