Transit of Venus March, by John Philip Sousa

On Tuesday, June 8, 2004, the first "transit of Venus" since December 6, 1882 will take place. In just over six hours, between 1:13 A.M. EDT and 7:35 A.M. EDT, the disk of Venus will pass in front of the Sun perceived, by those who can see it, as little more than a black dot silhouetted against the Sun's bright glow.

The last time this happened, John Philp Sousa composed a March about the event. Here is the cover as originally published by J. W. Pepper, Philadelphia, 1896.



Quoting directly from a Library of Congress page, here are additional interesting facts:

John Philip Sousa (1854-1932) was very interested in the 1882 transit of Venus, as were millions of people of his day. However, he didn't write the "Transit of Venus March" to commemorate the transit itself, but to honor the great American physicist Prof. Joseph Henry, who had died on May 13, 1878. Henry, a rather obscure figure today, was quite famous in his own time. He had assisted Samuel Morse in the development of the telegraph, discovered several important principles of electricity, made significant progress in the development of electromagnets, and created the first electric motor. As a result of his scientific achievements, Henry was named as the first secretary of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. In 1883, five years after Henry's death, and the year following the transit of Venus, the Smithsonian Institution asked Sousa to compose a processional for the occasion of the unveiling of a bronze statue of Henry in front of the Smithsonian.