Although Thales of Miletus is best known as the first Western philosopher, he actually became famous for predicting a solar eclipse. According to Herodotus, the philosopher correctly predicted the year of the solar eclipse which impressed his contemporaries and later ancient Greek thinkers because in his time, no one knew how to predict solar eclipses in Greece. The modern methods confirmed that a solar eclipse indeed took place during Thales’ lifetime, however, the story about Thales predicting the eclipse is surrounded with controversy because if he did correctly predict the eclipse, it apparently worked only once because whichever method he used, it was not used again. Although some sources claim he could have used the Babylonian lunar cycle known as the Sages and that he could have gained the knowledge about predicting solar eclipses from the Egyptians (he is known to have visited Egypt), most modern scholars think both explanations are highly unlikely. They attribute the story of Thales predicting the solar eclipse to a lucky guess, while some think that it never happened at all and that it was assigned to him because he was a highly respected philosopher who happened to live in the time of the eclipse and therefore, he must have known that it is coming.