The CBC’s science program “Quirks and Quarks” this week features an extended interview discussing… 

A new book by science journalist Mark Anderson - The Day The World Discovered The Sun - [that] chronicles the adventures of three of the more successful expeditions to measure the Transit of Venus in optimum locations on Earth.  It was a race against the clock for British Naval officer James Cook, who led an excursion to Tahiti; Hungarian priest Maximilian Hell, who traveled to the Norwegian Arctic; and French astronomer Jean-Baptiste Chappe d’Auteroche, who navigated his way to the Baja Peninsula in present day California.