But... was there a simutaneous emergence of cicada broods?
I remember the end of world back in the early 80s when all 9 planets were in alignment. It was early in the morning when I went ouside to go to work and I looked up into a crystal clear rural North Carolina sky and all that were visible to the naked eye. It was beautiful. The Chicoms had been forecasting woe and destruction for months but nothing happened.
Sort of like the Y2K thing. Total eclipses are just the shadow of the moon sweeping over the earth. Most of the time the shadow never meets the earth because the orbital planes of the earth and moon and the sun are not aligned. Off by about 5 degrees with each other. Thus the moons shadow just goes off into space most of the time.