In January 1994, an earthquake lasting up to twenty seconds hit the San Fernando Valley region of Los Angeles, California, causing nearly twenty billion dollars in damages and the deaths of nearly sixty people. Much of the city's power was lost because of the quake; radio and television stations were knocked off the air. That night, the Griffith Observatory in Los Angeles began to receive odd phone calls from panicked citizens reporting a "strange sky." They speculated that perhaps the silver cloud above them somehow caused the earthquake.

After some confusion, the director of the observatory realized what was going on. With the city lights made powerless by the earthquake, for the first time maybe ever, the people living in Los Angeles looked up and saw a dark sky. The scary, smoky, silver cloud they reported was the Milky Way. Today, two-thirds of the United States population and one-fifth of the world can't even see it.