In the days before round-the-clock communications, Easter Sunday was one of the busiest days of the year for long-distance telephone calls. But 75 years ago today, many of those Easter calls to grandma and papa never got through. A giant storm on the Sun bombarded Earth, causing all kinds of trouble. The troubles were set in motion a few days earlier, when a magnetic storm on the Sun created a tremendous eruption. The blast sent billions of tons of charged particles racing through the solar system. The storm cloud took dead aim at Earth. Its leading edge hit on March 23rd, 1940, but the bulk of it slammed into the planet the following day — Easter Sunday. When it hit, Earth’s magnetic field funneled the charged particles toward the ground. They zapped an electrically charged layer of the atmosphere, knocking out long-range radio broadcasts. That deprived Americans of the latest news of the war in Europe. Even bigger problems came when the solar particles slammed into the ground, where
