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-The Project Gutenberg eBook of Comet Lore, by Edwin Emerson

-

-This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and

-most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions

-whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms

-of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at

-www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you

-will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before

-using this eBook.

-

-Title: Comet Lore

-

-Author: Edwin Emerson

-

-Release Date: November 26, 2021 [eBook #66824]

-

-Language: English

-

-Character set encoding: UTF-8

-

-Produced by: deaurider and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at

-             https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images

-             generously made available by The Internet Archive)

-

-*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK COMET LORE ***

-

-

-

-

-Transcriber’s Notes:

-

-  Underscores “_” before and after a word or phrase indicate _italics_

-    in the original text.

-  Equal signs “=” before and after a word or phrase indicate =bold=

-    in the original text.

-  Small capitals have been converted to SOLID capitals.

-  Illustrations have been moved so they do not break up paragraphs.

-  Antiquated words have been preserved.

-  Typographical and punctuation errors have been silently corrected.

-

-

-

-

-[Illustration: HALLEY’S COMET OF 1910, AS SEEN IN NEW YORK, LOOKING

-WESTWARD, DURING THE LATTER PART OF MAY.]

-

-

-

-

-                             COMET LORE

-

-                    Halley’s Comet in History and

-                              Astronomy

-

-                                 By

-                            EDWIN EMERSON

-    _Author of “A History of the Nineteenth Century,” Etc._

-

-                             PRINTED BY

-                         THE SCHILLING PRESS

-                      137-139 EAST 25th STREET

-                              NEW YORK

-

-                 Copyrighted, 1910, by EDWIN EMERSON

-                 Entered at Stationers’ Hall, London

-             All rights reserved under Berne Convention

-

-             Printed in the United States of America by

-                   the Schilling Press in New York

-                    from the electrotyped plates

-

-

-

-

-CONTENTS

-

-

-                                                          PAGE

-    Halley’s Comet                                           7

-    The Terror of the Comet                                 10

-    Famous Comets of Olden Times                            30

-    The Star of Bethlehem                                   39

-    Great Events and Disasters Linked with Comets           42

-    Halley’s Comet the Bloodiest of All                     60

-    The Story of Edmund Halley                              90

-    What Are Comets?                                       101

-    Our Peril from Collision with the Comet                113

-    The End of the World                                   122

-

-

-

-

-ILLUSTRATIONS

-

-

-                                                                PAGE

-    Cover Designs by William Stevens

-    Halley’s Comet of 1910                             Frontispiece

-    The Terror of the Comet in Antiquity                         13

-    The Terror of the Comet in Mediæval Times                    20

-    The Terror of the Comet at the Present Day                   25

-    The Latest Photograph of the Comet of 1910                   28

-    Napoleon’s Comet of 1811                                     53

-    The Great Comet of 1843                                      56

-    Comet of Tel-el-Kebir, 1882                                  59

-    Halley’s Comet of 1835                                       62

-    Halley’s Comet of 1682                                       69

-    Halley’s Comet of 1066 in the Bayeux Tapestry                78

-    William the Conqueror, an English Dream                      81

-    Portrait of Edmund Halley                                    92

-    The Orbit of Halley’s Comet                                 103

-    Relative Sizes of the Earth, the Moon and Halley’s Comet    103

-    Donati’s Comet of 1858                                      106

-    The Civil War Comet of 1863                                 109

-    Coggia’s Comet of 1874                                      112

-    Halley’s Conception of a Collision with the Comet           119

-

-

-

-

-TO THE COMET

-

-    “Thereby Hangs a Tail.”—_Shakespeare._

-

-    Lone wanderer of the trackless sky!

-    Companionless! Say, dost thou fly

-    Along thy solitary path,

-    A flaming messenger of wrath—

-    Warning with thy portentous train

-    Of earthquake, plague and battle-plain?

-    Some say that thou dost never fail

-    To bring some evil in thy tail.

-                                W. LATTEY.

-

-

-

-

-THE COMING OF THE COMET

-

-

-The Sun will surely rise and set to-morrow.

-

-Just so surely must a Comet flare forth in our Heavens this Spring.

-

-Star gazers, astronomers and learned men have been waiting for this

-Comet all over the earth—in America, in Europe, in far China.

-

-They have known for certain that this Comet would come; and they knew

-just when and where in the Heavens the Comet would first show itself to

-the naked eye—down to the very night.

-

-All this has been known so surely because this same Comet has been seen

-by the people of this earth before.

-

-It came and went seventy-four years ago. Seventy-six years before that,

-it came and went. And seventy-six years before that, the Comet had come

-and gone.

-

-As long as human beings have lived on this earth—for thousands and

-thousands of years—human eyes have beheld this same Comet every

-seventy-six years or so.

-

-The longest time between the Comet’s coming has been seventy-nine

-years. The shortest interval of all—74½ years—was this time.

-

-For thousands of years in the past, wise men have written down records

-of this Comet.

-

-Long, long ago, when white men were still savages who dwelt in caves,

-patient star gazers in China and Chaldea studied the motions of this

-Comet.

-

-Farther back than that, in the hoary days before the art of writing

-was known, ancient bards sang of this Star and its hairy tail. Some of

-their words are still remembered.

-

-Artists have drawn pictures of this Comet. Their pictures are still

-shown.

-

-Women have stitched images of this Comet into their handiwork. Some of

-this handiwork can still be seen.

-

-Coiners have stamped designs of this comet on their coins and medals.

-Those coins are still shown in museums.

-

-Priests, Popes and great Divines have preached about this Comet. Their

-sermons are still preserved in the records of the Church.

-

-Learned men have written in their books what happened when the Comet

-came. Those books are read to-day.

-

-The coming of this Comet in olden times has been fixed in lasting

-records, which he who runs may read.

-

-Nothing in all History is more certain than the story of this Comet.

-

-

-

-

-WHY HALLEY’S COMET?

-

-

-Two hundred and twenty-eight years ago, when this Comet was seen

-shining over the City of London, the great astronomer, Edmund Halley,

-made a special study of it.

-

-Halley was the first to say that this Comet had come before and would

-surely come again. He wrote down the time when the Comet would come

-again, long after he should be dead.

-

-“If it should return,” he wrote, “according to our predictions, about

-the year 1758, impartial posterity will not refuse to acknowledge that

-this was first discovered by an Englishman.”

-

-The Comet returned, as he had foretold, seventeen years after Halley’s

-death, when it was first seen in 1758, on Christmas night, by a man in

-Saxony, named Palitsch, who was looking for the Comet.

-

-From that day this Comet has been called after Halley.

-

-Since then many famous astronomers, such as Clairaut, Pontécoulant and

-Laplace in France, have calculated the dates for the Comet’s return.

-

-Last time, in 1835, Halley’s Comet returned within a few nights of

-their prediction.

-

-This time, so the astronomers figured seventy-five years ago, the Comet

-should be plainly seen after dark late this May.

-

-What they predicted has come true.

-

-

-

-

-THE TERROR OF THE COMET

-

-    “Canst thou fearless gaze

-     Even night by night on that prodigious Blaze,

-     That hairy Comet, that long streaming Star,

-     Which threatens Earth with Famine, Plague and War?”

-                                     —_Sylvester._

-

-

-So long as the memory of man goes back, the appearance of a Comet has

-always been taken as a just cause for dread.

-

-In the train of Comets, it has ever been held, come wars, bloodshed,

-fires, floods, plagues, famine and the fall of mighty rulers.

-

-Our Holy Bible confirms this time-honoured belief.

-

-The Saviour Himself said, according to the Gospel of St. Luke, Chap.

-XXI., Verse 10-11:

-

-    “Nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom

-     against kingdom; and great earthquakes shall be in

-     divers places, and famines and pestilences; and

-     fearful sights and great signs shall there be from

-     Heaven.”

-

-In the Revelation of St. John the Divine (Chap. VIII., Verse 10) we

-read:

-

-    “There fell from Heaven a great star burning as a

-     torch,” and again (Chap. XII., Verse 3):

-

-    “There was seen another sign in Heaven, and behold

-     a great red dragon ... and his tail draweth a third

-     part of the stars in Heaven. And behold the third woe

-     cometh quickly.” (Chap. XII., Verse 14.)

-

-The “flaming sword” in the hands of the angel of the Lord, when Adam

-and Eve were driven from the Garden of Eden, many sacred writers hold,

-can only be interpreted as a Comet.

-

-     “For the Almighty set before the door

-    Of th’ holy park a seraphim that bore

-      A warning sword, whose body shined bright

-    A flaming Comet in the midst of night.”

-                                  —_Todd._

-

-So, too, when Jerusalem was to be wasted by a plague, David beheld a

-Comet in the shape of a flaming sword:

-

-    “And David lifted up his eyes and saw the angel of

-     the Lord stand between the earth and the Heaven,

-     having a drawn sword in his hand stretched out over

-     Jerusalem.”

-                             —_I. Chron. XXI. 16._

-

-The fall of Satan, some sacred writers hold, was marked by the

-appearance of a Comet. In Isaiah (XIV. 12) we find:

-

-    “How art thou fallen from Heaven, O flaming one, son

-     of the morning!”

-

-John Milton, in his “Paradise Lost,” has fixed this image in immortal

-verse:

-

-    “Satan stood

-     Unterrified, and as a Comet burned

-     That fired the length of Ophiuchus huge

-     In th’ arctic sky, and from its horrid hair,

-     Shakes pestilence and war.”

-

-The Great Deluge, described in Holy Writ, came after the appearance

-of a mighty Comet (Halley’s Comet), so Dr. William Whiston, Sir Isaac

-Newton’s successor in the Lucasian chair of Mathematics at Cambridge,

-set forth in a special treatise. The great French astronomer, Laplace,

-also reached the same conclusion.

-

-This same Comet (Halley’s Comet) likewise foretold the final fall of

-the Holy City, Jerusalem, in the year 70 after Christ. This Comet was

-seen by St. Peter. Josephus in his History of the Jewish Wars recorded

-the nightly appearance of this Comet over the City of Jerusalem just

-before the war which ended with the destruction of the Holy City.

-

-    “Amongst other warnings,” writes Josephus, who saw

-     this Comet with his own eyes, “a Comet of the kind

-     called sword-shaped, because their tails appear to

-     represent the blade of a sword, was seen above the

-     city for the space of a whole year.”

-

-Josephus at the time rebuked his Jewish countrymen for listening to

-false prophets while so clear a sign from Heaven was before their very

-eyes.

-

-This same Comet (Halley’s Comet) reappeared at a critical period of the

-rule of Constantine the Great, the first Christian Emperor of Rome. He

-first beheld his sign from Heaven in the midst of battle as it blazed

-overhead in the sign of a Cross. With the help of his mother, the

-sainted Helen, Constantine was moved thereby to turn Christian.

-

-Constantinople, the great capital of the Orient, which owes its name

-to this same Emperor Constantine, was lost to Christendom in the year

-1453, when the Turks overran the great city with fire and sword. This

-event, it is recorded, was heralded by another appearance of a Comet.

-Three years later, when the Turks were about to descend upon Belgrade,

-another Comet (Halley’s Comet) spread consternation throughout Europe.

-

-At that time Pope Calixtus III., on the appearance of this Comet,

-seeing that evils were impending for the human race, called for prayers

-that the Almighty would turn these evils upon the Turks, the enemies of

-the Christian faith.

-

-[Illustration: “A SWORD-SHAPED COMET BLAZED OVER THE DOOMED HOLY CITY.”

-

-—Josephus’ “_History of Judea_.”]

-

-At the same time the Holy Father gave orders for all Church bells to be

-tolled at noon to remind faithful Christians to pray for those battling

-against the Turk.

-

-Into the Ave Maria were put the words: “From the Devil, the Turk and

-the Comet, Good Lord, deliver us!”

-

-Since that time in most Catholic countries the Angelus is still

-regularly rung at noon. In Italy, even to-day, the cakes sold before

-the church doors at noon go by the name of _Comete_.

-

-All the great Fathers of the Church have taught that Comets are to be

-taken as signs from Heaven.

-

-Baeda, the Venerable, declared in the seventh century in England, that

-“Comets portend revolutions of kingdoms, pestilence, war, winds, or

-heat.”

-

-John of Damascus, preaching in the same century in the Orient, laid

-down the same belief.

-

-St. Thomas Aquinas, the great Light of the Church in the thirteenth

-century, accepted and handed down the same opinion.

-

-The sainted Albert the Great, the most noted thinker of the Church in

-the Middle Ages, received and taught the same doctrine.

