IN our modern era, we tend to associate the aurora borealis and its beautiful dance of colours in the sky with far-flung lands like Greenland, Iceland and Norway - so much so that they're known as the Northern Lights.
However, was there ever a time in the 19th century where the skies at latitudes nearer the Equator were unusually lit up by the tango of charged particles thrown from the sun into the earth's magnetic field?
