In summer’s waning days in 1881, New Englanders read about hope
for President Garfield‘s recovery from a gunshot wound suffered
two months earlier, an imminent rising of the Apache Nation in
the West, and a baseball game between the “Bostons” and the
“Worcesters”, where unfavorable weather “kept away all
spectators” and worries that Pike, the center fielder for the
Worcesters, must have been “sold out” since the errors he made
had given a win to the Boston team. That all changed when the
skies darkened shortly after dawn on Tuesday, September 6, 1881
– throughout all six New England states. In the “forenoon,” as
they called their mornings then, witnesses watched a “London
fog” envelop their homes and roads. This London fog soon took on
a yellowish hue. New Englanders worried that they were seeing
the beginnings of a hurricane coming. They began to talk about
their “Yellow Day”. The name stuck. Those among the more
superstitious remembered Mother Shipton‘s apocalyptic prophecies
with apprehension and hoped tha