-

-The teachings of these Church Fathers as to Comets have been commended

-in our own day by Pope Pius IX.

-

-The great teachers of other religions, likewise, have laid down

-identical beliefs as to the meaning of Comets.

-

-The sacred books of India are full of awed references to the baleful

-influence of Comets.

-

-The ancient year books of China, written centuries before white men

-kept any records, tell of the appearance of Comets and of the disasters

-they foretold.

-

-The Mohametans and their wise Arab star gazers, when they saw a Comet

-in the Heavens, knew that it meant war.

-

-The woe of one Comet (Halley’s Comet of 1456), which had the shape of

-a Turkish scimitar, so the Arab soothsayers foretold, would be turned

-against their enemies. This was the same Comet which brought such fear

-to the hearts of Pope Calixtus III. and all his Christian followers.

-

-Thus it can be seen that Comets have been held to foretell disaster on

-one side, and victory on the other.

-

-The Comets which conquerors hailed as their guiding stars, have meant

-war and bloodshed and disaster to those whom they came to conquer.

-

-The same Comets which shone upon the birth of mighty rulers, have

-blazed in warning of their death.

-

-Julius Caesar, who was born under a Comet, saw his bloody end foretold

-by another Comet.

-

-Therefore, Shakespeare in his play “Julius Caesar,” makes Calpurnia say

-to Caesar:

-

-    “When beggars die, there are no Comets seen;

-     The Heavens themselves blaze forth the death of princes.”

-

-On the night of Caesar’s assassination, when the Comet was seen blazing

-at its brightest, the Romans said that it had come to bear away the

-great soul of the murdered Caesar.

-

-At the death of Nero, the Roman Emperor, who persecuted the Christians,

-a Comet blazed forth again. The Roman historian Suetonius, who wrote

-the Life of Emperor Nero, thus described this Comet:

-

-    “A blazing star, which was commonly held to portend

-     destruction to Kings and Princes, reappeared above

-     the horizon several nights in succession.”

-

-Another great Comet (Halley’s again) reappeared when Attila, the King

-of the Huns, the “Scourge of God,” was overthrown in the greatest

-battle of Christendom on the Catalaunian fields.

-

-Claudius, a Roman writer of that period, then stated that “a Comet was

-never seen in the Heavens without implying some dreadful event.”

-

-This has ever been the belief of all the great poets of olden time.

-

-Homer, the greatest poet of Ancient Greece, a thousand years before the

-birth of Christ, sang of:

-

-    “The red star, that from his flaming hair

-     Shakes down diseases, pestilence and war.”

-

-Let it be explained here that the word Comet in Greek means

-“long-haired,” from _kome_,—hair.

-

-Virgil, the greatest Roman poet, sang of “the baleful glare of bloody

-Comets,” and again, of “dreadful Comets blazing in the sky.”

-

-Tasso, the greatest of Italian poets after Dante, sang thus of Comets

-in his “Jerusalem Delivered”:

-

-    “Qual con le chiome sanguinose horrende

-     Splender Cometa suol per l’aria adusta,

-     Che i regni muta, e i feri morbi adduce,

-     Ai purpurei tiranni infausta luce.”

-           —_Gerusalemme Liberata, Canto VII., Stanza 52._

-

-Rendered thus by Wiffen into English:

-

-    “As with its bloody locks let loose in air

-     Horribly bright, the Comet shows whose shine

-     Plagues the parched World, whose looks the Nations scare,

-     Before whose face States change, and Powers decline,

-     To purple Tyrants all, an inauspicious sign.”

-

-The great English poets, on their part, have lifted up their voices to

-sing of the dire effects of Comets.

-

-Shakespeare, the greatest of them all, abounds in allusions to these

-dread wandering stars.

-

-Thus he makes Horatio in the first scene of “Hamlet” speak with awe of:

-

-    “Stars with trains of fire and dews of blood;

-

-       *       *       *       *       *

-

-    And even the like precurse of fierce events,

-    As harbingers preceding still the fates

-    And prologue to the omen coming on.”

-

-More briefly Shakespeare in his “Henry VI.” refers to:

-

-    “A Comet of revenge

-     A prophet to the fall of all our foes”;

-

-and again, in “The Taming of the Shrew” to:

-

-    “Some Comet or unusual prodigy.”

-

-Spenser in his “Faerie Queene” sings of a woman’s hair loosely

-dispersed in the wind:

-

-    “All as a blazing starre doth farre outcast

-     His heavy beames, and flaming lockes dispredd,

-     At sight whereof the people stand aghast;

-     But the sage Wizzard telles, as he has redd,

-     That it importunes death and doleful drearyhedd.”

-

-John Milton, besides likening Satan to a Comet, as before quoted, also

-showed that he shared in the belief that the flaming swords mentioned

-in Holy Writ were Comets:

-

-    “High in front advanced

-     The brandish’d sword of God before them blazed

-     Fierce as a Comet.”

-

-The poet Young, in his “Night Thoughts,” aptly writes of the Comet:

-

-    “Hast thou ne’er seen the Comet’s flaming light?

-     Th’ illustrious stranger passing, terror sheds

-     On gazing Nations, from his fiery train.”

-

-The poets of other nations have written of Comets in like vein. There

-is an old German rhyme, sung by German school children even to-day,

-which has been put into English by Dr. Andrew D. White in his “History

-of the Doctrine of Comets”:

-

-    “Eight things there be a Comet brings,

-     When it on high doth horrid range;

-     Wind, Famine, Plague, and Death to Kings,

-     War, Earthquake, Floods and Direful Change.”

-

-This little rhyme was originally put forth for German school children

-by two Protestant preachers of Basle, Switzerland, at the time of the

-great Comet of 1618, which heralded the outbreak of the great “Thirty

-Years’ War.”

-

-These Protestant ministers got their belief in Comets and their evil

-influence upon mankind not from the Church of Rome, but from the

-Bible teachings of such great Protestant reformers as Martin Luther,

-Melanchthon, Zwingli, Calvin, John Knox of Scotland, Bishop Jeremy

-Taylor and John Howe, the great Nonconformist divine.

-

-Martin Luther preached in one of his Advent sermons:

-

-    “The heathen write that the Comet may arise from

-    natural causes; but God creates not one that does not

-    foretoken a sure calamity.”

-

-Luther’s friend, Melanchthon, in a letter, declared Comets to be

-“heralds of Heaven’s wrath.”

-

-Zwingli, in 1531, declared that the great Comet of that year (Halley’s

-Comet) was sent by God to betoken calamity.

-

-John Knox, preaching in his Scottish kirk at Edinboro, declared that he

-saw in Comets tokens of the wrath of Heaven.

-

-The great divines of the Church of England,—from Cranmer, Bishop

-Latimer, Archbishops Spottiswoode and Bramhall, Bishop Jeremy Taylor,

-down to our own times, clearly preached the doctrine that Comets must

-be taken as tokens from Heaven.

-

-Thus the Comet of 1572 was pointed out from the pulpits of England

-and Scotland as a token of Heaven’s wrath and warning at the St.

-Bartholomew Massacre on the night of August 24, 1572, when thirty

-thousand Huguenots were murdered in the streets of Paris and elsewhere

-in France.

-

-Across the sea, in the new Commonwealth of Massachusetts, the great

-New England divine and President of Harvard College, Increase Mather,

-on the apparition of the great Comet now known as Halley’s, in 1682,

-preached on “Heaven’s Wrath Alarm to the World—wherein is shown that

-fearful sights and signs in the Heavens are the presages of great

-calamities at hand.”

-

-Increase Mather preached on the text taken from the Book of Revelation:

-“And the third Angel sounded, and there fell a great Star burning as a

-Torch, ... and behold the Third Woe cometh quickly.”

-

-In this sermon the great preacher told of the Roman Emperor Vespasian,

-who, when warned of the omen of a Comet, made fun of it, and then died

-miserably.

-

-So Mather preached: “For the Lord hath fired his beacon in the Heavens

-among the stars of God there. The fearful sign is not yet out of

-sight.... Do we not see the sword blazing over us?... Doth God threaten

-our very Heavens? O pray unto Him, that he would not take away stars

-and send Comets to succeed them!”

-

-[Illustration: THE TERROR OF THE COMET OF 1531. FROM AN OLD NUREMBERG

-WOOD-CUT.]

-

-The profound Russian thinker Tolstoy, in his great book “War and

-Peace,” has written of the flaming Comet of 1811. This was the famous

-“Comet of Napoleon,” which blazed over Western Europe when Napoleon was

-gathering his grand army for its disastrous march into Russia and to

-Moscow.

-

-At Moscow, the ancient capital of Russia, this Comet was observed by

-anxious thousands. One night there was this talk between a novice nun

-and the Abbess of her Convent. On their way to vesper service one

-evening in Moscow the nun suddenly beheld the Comet for the first time

-and asked: “What is that star?”

-

-The Abbess answered: “It is not a star. It is a Comet.”

-

-“But what is a Comet?” asked the young nun. “I have never heard that

-word.”

-

-The Abbess then answered: “Comets are signs in Heaven, which God sends

-before misfortunes.”

-

-Shortly after this the bloody battle of Borodino was fought, and

-Napoleon, with his army, appeared before the gates of Moscow. The

-hundred-towered city was abandoned by the Russians and was given over

-to the flames.

-

-Years afterward this same nun thus told her story, as printed in the

-“Revue des Deux Mondes”:

-

-    “Every night the Comet blazed in the Heavens, and we

-     all asked ourselves: What misfortune does it bring?

-     Then the enemy came, and our sacred city was put

-     to the torch. Our convent, together with all other

-     cloisters, monasteries and churches, was burned to

-     the ground.”

-

-Many other writers of the time who saw the great Comets that blazoned

-Napoleon’s destructive wars have recorded how they were universally

-taken as omens of the great conqueror’s bloody trail.

-

-Napoleon himself gloried in this dread omen and hailed the Comet as his

-“guiding star.”

-

-All this has been fully set forth by the famous French astronomer

-Messier, a latter-day observer of Halley’s Comet, who wrote a special

-book on “The Wonderful Comet which appeared at the Birth of Napoleon

-the Great.”

-

-As for the many Comets that have blazed down upon other great

-conquerors and other bloody wars, before the comparatively recent

-Comets of the American Civil War and the Napoleonic Wars, they are all

-set down in a special History of Comets.

-

-In this great work, entitled “A History of All Comets,” the Latin

-scholar Lubienitius has pointed out all the calamities and dire events

-which attended the appearance of each and every Comet recorded in

-history.

-

-

-

-

-THE EFFECTS OF COMETS ON MAN

-

-

-Some thinkers have pointed out that there has often been a direct

-connection between the feelings produced in the human soul by the

-appearance of a Comet and the human deeds of violence or the human

-epidemics and excessive mortality following the widespread terror

-produced by Comets.

-

-Only this year (1910) the appearance of Inness’ Comet over Mexico

-caused a panic-stricken holy pilgrimage to the Shrine of Talpa. In

-China, too, it caused terror, resulting in Christian massacres.

-

-Hence, also, several Jewish massacres inspired by Comets in the past

-and hence also so many terrifying plagues connected with Comets.

-

-Thus Ambroise Paré, the “Father of French Surgery,” who flourished

-in the sixteenth century, has recorded the effect produced upon his

-contemporaries by the Comet of 1528.

-

-“This Comet was so horrible,” wrote Dr. Paré, “so frightful, and it

-produced such great terror among the common people, that many died of

-fear and many others fell sick.”

-

-Dr. Paré himself appears to have come under the influence of this fear,

-judging from his awestruck description of the appearance of this Comet:

-

-    “It appeared to be of excessive length; and was of

-     the colour of blood. At the summit of it was seen the

-     figure of a bent arm, holding in its hand a great

-     sword as if about to strike.

-

-    “At the end of the point there were three stars.

-     On both sides of the rays of this Comet were seen

-     a great number of axes, knives, and blood-coloured

-     swords, among which were a great number of hideous

-     human faces with beards and bristling hair.”

-

-Hannibal committed suicide on account of a Comet. So did Mithridates.

-So did one Toma, in Hungary, only this year.

-

-King Louis “the Debonair” of France, died from fear of a Comet

-(Halley’s Comet) in 837 A. D.

-

-Emperor Charles V., of Germany and Spain, the monarch who boasted that

-“the sun never set on his dominions,” was so moved by the appearance of

-a Comet in 1556, that he gave up his crown and became a monk.

