I’ve seen 4 solar eclipses, not sure it’s a once in a lifetime thing…
The ability to travel great distances with ease has really made it easier to experience a total solar eclipse than ever before.
Also, quite a lot of people have seen 0 solar eclipse.
Those mentioned are just the ones where I lived at the time, 1 in CA when I was a kid, 1 in AZ when I lived there, and 2 since I moved here to Oregon ~8 years ago.
Were they a total solar eclipse? Because those are way different then partial and I think qualify as once in a lifetime event.
Total eclipses happen frequently: there’s one every 18 months. You just have to be willing to travel for them. A total eclipse over right where you live, that’s a once-in-a-lifetime thing; those happen in once every 400 years or so. Back in the 1800’s, most people could consider it lucky to see one in their lifetime simply because few people could travel very far. Nowadays? There are eclipse chasers who’ve seen a dozen or more total solar eclipses. With the amount people move around, and how accessible travel is, total eclipses totally do not qualify as once-in-a-lifetime events.
