The "darkest night in 500 years" will take place on 20 December 2016 due to a lunar eclipse. See Example(s)
Collected via Facebook, December 2016
Been seeing an article from 2010 all over my Dacebook feed today. People are mistakenly claiming a lunar eclipse will occur tonight. The next eclipse is Feb 11, 2017.
On 20 December 2016, Facebook users began sharing a link to an io9 article reporting that “tonight” would be the “darkest night in 500 years”:
Thanks to a lunar eclipse on the longest night of the year, tonight we’ll be experiencing the longest, darkest night in a very long time. It’s been nearly 500 years since the last solstice lunar eclipse … Over at Sky and Telescope, you can get the real story on what the five possible stages of the eclipse are.
Some news outlets even picked up on the claim and reported it as current in December 2016. As it happens, the io9 article was accurate … but that was the case back in 2010, not today:
The evening of 20 December 2016 won’t be the “darkest night in 500 years,” nor will it coincide with a lunar eclipse, as the next occurrence of the latter phenomenon won’t take place until February 2017.