-

-Certain metaphysicians have held that there is a substance in a Comet,

-or in its tail, which has a weird effect on man’s brain, as moonshine

-is believed to have on some men, making them lunatics. As a matter

-of fact, as Arago pointed out, Comets have caused tremendous spring

-tides just like the moon. The same irresistible pull of gravity or

-electricity or light-pressure must perforce affect other substances

-besides water, such as human brains.

-

-According to this metaphysical theory, the close approach of a Comet to

-the earth affects and disturbs men’s brains, so that men are inwardly

-stirred with warlike impulses. Hence the great wars almost invariably

-following the appearance of Comets.

-

-Hence, too, the appeal to Comets made by so many conquerors, from

-William the Conqueror down to Napoleon. In the homely phrase of one

-writer, “the inner eye of man, under the weird effect of a Comet, sees

-red and makes him thirst for blood.”

-

-Those rare beings who have lying latent within them the gift of Second

-Sight or divination, according to this same metaphysical theory, upon

-the near approach of Comets find themselves stirred to prophesy. Hence,

-so many marvellous prophesies inspired by Comets since the ancient days

-of Merlin, the seer.

-

-[Illustration: “THE COMET OF 1910 SO ALARMED THE PEOPLE OF MEXICO THAT

-MANY THOUSANDS WENT ON A HOLY PILGRIMAGE TO THE SHRINE OF TALPA IN

-XALISCO.”—_Mexican Herald._]

-

-

-

-

-THIS YEAR’S PROPHECIES

-

-

-The return of Halley’s Comet in this Year of Our Lord 1910 has already

-called forth several memorable prophesies.

-

-On January 20th the French astrologer and prophetess Madame de Thebes,

-who predicted the disastrous French floods of this year, as well as the

-coming of Inness’ unexpected Comet, uttered the following prophesies:

-

-    “This year, 1910, will be one to look back to with

-    trembling.

-

-    “The earth is under a terrific strain from Comets and

-    planetary revolutions. Human destiny is red. That

-    means blood. Political events are black. Terrible

-    changes are imminent.

-

-    “This winter, France will be swept by terrible

-    floods. Paris will be under water. The influence of

-    form changes in other planets and the coming of a

-    Comet will affect us for the worse.

-

-    “The strain of the stars will be most severely felt

-    in America. The people of America will have to pay

-    dearly for all their riches and sudden prosperity.

-    With the coming of another Comet disaster will

-    descend upon America.

-

-    “A financial crash is impending, to be followed by a

-    long string of suicides. Black ruling us, men will

-    commit all manner of crimes and knaveries for money.

-

-    “The times are swaying toward degeneration. We are

-    swinging within the evil influence of a strange

-    orbit. Our souls are jarred from their proper

-    bearings. I dare not say all that is revealed to me.

-    It would be too terrible.”

-

-Soon after this prophesy was uttered came the first of such suicides.

-Adam Toma, a wealthy landowner of Szozona, Hungary, cut his throat

-because of the Comet. He left a note saying that the Comet was the

-cause of his death.

-

-Cardinal Gibbons later expressed his profound belief that the Paris

-floods of this year were sent by God as a punishment to the Parisians

-for their frivolities and sins, of which the Comet was a fiery warning.

-

-Commenting on Madame de Thebes’ predictions and her connection of the

-Comet of 1910 with this year’s spring-floods in France, Italy and

-Germany, the French astronomer Henri Deslandres, late Director of the

-Astronomical Observatory of Meudon and member of the French Academy of

-Sciences, said:

-

-    “However distant Comets may be, it is not at all

-     impossible that their enormous tails, measuring

-     75,000,000 to 125,000,000 miles in length, may come

-     in contact with our atmosphere. The theory that

-     a Comet may disturb the atmosphere of the earth,

-     causing rains of great duration, and consequently

-     inundations and the sudden overflow of rivers, is

-     not at all absurd. It can be sustained by scientific

-     reasoning.”

-

-It should be remembered here that Laplace, one of the greatest of all

-astronomers, credited the deluge to a Comet.

-

-Before Madame de Thebes’ ominous prophesy concerning Halley’s Comet and

-its effects upon America were cabled over to this country, another,

-no less dire prediction of financial disaster in the United States,

-coincident with the appearance of Halley’s Comet, was made by W. E.

-Corey, the President of the American Steel Trust.

-

-[Illustration: THE COMET OF 1910, FROM A TELESCOPIC PHOTOGRAPH TAKEN AT

-GREENWICH.]

-

-Mr. Corey then warned his friends to “call in their money and get from

-under” because a calamitous financial crash and general business ruin

-would surely come during the Spring of 1910.

-

-The most ominous of all prophesies connected with the coming of

-Halley’s Comet this year was made by the venerable General Ballington

-Booth, the head of the Salvation Army. Speaking in London, immediately

-after Halley’s Comet had been located, early this year, General Booth

-said:

-

-    “We are, this year, rapidly approaching the end of

-     all things, with similar results, but far surpassing

-     in horrors any disaster that has gone before.

-

-     “All things will be wound up. Besides a deluge of

-     water sweeping parts of the world and its inhabitants

-     there will be fierce destruction by fire.”

-

-

-

-

-FAMOUS COMETS OF OLDEN TIMES

-

-

-Bacon, the great English thinker, has said: “Comets have some action

-and effect on the universality of things.”

-

-All Comets recorded in history, so Lubienitius has shown in his

-“Universal History of All Comets,” appeared in connection with some

-great event or catastrophe in the History of Man.

-

-George F. Chambers, one of the most up-to-date writers on Astronomy

-and Comets, on the second page of his “Story of the Comets” (1909),

-declares:

-

-    “It is the general testimony of History during many

-     hundreds of years, one might even say during fully

-     2,000 years, that Comets were always considered to

-     be peculiarly ‘ominous of the wrath of Heaven and as

-     harbingers of wars and famines, of the dethronement

-     of Monarchs and the dissolution of Empires.’”

-

-Reaching back into remotest history, the sacred books of India show

-that the births of Krishna and of Buddha were foretold by moving lights

-in the Heavens.

-

-The ancient records of China tell of the appearance of a moving beacon

-in Heaven at the birth of Yu, the first ruler of the Celestial Empire,

-and again at the birth of the great Chinese prophet, Lao-Tse.

-

-The ancient Greeks have recorded similar appearances of Comets.

-Aesculapius, the divine healer and first physician, was born under a

-Comet.

-

-The oldest traditions of the Jews tell us that when Abraham was born a

-moving star was seen in the East.

-

-Another moving star with long radiant gleams of light streaming behind

-it shone forth at the birth of Moses. This Comet was seen by the Magi

-of Egypt, who pointed it out to the King as an omen meant for him.

-Hence Pharaoh’s order, as recorded in the Old Testament, for the

-slaughter of all male Jewish infants then born in Egypt.

-

-

-

-

-GREAT EVENTS CONNECTED WITH HISTORIC COMETS IN ANTIQUITY

-

-

-The earliest Comet of which there is any historic record was a Comet

-mentioned in the oldest cuneiform inscriptions of Babylonia several

-thousand years before our Christian era, recently found on the north

-bank of Nahr-al-Kalb, near Beyrut in Syria. This Comet is recorded to

-have been visible to the naked eye for 29 nights.

-

-At the time Lubienitius wrote his big “History of all the Comets” the

-exact date of this Comet had not been fixed. Lubienitius, though, had

-a record of this same Comet, the date of which he fixes at the year

-2312 before Christ, the date computed by him and other writers for the

-beginning of the deluge.

-

-In modern times the great French astronomer Laplace credited a Comet

-with causing huge floods at the time of the great Deluge.

-

-Two hundred and eighty-eight years after the great Deluge, according to

-the records of the Chaldean star gazers, there appeared another Comet.

-This is the date, computed by Lubienitius, for the building of the

-Tower of Babel and the confusion of tongues.

-

-Two thousand and sixty-four years before Christ, another Comet

-appeared, as recorded by the Chaldeans. This is the date given for the

-birth of Abraham.

-

-When Abraham was seventy years old, in the year 1949 B. C., a Comet was

-seen shining over the Valley of Siddim for twenty-two nights. This is

-the date given by Bible historians for the destruction of Sodom and

-Gomorrah, the two cities of iniquity which lay in the Vale of Siddim.

-

-Jewish annalists record a Comet in Egypt in the year corresponding to

-B. C. 1841. This Comet shone at the time of the bitter persecution of

-the Jews by the Egyptians.

-

-Arabian star gazers have recorded a Comet shining over Arabia 1732 B.

-C. In that year there was a terrible famine, of which mention is made

-in the Old Testament.

-

-The ancient Chinese year books record the appearance of a Comet over

-northern China and Manchuria in the year corresponding to 1537 B.

-C. The appearance of the Comet, so the Chinese chronicles tell, was

-followed by a great flood and disastrous famine.

-

-The next Comet of which we have any record, appeared 1515 B. C. This

-was at the time of the expulsion of the Jews from Egypt.

-

-In the year B. C. 1194, we are told by Hyginus that “On the fall of

-Troy, one of the Pleiades group of stars rushed along the Heavens

-toward the Arctic pole, where the star remained visible with

-dishevelled hair, to which the name of Comet is applied.”

-

-We are informed by Pliny, the Roman historian, that in B. C. 975, the

-“Egyptians and Ethiopians suffered from a terrible famine, the dire

-effects of a Comet. It appeared all on fire, and was twisted in the

-form of a wreath, and had a hideous aspect. It seemed not to be a star,

-but rather a knot of fire.”

-

-Babylonian cuneiform inscriptions tell us that about 575 B. C., when

-Nebuchadnezzar overran Elam, “a star arose whose head was bright as

-day, while from its luminous body a tail extended like the sting of a

-scorpion.”

-

-According to Pliny, again, a Comet in the form of a horn was seen in

-the year B. C. 480, just before the great invasion of Greece by Xerxes

-ending in the bloody sea fight of Salamis.

-

-The next Comet mentioned by Lubienitius appeared in B. C. 466, when it

-was seen for 75 nights all over Greece. In that year Greece was ravaged

-by war between the Spartans and Athenians, and the city of Sparta was

-all but destroyed by an earthquake.

-

-The next Comet appeared one generation later in 431 B. C., and was seen

-through 60 nights all over the ancient world. This Comet was followed

-by a terrible pestilence which swept over Aethiopia, Egypt, Athens, and

-Rome. War broke out all over Greece. It was the beginning of the great

-Peloponnesian War, which devastated Greece for a generation to follow.

-

-In the year 394 B. C., there was another Comet seen in Greece, followed

-by the great Corinthian War with the bloody battles of Knidus and

-Koronea.

-

-Aristotle records a Comet seen by him in his fifteenth year, 371 B. C.

-The sight of it inspired the youth to a special study of astronomy.

-The Comet was visible until the end of the first week of July. On July

-eighth was fought the great battle between the Thebans and Spartans,

-when Epaminondas, one of the greatest generals of antiquity, overthrew

-the Spartans.

-

-The next Comet, that of 338 B. C., which was likewise observed by

-Aristotle, who had then become the teacher of Alexander the Great,

-marked Alexander’s first public entry into the history of the world.

-The Comet blazed its brightest on the eve of the bloody battle of

-Chaeronea, Alexander’s first victory and achievement in war.

-

-In the year 344 B. C., there was another Comet, followed by another

-war in Greece and Sicily. Diodorus of Sicily wrote of this Comet: “On

-the departure of the expedition of Timoleon from Corinth for Sicily

-with all his war ships, the Gods foretold success by an extraordinary

-prodigy: A burning torch appeared in the Heavens for an entire night

-and went before the fleet into Sicily.”

-

-

-_The Comets of Carthage._

-

-Nearly a hundred years passed before the appearance of another Comet in

-240 B. C. This is the first recorded appearance of Halley’s Comet. By

-the light of this Comet, Hamilcar, the great Carthaginian general, made

-his young son Hannibal swear eternal enmity to the Romans. Hamilcar was

-then in the midst of preparations for the war against Rome, which broke

-out soon afterward.

-

-Comets appear to have been stars of special omen to Hannibal and to his

-native city, Carthage. Twenty years later, appeared another Comet which

-shone over Carthage for 22 nights. Its appearance was followed by the

-outbreak of the great war between Hannibal and the Romans, and by a

-terrible earthquake in Greece.

-

-The next Comet shone in 204 B. C., when Hannibal suffered his first

-bloody defeat by Sempronius, while Scipio, Hannibal’s arch enemy, was

-crossing over to Africa, for the first attack upon Carthage.

