Comet Halley 18 May

On this day in 1910, the earth passed through the tail of the Comet Halley. Whilst of great interest to astronomers, this event proved worrisome to the timorous who fretted in the press that the comet’s tail was known to contain poisonous cyanogen gas. Happily for the timorous however, the gas caused no ill-effects. The appearance of Comets has often been seen as a prophetic event. Spookily, for example, two of the comet’s visits - 1835 and 1910 - are in the same years as the birth and death of the American novelist Mark Twain, who wrote in 1909, "I came in with Halley’s Comet in 1835. It is coming again next year, and I expect to go out with it." On the subject of prophetic stuff, Eilmer of Malmesbury (a famous early aviator, who "had hazarded a deed of remarkable boldness. He had by some means, I scarcely know what, fastened wings to his hands and feet so that, mistaking fable for truth, he might fly like Daedalus, and, collecting the breeze upon the summit of a tower, flew for more than a furlong. But agitated by the violence of the wind and the swirling of air, as well as by the awareness of his rash attempt, he fell, broke both his legs and was lame ever after."), having first seen it as a young boy in 989, declared in 1066: "You’ve come, have you?...You’ve come, you source of tears to many mothers. It is long since I saw you; but as I see you now you are much more terrible, for I see you brandishing the downfall of my country". Later that year, King Harold suffered the unpleasantness of receiving a Norman arrow in his eye at Hastings.