A total lunar eclipse occurred on 1 March 1504, visible at sunset for the Americas, and later over night over Europe and Africa, and near sunrise over Asia.

During his fourth and last voyage, Christopher Columbus induced the inhabitants of Jamaica to continue provisioning him and his hungry men, successfully intimidating them by correctly predicting a total lunar eclipse for 1 March 1504 (visible on the evening of 29 February in the Americas).

The indigenous people of the island welcomed Columbus and his crew and fed them, but after six months, they halted the food supply, dissatisfied with what the Spaniards could provide in trade.

He requested a meeting for that day with the cacique, the leader, and told him that God was angry with the local people's treatment of Columbus and his men.

Columbus said God would provide a clear sign of displeasure by making the rising full Moon appear "inflamed with wrath".

H. Rider Haggard used an altered version of the real story of the rescue of Columbus in his novel King Solomon's Mines (first published 1885), where hero Allan Quatermain and his companions recruit supporters for their cause from the local tribe by predicting a lunar eclipse.

The Guatemalan writer Augusto Monterroso used a similar plot in his short novel El eclipse, published in 1959 in Obras completas (y otros cuentos), but with an opposite ending, sarcastic and anticolonialist.