-

-The appearance of the next Comet, twenty years later, 184 B. C., which

-shone through 88 nights over Asia Minor “with a horrible lustre” was

-followed by the death of Hannibal. Soothsayers at the court of King

-Prusias of Bithynia, in Asia Minor, whither Hannibal had fled from

-the Romans, told the King that the Comet betokened Hannibal’s early

-death. This so wrought on Hannibal’s spirit that he ended his life with

-poison.

-

-In the year 150 B. C., appeared another Comet “of horrible size.” It

-was seen for many nights running all over the Mediterranean Sea. Its

-appearance was followed by the outbreak of the third great Punic War

-between Rome and Carthage.

-

-Within four years another Comet, blazing over northern Africa in 146 B.

-C., was followed by the fall of Carthage, which was stormed and utterly

-destroyed by the Romans.

-

-

-_Mithridates’ Star._

-

-Mithridates, King of Pontus, and conqueror of Asia Minor, another arch

-foe of the Romans, having been born under a Comet, seems to have fallen

-under the bane of Comets.

-

-During the Winter of 134-135 B. C., preceding Mithridates’ birth, a

-Comet of unusual lustre flared over Asia Minor through 72 days. This

-Comet was so bright that its long, flaming tail was plainly visible

-even in day time. The ancient historian Justinus thus described it:

-

-“Its splendour eclipsed that of the midday sun and occupied the fourth

-part of Heaven.”

-

-The next Comet, burning through 72 nights again, preceded Mithridates’

-accession to the throne of Pontus, 119 B. C.

-

-Mithridates’ fourth Comet, now identified as Halley’s Comet, was seen

-over Asia Minor through the Winter months of 87-88 B. C., just before

-the horrible massacre of 150,000 Italians ordered by Mithridates.

-

-Twenty-five years later, 63 B. C., Mithridates saw his Comet for the

-last time when his own son rose up in arms against him. The omen of the

-Comet so wrought on Mithridates that he first poisoned himself and then

-had one of his own soldiers despatch him with his sword.

-

-No other Comet is recorded in ancient history during this century,

-except the one which was seen shining over Italy preceding the birth

-(July 11, 100 B. C.) of Julius Caesar, destined to become “The foremost

-man of all this world,” as Shakespeare calls him.

-

-“Caesar’s Comet” as it came to be known (now identified as Halley’s

-Comet) appeared again over Italy during the great Civil War between

-Marius and Sylla, when Caesar was first entering into public affairs

-and earned his spurs as a warrior.

-

-“Caesar’s Comet” shone again over Rome in the year 60 B. C., when

-Julius Caesar, together with Pompey and Crassus, took charge of the

-government of Rome and presently seized supreme power as Consul of Rome.

-

-Ten years later “Caesar’s Comet” was seen once more in Italy in the

-Winter months of 49-50 B. C., when Caesar, returning from his conquest

-of Gaul, crossed the Rubicon and began the great Civil War against his

-rival for power, Pompey.

-

-The last appearance of “Caesar’s Comet,” was in 44 B. C., on the

-death of Caesar. Its coming was foreseen in a dream by Caesar’s wife

-Calpurnia, who warned him of the omen, as immortalized in Shakespeare’s

-lines, put into the mouth of Caesar’s wife:

-

-    “When beggars die, there are no Comets seen,

-     The Heavens themselves blaze forth the death of Princes”;

-

-followed by Caesar’s famous answer, as culled from Plutarch by

-Shakespeare:

-

-    “What can be avoided,

-     Whose end is purposed by the mighty gods?

-     Yet Caesar shall go forth; for these predictions

-     Are to the world in general as to Caesar.”

-

-On the following morning Caesar was murdered at the foot of Pompey’s

-statue in the Curia.

-

-Immediately after Caesar’s death, records the Roman historian Suetonius

-in his “Life of Caesar”: “A Comet blazed for seven nights together,

-rising always about eleven o’clock, visible to all in Rome. It was

-taken by all to be the soul of Caesar, now received into Heaven; for

-which reason, accordingly, Caesar is represented in his statue with a

-star on his brow.”

-

-Only one more Comet is recorded in ancient history before the birth of

-Christ. This was the Comet, now identified as Halley’s Comet, which

-shone over the dense forests of Germany, eleven years before the birth

-of Christ, when Drusus, the brother of Tiberius, was warring against

-the ancient Germans and robbing them of their last vestige of liberty.

-At the same time fell the death of Agrippa, who ruled over the Roman

-Empire in the absence of Augustus.

-

-

-_THE STAR OF BETHLEHEM_

-

-The coming of the Messia, according to the sacred legends of the Jews,

-was to be foretold by a flaming star.

-

-Many sacred writers have held, and many still hold, as did the

-distinguished American astronomer R. A. Proctor, that the “Star of

-Bethlehem,” whose shining trail guided the Wise Men from The East, was

-a Comet. Lubienitius in his “History of Comets” expressly mentions the

-Star of Bethlehem as the most important Comet of history.

-

-As a matter of fact our modern astronomical computations prove that a

-Comet appeared in that year so as to be visible to the naked eye over

-Arabia, Syria, and the Holy Land.

-

-When this Comet appeared Herod was King of Judea. On the appearance of

-the Comet, Herod consulted the oracle of the Sibyl in Rome. She told

-him that the Comet shone in token of a boy destined to be far greater

-than he.

-

-Herod grew so afraid at this that he caused to be murdered his own

-two infant sons, Aristobolus and Alexander, and after that his eldest

-son, the boy Antipater. Herod further ordered the massacre of all

-male infants born in Judea under this Comet, as told in the Gospel of

-Matthew (Chap. II., Verse 1). As the Comet kept on blazing in the sky,

-Herod, becoming desperate, tried to kill himself. Five days after this

-he died of a loathsome disease.

-

-Christian painters and writers from olden times until now, accordingly

-have pictured the Star of Bethlehem as a Comet.

-

-Take for instance this description of “The Light in the Sky” as given

-by Lew Wallace in his “Ben Hur: A Tale of the Christ”:

-

-    “About midnight some one on the roof cried out:

-    ‘What light is that in the sky? Awake, brethren,

-     awake and see!’

-

-     The people, half asleep, sat up and looked; then

-     they became wide awake, though wonder struck....

-     Soon the entire tenantry of the house and court and

-     enclosure were out gazing at the sky.

-

-     And this is what they saw: A ray of light, beginning

-     at a height immeasurably beyond the nearest stars,

-     and dropping obliquely to the earth; at its top, a

-     diminishing point; at its base, many furlongs in

-     width; its sides blending softly with the darkness

-     of night; its core a roseate electrical splendour.

-     The apparition seemed to rest on the nearest mountain

-     southeast of the town, making a pale corona along the

-     line of the summit. The khan was touched luminously

-     so that those upon the roof saw each others’ faces

-     all filled with wonder.

-

-     Steadily the ray lingered....

-

-    ‘Saw you ever the like?’ asked one.

-

-    ‘Can it be that a star has burst and fallen?’ asked

-     another, his tongue faltering.

-

-    ‘When a star falls its light goes out.’

-

-       *       *       *       *       *

-

-     After that there was silence on the housetop, broken

-     but once again while the mystery continued.

-

-    ‘Brethren!’ exclaimed a Jew of venerable mien, ‘what

-     we see is the ladder our father Jacob saw in his

-     dream. Blessed be the Lord God of Our Fathers!’”

-

-Meanwhile the Wise Men from the East, as described in the same story,

-were travelling over the desert, on the alert for the apparition of the

-star, whose coming had been revealed to them.

-

-    “Suddenly, in the air before them, not farther up

-     than a low hill-top,” writes Lew Wallace, “flared a

-     lambent flame; as they looked at it, the apparition

-     contracted into a focus of dazzling lustre. Their

-     hearts beat fast; their souls thrilled; and they

-     shouted as with one voice: ‘The Star! the Star! God

-     is with us!’”

-

-

-

-

-GREAT EVENTS LINKED WITH COMETS SINCE CHRIST

-

-

-Since the time of Christ, thanks to the spread of Christianity and

-learning, with the growing zeal for keeping records and studying the

-stars, a far greater number of Comets and events connected therewith

-have been recorded.

-

-A number of learned writers have made a special study of the history of

-Comets and their effect upon man. Long before Lubienitius’ ponderous

-work on the subject there were other histories written in Latin and

-Arabic, with references to which his book abounds.

-

-Since then others have followed in the same direction, notably Pingré,

-Hind, Lalande, Messier, Chambers and latterly Messrs. Crommelin and

-Cowell, of the Greenwich Observatory.

-

-The number of known Comets has grown immeasurably since Galileo’s

-invention of the telescope, 300 years ago, and our later perfections

-of this instrument, together with latter-day devices for photographing

-Comets invisible to the naked eye.

-

-It would carry us too far to trace the possible connection between

-modern events and Comets that were seen only by astronomers. Since

-our record of Comets is already too full, we shall limit our story of

-the Comets and their influence upon man to a bare recital of the most

-important events connected with the more memorable and conspicuous

-Comets from the time of Christ until now.

-

-

-

-

-DATES OF COMETS FOLLOWED BY IMPORTANT EVENTS

-

-

-    =A. D.=

-

-        14—A Comet preceded the death of Augustus, the first

-           Emperor of Rome. Earthquake in Italy.

-

-        55—Suicide of Pontius Pilate, the judge who condemned

-           Christ.

-

-        68—Halley’s Comet. Suicide of Nero, persecutor of

-           Christians. Siege of Jerusalem.

-

-        73—A Comet shone 180 days over Cyprus. Earthquake in

-           Cypress in which 10,000 persons perished.

-

-        79—Death of Emperor Vespasian, who began the siege of

-           Jerusalem. The Roman historians Dion Cassius and

-           Suetonius relate that Vespasian, when taken sick,

-           heard his astrologers discussing in a low tone

-           of voice the Comet which was then visible, which

-           they said predicted his death. The Emperor roused

-           angrily and said: “This hairy star is not meant for

-           me. It must be meant for my enemy, the King of the

-           Parthians, for he is hairy, while I am bald.”

-

-           On the following night Vespasian died in great pain,

-           and the Comet was seen no more.

-

-           Shortly after Vespasian’s death followed the fierce

-           eruption of Mt. Vesuvius, Nov. 1, which destroyed the

-           two flourishing cities of Herculaneum and Pompeii.

-

-       130—A Comet shone over Holy Land for 39 nights,

-           followed by destructive earthquake in Holy Land.

-

-       145—One week’s Comet over Island of Rhodus. Earthquake

-           in Rhodus, followed by famine and pestilence.

-

-       217—From a Comet which shone for eighteen nights

-           soothsayers predicted the death of the Roman

-           Emperor, Caracalla. The Emperor was murdered

-           immediately afterwards by his rival Macrinus.

-

-       312—A Comet in the sign of a cross seen by Constantine

-           the Great during battle of Saxa Rubra under the

-           walls of Rome. Constantine was victorious and

-           afterward turned to Christian faith.

-

-       337—A Comet seen just before death of Constantine the

-           Great.

-

-       373—Halley’s Comet. Beginning of tremendous migration

-           of peoples which overran all Central Asia and

-           Europe.

-

-       399—This Comet was described by Nicephorus as “of

-           prodigious magnitude and horrible aspect, with a

-           point like a sword and fiery hair reaching nearly

-           to the ground, from which a great peril to the

-           people was predicted.” Its appearance was followed

-           by the conquest and capture of Rome by Gainas.

-

-       410—A sword-shaped Comet shone over Italy for four

-           months until the third week in August. On Aug. 24

-           Rome was taken and plundered by Alaric, King of

-           the Visigoths. This marks the end of the old Roman

-           Empire.

-

-       442—First appearance in Europe of Attila, “The Scourge

-           of God,” and his Hunnic hordes.

-

-     449-50—Two Comets (now believed to be coming and going

-            of Halley’s Comet) were observed over England and

-            France. First invasion of England by the

-            Anglo-Saxons under Hengist and Horsa. Attila

-            overthrown in the great battle on the Catalaunian

-            Fields, at which a hundred and eighty thousand

-            warriors fell, among them Theoderic, the King of

-            the Goths. The Roman historian Callimachus recorded

-            that this battle was preceded by a brilliant Comet

-            and an earthquake.

-

-       453—Death of Attila and end of his Hunnic empire.

-

-       530—Halley’s Comet. Merlin, the British seer,

-           prophesied from this Comet. His prophesies came true.

-

-       531—Comet observed in Constantinople by the astronomers

-           of Emperor Justinian. Earthquake in Constantinople

-           followed by famine and uprising of the people in

-           which two thousand were killed. Pestilence.

-

-       538—Terrible famine throughout civilized world, so that

-           many people became cannibals.

-

-       547—A lance-shaped Comet over Italy. Ostro-Goths under

-           Totila overrun Italy. Totila storms Rome.

-

-

-_Mohamet’s Star._

-

-     570—Scimitar-shaped Comet over Arabia. Birth of Mohamet.

-

-     610—Another scimitar-shaped Comet over Arabia. Mohamet

-         begins preaching the Koran.

-

-     622—Flight of Mohamet to Medina.

-

-     624—Fourth scimitar-shaped Comet over Arabia and Holy

-         Land. Mohamet’s first battle for the new faith. His

-         massacre of 700 Jews.

-

-     632—Last appearance of Mohamet’s Comet during first

-         week of June. Death of Mohamet on June 8 at Medina.

-

-     800—A Comet seen during Coronation of Charlemagne as

-         Emperor of Rome.

-

-     814—Torch-shaped Comet seen in Germany during the first

-         three weeks of January. Death of Charlemagne on

-         Jan. 28, at Aix la Chappelle. The monk Eginard

-         relates in his chronicles that on the appearance

-         of the Comet all those at Charlemagne’s court

-         feared for the Emperor’s life. Eginard preached to

-         them from the text of Isaiah not to believe in the

-         signs of the heathens. But Charlemagne reproved

-         him, saying that he felt that he had reason to

-         thank God for having sent him a timely warning of

-         his impending death. Thereupon the Emperor made

-         his testament and divided his empire among his

-         successors. On the day following the disappearance

-         of the Comet, he died.

-

-     837—Halley’s Comet observed in France by King Louis the

-         Debonair, who died from fear of it.

-

-     876—Disastrous flood in Italy, followed by plague.

-

-     900—Another Comet over Italy. Saracens invade Italy.

-

-     944—Comet with an immense tail over Italy, followed by

-         disastrous earthquake.

-

-    1000—In January of this year a Comet was observed all

-         over Europe. Gigibertus describes it “shaped like

-         a horrible serpent and so bright that its light

-         was seen even indoors.” It was generally taken to

-         foretell the end of the world,—the millennium

-         prophesied in the Apocalypse. When it was followed

-         soon by earthquakes, floods and famine there was

-         universal panic which was not allayed until the end

-         of the “fateful year.”

-

-    1002—A Comet over England and Scandinavia. Massacre of

-         all Danes in England by King Ethelred.

-

-    1066—Halley’s Comet. It appeared in May at Easter time

-         and shone for forty nights, waxing and waning with

-         the moon. William the Conqueror haled it as an omen

-         of destruction to Harold of England just before the

-         battle of Hastings.

-

-    1077—Comet over Italy and Germany. Emperor Henry IV. of

-         Germany was excommunicated by the Pope, followed by

-         war in Italy and Germany.

-

-

-_Crusaders’ Comets._

-

-    1099—Arabic astronomers record a Comet in the shape of

-         a scimitar over Arabia and the Holy Land for six

-         weeks in Spring and early Summer. First crusade

-         and storming of Jerusalem by the crusaders on July

-         15 after a siege of five weeks. Bloody massacre of

-         Mohammedans.

-

-    1109—Emperor Henry V. of Germany enters Rome and makes

-         Pope prisoner.

-

-    1148-9—Second crusade. Utter destruction of whole army

-         of French and German crusaders.

-

-    1200—Comet recorded by Hal Ben Rodoan, an Arab

-         astronomer, over North Africa. Bloody revolt of

-         Arab warriors in Morocco.

-

-    1212—Lance-shaped Comet shining over western Europe for

-         eighteen nights. The Children’s Crusade. Thousands

-         of German and French boy crusaders perished or were

-         sold into slavery. Bloody invasion of Tartar hordes

-         into Russia and Poland.

-

-    1223—Preaching of fifth crusade. Outbreak of “Guelph and

-         Ghibelline” war between Emperor Frederick II. of

-         Germany and Pope Gregory the IX.

-

-    1264—Very bright Comet observed shining all over Europe

-         for three months. Pope Urban IV. died on the night

-         of the Comet’s disappearance. A Latin verse gained

-         great currency in which it was said that the

-         Comet portended “disasters, sickness, hunger, and

-         war.” The chronicles of that age ascribe to this

-         Comet besides the death of the Pope a famine and

-         pestilence in Italy, the ravages of the Russians

-         into Poland and of the Slavs into Prussia.

-

-

-_Comets of Bloodshed._

-

-    1282—An immense Comet over Italy. Disastrous earthquake

-         in southern Italy. On March 30, a fortnight after

-         the first appearance of the Comet followed the

-         massacre of all Frenchmen in Sicily on the evening

-         of Easter Monday, known in history as the “Sicilian

-         Vespers.”

-

-    1298—Because of the appearance of a Comet over middle

-         Germany, there were riots in Nuremberg and other

-         neighbouring cities followed by a general massacre

-         of the Jews in those cities.

-

-    1300—A brilliant Comet preceded the Jubilee of Pope

-         Boniface the VIII. The Pope interpreted the Comet

-         as a happy omen, but because of the popular dread

-         of the Comet there were riots and blood shed in

-         Rome and elsewhere in Italy. The chroniclers of the

-         times pointed out the significant fact that shortly

-         after his jubilee Pope Boniface was made a prisoner

-         by King Philip of France, causing him to die of rage.

-

-

-_Plague Comets._

-

-    1305—A Comet “of horrible aspect” burning all through

-         Passion Week preceded the outbreak of the terrible

-         black plague which swept from the Orient all over

-         Europe and Asia.

-

-    1333—Chinese and Arab astronomers record a bright

-         Comet over China, Turkestan and Persia. Birth

-         of Tamerlane, the “Scourge of the Nations” at

-         Samarkand, in Turkestan.

-

-    1347—A Comet precedes the “Black Death,” a terrible

-         pestilence followed by famine all over the world.

-         One-fourth of all the people of Europe died.

-         Fifteen million deaths in China,—twenty-five

-         million in Europe.

-

-    1363—A Comet of immense size shone for three months over

-         northern Europe. Pestilence and famine in England,

-         Poland and Russia.

-

-    1378—Halley’s Comet. Pestilence in Germany. Holy Church

-         is rent by the great schism, with rival popes at

-         Rome and Avignon.

-

-

-_Tamerlane’s Star._

-

-    1382—Arab astronomers and Chinese report a very bright

-         Comet which shone a fortnight. Tamerlane and his

-         hordes overrun Central Asia. Pestilence breaks out

-         there and spreads all over the world.

-

-    1402—Arab astronomers report another Comet seen all over

-         the East. Tamerlane carries war into Europe and

-         takes Constantinople by storm. Sultan Bayezid is

-         taken prisoner by Tamerlane and is carried to Asia

-         in a cage.

-

-    1405—Chinese astronomers record a spear-shaped Comet

-         over China. Tamerlane dies while invading China.

-

-    1456—Halley’s Comet. Bloody war between the Christians

-         and the Turks. Battle of Belgrade.

-

-    1492—Arab astronomers record a Comet over northern

-         Africa and Spain. Final conquest of Granada from

-         the Moors by Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain.

-         Discovery of the New World.

-

-    1500—Sword-shaped Comet over northern Europe, followed

-         by Tartar invasion into Russia and Poland.

-

-    1528—A Comet noted by Ambroise Paré, who recorded that

-         many people fell sick and died of fright. War

-         between Emperor Charles V. of Germany and Francis

-         I. of France, with fighting in France, Germany and

-         Italy.

-

-    1531—Halley’s Comet. Plague in Italy. Great schism in

-         the Church. Defection of German Protestants from

-         Rome. Henry VIII. of England declares English

-         Church independent of Rome. Sultan Soleyman ravaged

-         Hungary. Disastrous floods in Holland, where

-         400,000 people were drowned.

-

-    1556—Emperor Charles V. of Germany and Spain, on account

-         of his fear of the Comet that appeared in that

-         year, abdicated his throne and became a monk.

-         Wide-spread wars all over Europe. The Turks ravaged

-         Hungary. Persecutions of English Protestants under

-         “Bloody Mary.” Many Protestants burned at the

-         stake, beheaded or broken on the rack.

-

-    1572—St. Bartholomew’s Comet. Massacre of St.

-         Bartholomew, when 30,000 Huguenots were slaughtered

-         in France.

-

-    1577—General persecution of Huguenots in France,

-         followed by Civil War in France.

-

-    1607—A Comet seen over Constantinople for several weeks.

-         Wide-spread war on the part of the Turks against

-         the Persians on one side, the Poles on another, and

-         against Venice on the third.

-

-    1618—A blood-coloured Comet observed just before the

-         execution of Sir Walter Raleigh in England. A

-         bloody rising of the Protestants in Bohemia,

-         followed by the outbreak of the terrible Thirty

-         Years’ War in Germany and the Netherlands. This

-         was the Comet which gave rise to the German school

-         rhyme:

-

-              “Eight things a Comet always brings,

-               Wind, Famine, Plague and Death to Kings,

-               War, Earthquake, Floods and Dire Things.”

-

-

-_Louis XIV.’s Star._

-

-    1661—Inspired by the appearance of a Comet, a horde

-         of fanatics under Venner, a cooper, preached the

-         coming of the “Fifth Monarchy” in England, and

-         proclaimed Jesus Christ as their only King. The

-         fanatics were routed and put to death. Death of

-         Mazarin, the “Master of France.” Rise of Louis

-         XIV., the most powerful ruler of France. French war

-         against the Pope.

-

-    1680—This Comet was studied by Halley, in Paris, and

-         by Newton, in England. It was called “Heaven’s

-         Chariot.” Plague in Europe. The French overrun

-         Alsace and carried war into Germany. War between

-         Venice and the Turks.

-

-    1682—Halley’s Comet. War in Italy. War in Hungary

-         against the Turks.

-

-    1689—A remarkable Comet observed all over Europe,

-         followed by war all over Europe. Wars between

-         France, Germany, England, Spain and Italy. The

-         Rhine lands were harried by the French with fire

-         and sword, rendering 4,000,000 people homeless.

-         Burning of the castle of Heidelberg by the French.

-         Religious war in Ireland and Scotland. Siege of

-         Londonderry and Dundee. Battle of Newton Butler

-         in Ireland.

-

-    1729—War between France, England and Spain.

-

-

-_Frederick the Great’s Star._

-

-    1744—A six-tailed Comet observed in Germany just before

-         the death of Emperor Charles VII. His death

-         followed by war between Frederick the Great and

-         Maria Teresa of Austria. War spreads to England,

-         Holland, France, Spain and Italy. A British fleet

-         beaten by French and Spaniards off Toulon.

-

-    1755—A Comet precedes earthquake of Lisbon, by which

-         40,000 people lost their lives.

-

-    1759—Halley’s Comet. Seven Years’ War in Germany.

-         Frederick the Great overthrown in four bloody

-         battles. French lose Canada by their disastrous

-         defeat of the plains of Abraham, and lose India by

-         the loss of their fleet through three successive

-         defeats on the sea.

-

-

-_Napoleon’s Star._

-

-    1769—“Napoleon’s Comet.” A Comet of unusual red lustre

-         was observed over Italy and France. French overrun

-         Corsica. Bloody massacre of Corsicans. Birth of

-         Napoleon on August 15 in Corsica, just after the

-         Comet was seen no more.

-

-    1811-12—This huge Comet was one of the most famous

-         Comets of modern times. It was first seen in France

-         on March 26, 1811, and was last observed over

-         southern Russia on August 17, 1812—an appearance

-         of seventeen months, the longest on record. For

-         a while it had two tails, then only one. The

-         length of this tail was estimated as 100,000,000

-         miles. It was called “Napoleon’s Comet.” Under its

-         lustre Napoleon gathered his “grand armée,” the

-         greatest army assembled in Europe since Xerxes, and

-         invaded Russia. Wars were fought at the same time

-         in Portugal and Spain, where the British stormed

-         Ciudad Rodrigo and Badajos; and in America, where

-         Harrison’s victory over the Indians under Tecumseh

-         at Tippecanoe, and the seafight between the

-         “President” and “Little Belt” ushered in the War of

-         1812. In Egypt the Comet was taken as an omen of the

-         bloody massacre of the Mamelukes perpetrated at Cairo.

-

-[Illustration: THE GREAT COMET OF 1811.]

-

-    1821—“Napoleon’s Comet.” Seen one night only over France

-         and over St. Helena the night before the death of

-         Napoleon at St. Helena.

-

-    1823—A Comet much mentioned by Spanish writers.

-         While it shone over Spain, South America and

-         the Mediterranean, the French overran Spain and

-         reinstated the Spanish king. Revival of the

-         Spanish Inquisition and bloody persecutions of the

-         revolutionists. War of Independence in Central and

-         South America. Bloody war of Greek Independence.

-

-    1835-6—Halley’s Comet. New York City all but destroyed

-         by fire. Zulu massacre of Boers at Weenen. Mexican

-         massacre of Americans at the Alamo. Wars throughout

-         South America.

-

-    1843—Another famous Comet seen all over the world during

-         the Spring of that year. Especially brilliant in

-         the Southern Hemisphere and in India. War in India

-         on the part of the British against Afghanistan,

-         Beluchistan, Scinde and against the Sikhs.

-

-    1848—Encke’s famous periodic Comet. Bloody revolutionary

-         risings and civil wars in France, Hungary, Bohemia,

-         Austria, Germany, Italy and Poland.

-

-    1858-9—Donati’s Comet. This Comet, which appeared to be

-         charging straight down from the zenith, and had a

-         curved tail, was observed from June 1858 to April

-         1859. It was seen at its brightest in the South, in

-         Italy, Mexico and in the Far East. While it shone

-         over the Far East there were bloody wars between

-         the British and the risen people of India; between

-         the British and the Chinese, who objected to

-         having opium thrust upon them; while Japan was in

-         the throes of revolution and civil war. In Mexico

-         the standard of revolt against the clericals was

-         raised by Juarez, thus plunging Mexico into civil

-         war and war with France. Immediately after the

-         disappearance of the Comet war broke out in Italy

-         between the French and Italians on one side and the

-         Austrians on the other, ending in the bloody Battle

-         of Solferino.

-

-

-_Civil War Comets._

-

-    1861—“First Civil War Comet.” The brightest Comet of

-         the nineteenth century. Sir John Herschel, the

-         great English astronomer, said of this Comet: “It

-         far exceeded in brightness any Comet I have before

-         observed, those of 1811 and the recent splendid one

-         of 1858 not excepted.” The Comet was first seen

-         by a layman, and appeared at its brightest during

-         the Summer months in North America. Its coming was

-         heralded as a token of the great Civil War which

-         broke out then in America.

-

-    1862—“Second Civil War Comet.” Another Comet of very

-         peculiar appearance, with jets of flame flaring

-         from its head, showed itself during the Summer

-         months in North America. The Civil War was then at

-         its height. The coming of the Comet was taken to

-         herald the bloody battles of Shiloh, Williamsburg,

-         Seven Days, Seven Pines, Cedar Mountain and

-         Antietam, all fought that year after the Comet’s

-         appearance.

-

-[Illustration: THE GREAT COMET OF 1843 AS SEEN ON MARCH 17 FROM

-BLACKHEATH, KENT.]

-

-    1874—Coggia’s Comet. This Comet was seen at its

-         brightest over Southern France and Spain during the

-         Summer months of that year. Spain was then in the

-         throes of the bloody Carlist War.

-

-

-_Garfield’s Comet._

-

-    1881—Garfield’s Comet. This Comet showed itself for a

-         few nights only in March during the week following

-         President Garfield’s inauguration. It was observed

-         also in Russia. On March 13, Emperor Alexander II.

-         of Russia, was assassinated with a bomb. Three

-         months later President Garfield was assassinated in

-         Washington.

-

-

-_War Comets._

-

-    1882—Comet of Tel-el-Kebir. A Comet with two tails was

-         seen at its brightest over Egypt during the first

-         two weeks of September. Egypt was then in the midst

-         of Arabi Pasha’s uprising against the British. On

-         September 18, when the Comet was last seen, Arabi

-         Pasha was overthrown by General Wolseley in the

-         bloody battle of Tel-el-Kebir.

-

-    1904-5—Manchurian War Comet. From the early part of

-         February, 1904, until Midsummer, 1905, Chinese

-         observers recorded the appearance of a Comet over

-         Northern China. Throughout that period Manchuria

-         was ravaged by the bloody war between the Japanese

-         and Russians.

-

-

-_Earthquake Comets._

-

-    1906—San Francisco Comet. A Comet discovered by Ross on

-         March 17, remaining visible for one month. Observed

-         from the Lick Observatory in California. On April

-         17 came the California earthquake and burning of

-         San Francisco.

-

-    1908—Morehouse’s Comet. Visible for more than a month,

-         during the autumn. In Italy it was interpreted

-         afterward as an omen foreboding the Messina

-         earthquake late in the year.

-

-

-_This Year’s Comets._

-

-    1910—Inness’ Comet, otherwise known as “1910 A”. An

-         unexpected Comet of short duration during January.

-         On the appearance of this Comet Madame de Thebes,

-         a French astrologer, predicted floods and general

-         disaster for France. The disappearance of the Comet

-         in France was followed by unprecedented rains and

-         floods which covered one-fourth of France with

-         water and inundated Paris, completely submerging

-         all the bridges over the Seine. Floods also in

-         Italy and Germany. This Comet was likewise observed

-         in China late in January, where it caused universal

-         consternation.

-

-    1910—Pidoux’s Comet. Another unexpected Comet was first

-         observed by Pidoux, in Geneva, during a few nights

-         late in February. It is recorded astronomically as

-         “1910 B”. Its fleeting observations by astronomers

-         were followed by Socialist franchise riots in

-         Germany and by the labour riots of Philadelphia,

-         with widespread bloodshed between the rioters and

-         the constabulary.

-

-    1910—Halley’s Comet of this year was first “picked

-         up” by Dr. Wolf, in Germany. Already various

-         astrologers have foretold disaster from its coming.

-         It remains to be seen whether their predictions

-         will come true.

-

-[Illustration: THE GREAT COMET OF 1882, ON OCTOBER 9, AT 4 A. M.]

-

-

-

-

-HALLEY’S BALEFUL COMET

-

-

-Among all the stars known in astronomy, the periodically returning

-Comet now known as Halley’s Comet has the most baleful record.

-

-In this Comet’s wake, after every one of its recorded appearances,

-there have always followed terrible disasters.

-

-Not only war and battles, or other deeds of bloodshed, such as

-massacres and murders, but each of the dread disasters that are held to

-go with Comets have followed along one after the other in this Comet’s

-train.

-

-Of the eight baneful after-effects of Comets mentioned in the old

-German ditty that has been sung in the Fatherland ever since the great

-Comet which ushered in the dreadful Thirty Years’ War,

-

-    “Wind, Famine, Plague and Death to Kings

-     War, Earthquakes, Floods and Dire Things.”

-

-Halley’s Comet is known to have preceded each and every form of these

-evils in turn.

-

-Directly after each return of Halley’s Comet there has always followed

-somewhere within the influence of its rays one or other of those “dire

-things,”—a flood, an earthquake, a hurricane, famine, plague, war,

-bloodshed, or the sudden death of a ruler.

-

-Thanks to the careful work of such painstaking astronomers and

-historians as Lubienitius, Pingré, Dionys de Séjour, J. Russell Hind,

-Laugier, and Messrs. Cowell and Crommelin, the records of great events

-connected with Halley’s Comet have been traced back nearly 2,000 years,

-to the days before Christ.

-

-Among the signal events following in the train of this Comet there have

-been so many bloody massacres and appalling disasters that Halley’s

-Comet now has the ominous distinction of being the bloodiest of all

-stars of ill omen.

-

-Herewith follows the story of this Comet’s periodic appearances in

-history and of the events connected therewith, as traced back from its

-last return in 1835 to its first recorded entrance into the history of

-mankind.

-

-

-1835-1836

-

-Halley’s Comet last appeared in the Summer of 1835, and was seen until

-Spring of the following year.

-

-It was first discerned by Father Dumouchel with a powerful telescope

-from the observatory of the Collegio Romano in Rome on the night of

-August 6, 1835. Father Dumouchel, who had been watching for it many

-months, picked it up close to the spot in the heavens that Rosenberger,

-a German astronomer, had predicted for its appearance on that date.

-

-The last astronomer to see the Comet was Sir John Herschel, who

-observed it from the Cape of Good Hope until the middle of May, 1836.

-

-Other noted astronomers who made observations of it were Arago, Struve,

-Bessel, Kaiser, Sir Thomas Maclear, Admiral Smyth, Baron Damoiseau and

-Count Pontécoulant.

-

-This last astronomer, many years before, had computed the exact time

-of its coming and came within four days of it. For this brilliant feat

-Count Pontécoulant received a gold medal from the French Academy of

-Sciences.

-

-[Illustration: HALLEY’S COMET OF 1835. FROM A DRAWING BY ROSENBERGER.]

-

-The German astronomer, Rosenberger, who had likewise computed the

-Comet’s return, coming within five days of its passage nearest to the

-Sun, received a similar gold medal from the Royal Astronomical Society

-of Great Britain.

-

-Professor Struve, who studied the Comet through the great telescope

-at Dorpat in Russia, described it as “glowing like a red-hot coal of

-oblong form.”

-

-Bessel, who observed it from the Koenigsberg observatory in Northern

-Germany, described the Comet’s appearance as that of “a blazing rocket,

-the flame from which was driven aside as by a strong gale, or as the

-stream of fire from the discharge of a cannon when the sparks and smoke

-are carried backwards by the wind.”

-

-Struve at Koenigsberg and Kaiser at Leyden were the first to see the

-Comet with their naked eyes in the third week of September.

-

-Immediately after the Comet became generally visible in the Old World

-the bubonic plague, known of old as the “Black Death,” broke out in

-Egypt. In the City of Alexandria alone 9,000 people died on one day.

-By the Moslems this calamity was generally attributed to the evil

-influence of the Comet.

-

-In America the Comet became visible to the naked eye only late in the

-year. Then, on its approach to the Sun, it was lost to view and passed

-over to the Southern Hemisphere where it was next observed by Sir John

-Herschel in South Africa.

-

-Shortly after its brief blaze over North America the great “New York

-Fire” laid waste the entire business section of the biggest city in the

-New World. All the commercial centre of the city, including the richest

-firms and largest commercial warehouses, were laid in ashes. The fire

-raged through days and nights. In all, 530 houses burned down and

-$18,000,000 of property was consumed. Owing to the intense cold, the

-sufferings of the homeless were pitiable.

-

-Down in Florida, at the same time, Osceola, the chieftain of the

-Seminole Indians, called upon the Comet as a signal for war against the

-whites. The Indians called the Comet “Big Knife in the Sky.”

-

-The war began with a bloody massacre of American soldiers under General

-Wiley Thompson at Fort King. All were slaughtered. Osceola scalped

-General Thompson with his own hands.

-

-On the same day, Major Dade of the American Army, who was leading a

-relief expedition into Florida from Tampa Bay, was ambushed by the

-Indians near Wahoo Swamp and was massacred with his men. Of the whole

-expedition only four men escaped death.

-

-Within forty-eight hours of this horrible massacre came another bloody

-Indian fight on the banks of the Big Withlacoochee.

-

-With the passing of the Comet to the Southern Hemisphere, bloody wars

-broke out one after another in Mexico, Cuba, Central America, Ecuador,

-Bolivia, Peru and Argentina. All those countries were in a welter of

-blood.

-

-At the same time the American settlers of Texas declared themselves

-independent and made open war on Mexico. The war began with the bloody

-battle of Gonzales, in which 500 American frontiersmen fought and

-defeated over a thousand Mexican soldiers. This was followed by other

-fierce fights at Goliad and Bexar.

-

-Next came the bloody massacre of the Alamo, when all of Jim Bowie’s and

-Davy Crockett’s American followers were killed in an all night fight.

-Out of 200 Americans every man fell at his post. This was the deed of

-blood on which Joaquin Miller wrote his stirring Ballad of the Alamo.

-

-    “Santa Ana came storming as a storm might come,—

-     There was rumble of cannon; there was rattle of blade;

-     There was cavalry, infantry, bugle and drum,—

-     Full seven thousand, in pomp and parade,

-     The chivalry, flower of Mexico,

-     And a gaunt two hundred in the Alamo.”

-

-One month before the final disappearance of the Comet, the Texas War

-came to an end with the bloody battle of San Jacinto, when Sam Houston,

-with 800 American frontiersmen, defeated 1,500 Mexicans, and made a

-prisoner of President Santa Ana of Mexico.

-

-When the Comet had passed to the Southern Hemisphere, it was seen at

-its brightest in South Africa.

-

-The pious Boers of Cape Colony understood it to be a sign from heaven

-and forthwith set out on their great trek across the Orange and Vaal

-rivers, where they founded the Orange Free State and Transvaal Republic.

-

-Thus the Comet was the signal for the first blood drawn in the long

-fight between the British and Boers.

-

-A little later, though, the Boers found another, more woeful

-significance for the blazing of the Comet.

-

-Under the leadership of Piet Relief, a thousand Boer families had

-trekked across the Drakensberg Mountains into Natal. A solemn treaty

-of peace with the Zulu warriors was entered into with Dingaan, the

-chief of the Zulus at Dingaan’s Kraal. Suddenly the Zulus pounced upon

-the unsuspecting Piet Relief and his sixty-five Boer followers and

-massacred them to a man.

-

-Then the Zulus, numbering some 10,000 warriors, swept out into the

-veldt and made for the Boer wagon trains. Near Colenso, at a spot

-called Weenen (weeping), in remembrance of the dreadful tragedy there

-perpetrated, the Zulus overwhelmed the Boer laager and slaughtered all

-its inmates—41 men, 56 women, 185 children and 250 Kaffir slaves.

-

-After this bloody massacre, equalling in horror the Massacre of the

-Alamo on the other side of the world, the Comet of 1835-36 was seen no

-more.

-

-

-1758-1759

-

-This was the first return of the Comet predicted by Halley. Hence it

-must be reckoned as the first appearance of “Halley’s Comet” under his

-name.

-

-It was first seen on Christmas night, 1758, by John Palitsch, a Saxon

-farmer, near Dresden, who was looking for it with a self-constructed

-telescope of eight-foot focus. The Comet did not become visible to the

-naked eye until well into 1759. It passed around the sun on March 12,

-1759. After that it was seen throughout Europe during April and May,

-appearing at its brightest during the first week in May. Later it was

-seen to advantage in the Southern Hemisphere.

-

-In Germany, where it was seen at its fiercest, the Comet was taken as

-a token of the bloody Seven Years’ War, which was then being fought

-between Frederick the Great and his enemies on all sides.

-

-The ominous Comet had scarcely vanished from view when all Germany was

-overrun by marching armies from France, from Austria, from Russia.

-

-The French, under the Duke of Broglie, overthrew the Germans, under

-the Duke of Brunswick, at Bergen, and seized the city of Frankfurt.

-Then came the bloody battle of Minden, in which two large French armies

-were beaten. Meanwhile the Russians were marching into Prussia, and

-another bloody battle was fought at Kay in midsummer.

-

-Within a fortnight King Frederick the Great and his whole army were

-overthrown by the Austrians and Russians in the disastrous battle of

-Kunersdorf.

-

-Another Prussian army was overcome at Maxen, where 13,000 Prussians

-were taken.

-

-Altogether, during this year’s campaigns, several hundred thousand

-soldiers lost their lives.

-

-It was the worst year of the Seven Years’ War for Frederick the Great

-and his soldiers, who attributed their bloody defeats to the ill omen

-of the Comet.

-

-In other parts of the world, likewise, the coming of the Comet was

-followed by widespread war and bloody fighting.

-

-For the French, the Comet signalled disaster after disaster. After

-their armies had been beaten in Germany, their navy was defeated on

-August 17 in a great sea fight in the Bay of Lagos, on the coast of

-Portugal. Six weeks later there was another bloody sea fight between

-the British and French, when Admiral Pocock inflicted a telling defeat

-on the French fleet.

-

-Then came the final French naval disaster off Quiberon, in the Bay of

-Biscay, when Admiral Hawke destroyed French naval power by sinking

-or blowing up over a score of the French fighting ships. This bloody

-defeat was a disaster of untold consequences to the French, since it

-meant the loss of India.

-

-But this was not all that this Comet of ill omen had brought to the

-French.

-

-On September 13th of that year the French lost their strongest hold on

-America in the disastrous defeat inflicted upon them by General Wolfe

-in the bloody battle on the Plains of Abraham, where Wolfe himself fell

-fighting. On the French side, General Montcalm, the Commander-in-Chief,

-was mortally wounded. This meant the loss of Quebec and of all Canada

-to the French, an event of far-reaching importance that has changed the

-destiny of all America and of the modern world.

-

-

-1682

-

-The Comet which put Halley on the right track in his theories of

-Comets, first came into view on the night of August 15, 1682. It was

-first detected by Flamsteed’s assistant at the Greenwich Observatory,

-while searching the northern heavens with a telescope.

-

-Flamsteed, the first Astronomer Royal, and Halley, his successor, kept

-a close watch upon the Comet every night, and followed its course over

-the sky. Others who watched it were Sir Isaac Newton, Cassini, Picard

-and La Hire in Paris, Baert at Toulon, Kirch and Zimmermann in Germany,

-Montanari at Padua, and Hevelius in Dantsic. They observed that the

-tail lengthened considerably as the Comet came nearer the sun. Later

-a jet of luminous matter was seen shooting out toward the sun, which

-afterward fell back into the tail. Hevelius has left us a drawing of

-this phenomenon.

-

-On November 11th, Halley found that the Comet had come within a

-semi-diameter of the path of our earth. This startling discovery

-caused Halley to reflect what might happen if the earth and the Comet

-had arrived at the same time at the spot in space where their two

-orbits intersect. Assuming as he did that the mass of the Comet was

-considerably larger than our earth, he declared: “If so large a body

-with so rapid a motion were to strike the earth—a thing by no means

-impossible—the shock might reduce this beautiful world to its original

-chaos.”

-

-[Illustration: HALLEY’S COMET, JANUARY 9, 1683, AS DRAWN BY HEVELIUS.]

-

-[Illustration: THE COMET OF 1682, AS REPRESENTED IN THE NUREMBURG

-CHRONICLE.]

-

-[Illustration: MEDAL STRUCK IN GERMANY TO ALLAY THE TERROR CAUSED BY

-THE COMET OF 1680-81.

-

-TRANSLATION OF INSCRIPTION:

-

-    “THE STAR THREATENS EVIL THINGS—ONLY TRUST!

-     GOD WILL MAKE IT TURN OUT WELL.”]

-

-Others beside Halley took alarm at the Comet. They called it “The

-Chariot of Fire.”

-

-Dr. Whiston—he who succeeded Newton in the Lucasian chair of

-mathematics at Cambridge—in a moment of prophetic vision fervently

-declared that this Comet was God’s agent that would bring about the

-General Conflagration by involving the world in flames.

-

-In America, the Rev. Increase Mather, President of Harvard College, on

-the appearance of the Comet in New England, preached his great sermon

-on “Heaven’s Alarm to the World ... wherein is shown that fearful

-sights and signs in the Heavens are the presages of great calamities at

-hand.”

-

-Increase Mather’s warning was handed down as an inspired prophesy,

-in view of the fact that the English settlers in North America soon

-afterwards got into bloody warfare with the Indians. The war raged at

-its fiercest in the Carolinas, where the English settlers made war upon

-the redskins simply for the purpose of taking them captive and selling

-them into slavery in the West Indies.

-

-To the Indians the Comet appeared as a sign of ill omen, as shown by

-their frequent references to it during the parleys with the white men.

-

-The Comet was shining at its fiercest when the six greatest chiefs of

-the Susquehanna nation were enticed into a pretended council of peace

-with the white men, only to be foully murdered with all their followers.

-

-While this was going on in America, the Comet gave the signal in India

-for the first hostilities there upon the white settlers from Portugal,

-as well as for the outbreak of the bloody Mahratta War, which ravaged

-India for a generation to come.

-

-Nearer East, the Turks, under the leadership of Mohammed Bey, ravaged

-Egypt, while, on the other side, a Turkish army under Kara Mustapha

-carried war into Hungary, to the very gates of Vienna, until Emperor

-Leopold felt constrained to call for help from Sobieski, the warrior

-king of the Poles.

-

-In Europe the French overran Alsace, and suddenly seized the German

-city of Strasburg.

-

-At the same time the bubonic plague broke out in North Germany. In the

-little university town of Halle alone, within a few days, 4,397 people

-died out of a total population of ten thousand.

-

-It was then that medals were struck off in Germany with a design of

-the comet on their face, and an inscription imploring God to avert the

-evils threatened by the Comet:

-

-    “The star threatens evil things;

-      Only trust! God will make it right.”

-

-

-1607

-

-The Comet this year was seen all over Europe. The best observations of

-it were made by Kepler and Longomontanus (Langberger). It was seen at

-its brightest in England.

-

-Shortly after its appearance over England, there came freshets and

-floods which completely submerged the richest counties of England. In

-Somersetshire and Gloucestershire the water rose above the tops of the

-houses. This was followed by a visitation of the plague.

-

-In Ireland the Comet was taken as an omen of the fate of Londonderry,

-where the Irish rebels, suddenly seizing the city, massacred Sir George

-Powlett and all his English garrison.

-

-In Germany the Comet was taken as a token of the war then brewing

-between the Emperor and the German Protestant Princes—the so-called

-Protestant League—which ushered in the dreadful Thirty Years’ War in

-Germany.

-

-Off Gibraltar, a Dutch fleet completely destroyed a fleet of Spanish

-war galleons, thereby crippling Spanish sea power for a generation to

-come.

-

-Meanwhile, in America, the early settlers in Virginia, led by John

-Smith, found themselves beset by the redskins, who were incited to

-war by the appearance of the Comet. They called it “Red Knife in the

-Sky.” During the war, John Smith was taken prisoner, and escaped with

-his life only through the intercession of Pocahontas, the daughter of

-Powhattan.

-

-

-1531

-

-The Comet was first sighted by the German astronomer Bienewitz

-(“Apianus”) in midsummer of this year. Zwingli preached about it as an

-omen of disaster.

-

-German astrologers regarded it as a herald of the wars between Spain

-and France, which broke out in that year, and of the bloody war carried

-into Hungary by the Turks under Soleyman, who ravaged the Danube

-country to the very walls of Vienna. These wars were followed by a

-visitation of the black plague.

-

-In the Netherlands the breaking of the ocean dykes caused terrific

-floods, in which over 400,000 people were drowned.

-

-Toward the close of the year the Comet passed over to the Southern

-Hemisphere.

-

-To the aborigines of South America it proved a star of dreadful omen.

-During this year the most cruel of Spanish conquerors did their

-bloodiest work in the New World—Cortez in Mexico, Alvarado at the

-Equator, and Pizarro in Peru. Before the Comet disappeared from view,

-several hundred thousand wretched Incas and Aztecs had been slaughtered

-by the Spaniards, while many more hundred thousands were worked to

-death as slaves.

-

-

-1456

-

-The Comet this year was observed throughout Europe and also in China.

-It came into view over Europe on the 29th of May, and was seen gliding

-over the sky towards the moon.

-

-Writers of that period say that it shone with exceeding brightness and

-spread out a fan-shaped train of fire. The Arab astronomers describe

-its shape as that of a Turkish scimitar, which, blazing against the

-dark sky, was regarded as a sign from heaven of the war then raging

-against the Christian infidels.

-

-A clear story of the Comet’s appearance has been left by the Bavarian

-Jesuit, Brueckner (Pontanus). He based his story on the record of

-Georgos Phranza, Grandmaster of the Wardrobes to the Emperor of

-Constantinople. There the Comet is described as “rising in the West;

-moving towards the East, and approaching the Moon.”

-

-By the Chinese this Comet was described as having a tail sixty degrees

-long, and a head “which at one time was round, and the size of a bull’s

-eye, the tail being like a peacock’s.”

-

-    Halley wrote of this Comet in 1686: “In the summer

-    of the year 1456 a Comet was seen, which passed in a

-    retrograde direction between the earth and the sun.

-    From its period and path, I infer that it was the

-    same Comet as that of the years 1531, 1607 and 1682.

-    I may therefore with confidence predict its return in

-    the year 1758.”

-

-The appearance of the Comet in 1456 was so well remembered even 225

-years later, because this was the scimitar-shaped Comet hailed by the

-conquering Turks as their guiding star, against the evil influence of

-which Pope Calixtus III. exhorted all Christians to pray to God.

-

-This story has been denied by certain latter-day sceptics, but the

-medieval historian Platina, who was living in Rome at the time, and who

-knew whereof he spoke, wrote in his “Lives of the Popes” in 1470:

-

-    “A hairy and fiery star having then made its

-     appearance for several days, the mathematicians

-     declared that there would follow grievous pestilence,

-     dearth and some great calamity. Calixtus, to avert

-     the wrath of God, ordered supplications that if evils

-     were impending for the human race He would turn all

-     upon the Turks, the enemies of the Christian name. He

-     likewise ordered, to move God by continual entreaty,

-     that notice should be given by the bells to call the

-     faithful at midday to aid by their prayers those

-     engaged in battle with the Turk.”

-

-In truth, all Christendom appeared indeed to have fallen under the

-“wrath of God,” for the Turks; having wrested Constantinople away from

-the Christians, now came ravaging up the Danube countries and laid

-siege to the Christian city of Belgrade. Bloody battles were fought

-between the Magyars and Turks on the Danube, until Hunyadi, the great

-Magyar leader, at last overthrew the Turks under Mahomet II., under

-the walls of Belgrade, in a great battle, in which no less than 24,000

-Turks were slain. This was on July 21st, on the eve of which day the

-Comet had been seen to blaze at its fiercest.

-

-

-1378

-

-The Comet appeared late in the year, and was seen at its brightest over

-Northern Europe, in Scotland, Scandinavia, Russia and Poland.

-

-All these countries, during the same period and immediately afterwards,

-were cursed by the terrible pestilence called the “Black Death,” now

-known to have been the worst visitation of the bubonic plague known in

-history. Wherever the dread sickness appeared, the people “died like

-rats.” So many succumbed to the disease, and so many others fled aghast

-from the pestilence, that whole cities and towns were left empty, and

-no labourers could be found to till the fields.

-

-

-1301

-

-The Comet this year was first observed by German and Flemish

-astrologers during the late Summer and Autumn. It was interpreted as an

-ill omen of the wars which then ravaged Europe. Immediately after the

-appearance of the Comet, Emperor Albrecht of Germany ravaged the Rhine

-lands with fire and sword. Afterwards the German astrologers explained

-the Comet as a warning omen of the death of the Emperor’s son Rudolf,

-who died within a twelvemonth of his coronation as King of Bohemia.

-

-In Flanders the Comet was taken as a heavenly token of the fierce war

-which followed the bloodstained massacre of 3,000 French soldiers by

-the enraged people of Flanders.

-

-Soon after this came Robert of Artois’ bloody defeat at Coutrai, the

-famous “Battle of the Spurs,” so called from the thousands of gilt

-spurs that were taken afterwards from the feet of the slain French

-cavaliers.

-

-

-1222

-

-The Comet during this year is recorded by the Chinese astronomers

-in the months of September and October. During these months, and

-immediately afterwards, Jenghis Khan, the bloody Mongol conqueror, with

-his fierce Mongol hordes, was ravaging all China, Persia, India and the

-Caucasus country as far as the River Don.

-

-The Comet was taken as a special omen of the terrible fate of the City

-of Herat and its surrounding country, where the bloodthirsty conqueror

-caused to be slaughtered over a million of people. Jenghis Khan, who

-believed in stars and omens, having been born with bloodstained hands,

-hailed the Comet as his special Star. Under its rays he extended his

-immense Empire to its outermost boundaries from the China seas to the

-banks of the Dniepr in Russia. After the Comet’s disappearance, Jenghis

-Khan regarded the planets that had crossed its orbit as stars of ill

-omen, betokening his death, so he set his face backward from his march

-of conquest, and soon afterwards died in Mongolia.

-

-

-1145

-

-The Comet appeared over Europe early in Spring. It was seen at Rome in

-March and April.

-

-Inspired by the appearance of the Comet, Pope Eugenius III. called for

-a crusade against the Moslems. St. Bernard in France took up the cry,

-and preached a holy war all over France. On Easter Sunday, King Louis

-VII. of France, his Queen and all his nobles, received the Cross from

-St. Bernard at Vizelay.

-

-In Rome, however, the Comet was taken as a token of the Pope’s

-downfall. Arnold of Brescia preached against the Pope and aroused the

-Roman populace against him. The Holy Father had to flee.

-

-On the disappearance of the Comet, the Pope returned and excommunicated

-the Patricians of Rome. Arnold of Brescia was taken and strangled in

-his cell. Later historians, like Lubienitius, accordingly interpreted

-the Comet as a sign of warning rather than as an ill omen.

-

-

-1066

-

-This is the most famous appearance of the Comet now known as Halley’s

-Comet. Under its seven rays, that year, William the Conqueror felt

-inspired to fall upon England, while Harold, the Saxon, on the other

-hand, saw in the Comet a star of dread foreboding and of doom.

-

-The medieval chronicles of this year all make special mention of the

-Comet. A picture of the Comet, as it appeared to the doomed Harold, was

-embroidered by Matilde of France, on the famous coloured tapestry of

-the Norman Conquest, which is still preserved at Bayeux in Normandy.

-

-Zonares, the Greek historian, in his account of the death of Emperor

-Constantinus Ducas (who died in May, 1067), writes of the Comet as

-“large as the full moon, and at first without a tail, on the appearance

-of which the star dwindled in size.”

-

-The Chinese astronomers have recorded that this Comet had seven tails,

-and was seen for sixty-seven days, after which “the star, the blaze,

-and the star’s tails all drew away.”

-

-[Illustration: HALLEY’S COMET, 1066. (_From the Bayeux Tapestry._)]

-

-

-The Christian chroniclers record that this Comet, “in size and

-brightness equalled the full moon, while its tail, slowly lengthening

-as it came near the Sun, spread out into seven rays and arched over the

-heavens in the shape of a dragon’s tail.”

-

-Sigebert of Brabant, the Belgian chronicler of that time, wrote of it:

-“Over the island of Britain was seen a star of a wonderful bigness, to

-the train of which hung a fiery sword not unlike a dragon’s tail; and

-out of the dragon’s mouth issued two vast rays, whereof one reached as

-far as France, and the other, divided into seven lesser rays, stretched

-away towards Ireland.”

-

-William of Malmesbury wrote how the apparition affected the mind of

-a fellow monk of his monastery in England. His words were: “Soon

-after the death of Henry, King of France, by poison, a wonderful star

-appeared trailing its long tail over the sky. Wherefore, a certain monk

-of our monastery, by name Elmir, bowed down with terror at the sight of

-the strange star, wisely exclaimed, ‘Thou art come back at last, thou

-that will cause so many mothers to weep; many years have I seen thee

-shine, but thou seemest to me more terrible now that thou foretellest

-the ruin of my country.’”

-

-Another old Norman chronicler, by way of defending the divine right

-of William of Normandy to invade England, wrote: “How a Starre with

-seven long Tayles appeared in the Skye. How the Learned sayd that newe

-Starres only shewed themselves when a Kingdom wanted a King, and how

-the sayd Starre was yclept a Comette.”

-

-William himself appealed to the Comet as his guiding star. It shone

-at its brightest during the Summer months while William was preparing

-his expedition at St. Valery. When the spirits of his followers failed

-them, William pointed to the blazing Comet and bid monks and priests

-who accompanied his expedition to preach stirring sermons on the

-“wonderful Sign from Heaven.”

-

-The trip across the English Channel, late in September, was lighted up

-by the Comet, and under its lustre the Norman invaders first pitched

-their camp at Pevensey.

-

-Once more, when William’s Norman followers quailed at the fierce work

-before them, William pointed to the Comet as a token of coming victory.

-

-A fortnight later, directly after the disappearance of the Comet, the

-Battle of Hastings was fought, in which King Harold and his Saxon

-thanes lost their lives and their country.

-

-Afterwards, when Queen Matilda and her court ladies embroidered the

-pictorial story of her husband’s Conquest of England in the huge

-tapestry of Bayeux, they did not forget the Comet. They represented

-Harold cowering in alarm on his throne, whilst his people are huddled

-together, pointing with their fingers at the fearful omen in the sky,

-the birds even being upset at the sight. The Latin legend over the

-picture “Isti Mirant Stella” (they marvel at the star), makes it all

-plain.

-

-As I. C. Bruce, the editor of “The Bayeux Tapestry Elucidated,” has

-said: “This embroidery is remarkable for furnishing us with the

-earliest human representation we have of a Comet.”

-

-The Comet of 1066 will ever be famous for ushering in a new era for

-England. Even to-day Halley’s Comet is remembered as “The Comet of the

-Conquest.”

-

-[Illustration: WILLIAM THE CONQUEROR. (An English Dream.)

-

-Halley’s Comet appeared in 1066—When William the Conqueror took

-England. Halley’s Comet is here to-day.—Kladderadatsch (Berlin).]

-

-

-989

-

-The appearance of the Comet this year was marked by bloody wars all

-over Europe. The Lombards under Otho were harrying the ancient Roman

-Empire, while the heathen Danes and Wends ravaged Germany.

-

-

-912

-

-The Comet appeared early in the year and was seen over Germany, as

-noted in the chronicles of the monks of St. Gallus in Switzerland.

-Immediately after the appearance of the Comet, Germany was ravaged by

-war, both inside and outside, the Empire being invaded on all sides by

-the Danes in the North, the Slavs in the Northeast, and the Magyars

-from Hungary.

-

-

-837

-

-The Chinese Astronomers record two Comets for this year, one in

-February, and the other in April. But the modern view is that this was

-the same Comet, as seen going to the Sun, and afterward, when it was

-coming away from the Sun.

-

-Immediately after the appearance of the Comet there followed a

-widespread rebellion in China with much bloodshed and fierce reprisals.

-

-The only Christian record of the Comet we have is that of Eginard, an

-astrologer employed at the Court of Louis the Debonair, in France. This

-is Eginard’s account of the Comet: “In the midst of the holy festival

-of Easter there shone forth in our sky a sign always ominous and of

-sad foreboding. As soon as the Emperor—who was in the habit of gazing

-up into the sky at night—first saw the Comet, he had me called before

-him, together with another learned star gazer. As soon as I came

-before him he asked me what I thought of the sign in heaven.”

-

-“‘Let me have but a little time,’ I asked of him, ‘that I may study

-this sign and see the exact constellation of the other stars around

-it, thus to gather from the stars the true meaning of this portent,’

-promising him that I would tell him on the morrow of the results of my

-studies.

-

-“But the Emperor, guessing that I was trying to gain time—as was

-indeed the truth, lest I be driven to tell him something unlucky and

-fatal to him—he said to me:

-

-“‘Go up on the terrace of the palace and look. Then come back at once

-and tell me what thou hast seen! For I did not see this star last

-night; nor didst thou point it out to me; but I know that sign in

-heaven is a Comet. Thou must tell me true what it forebodes to me!’

-

-“Then, before I could say anything, he said: ‘There is another thing

-thou art hiding from me. It is that changes in Kingdoms and the deaths

-of rulers are foretold by this sign.’

-

-“To soothe him I reminded the Emperor of the words of the Prophet

-Isaiah, who said: ‘Fear not signs in the Heaven, like unto the Heathen.’

-

-“But the Emperor smiled sadly and said: ‘We should believe only in God

-on High, who has created us and also all Stars in Heaven. Since He has

-sent this Star, and since this unlooked for Sign may be meant for us,

-let us look upon it as a warning from Heaven.’”

-

-Thereupon Louis the Debonair betook himself to fasting, prayers, and

-the building of churches and shrines, he and all his Court. Shortly

-thereafter he died.

-

-The French chronicler, Raoul Glaber, afterward wrote in his chronicle:

-“Comets never show themselves to man without foreboding surely some

-coming event, marvellous or terrible.”

-

-

-760

-

-A Comet appeared in the Spring of this year, which without any doubt

-whatever was Halley’s. It was recorded in detail both by European and

-Chinese annalists, and its orbit has been calculated and identified by

-Laugier.

-

-A Greek record of Constantinople tells how “a Comet like a great beam”

-and very brilliant was observed in the twentieth year of Emperor

-Constantine V., surnamed Copronymus, first in the East and then in the

-West, for about thirty days. Its appearance was followed next Winter

-by a biting frost throughout the Orient, which endured 150 days, from

-October until February, blighting all crops in Egypt and elsewhere in

-the Eastern Empire.

-

-

-684

-

-Chinese annals record a Comet observed in the West in September and

-October. This accords with the computed time for the course of Halley’s

-Comet that year. Immediately after the Comet’s appearance, China and

-the Far East were ravaged by the black plague. Millions died of it.

-Baeda the Venerable, in his “Chronicle of the English People,” records

-that the plague also reached England.

-

-

-607

-

-All Europe and the former Roman Empire were in such dire confusion

-during this period that no records of this year, either astronomic

-or historical, have come down to us. Messrs. Cowell and Crommelin,

-however, have computed astronomically that the Comet must have appeared

-during this year. All we know is that Italy and the Latin World were

-overrun by ravaging Slavonian hordes from Hungary, who made all the

-country run with blood.

-

-

-530

-

-Of the Comet this year, likewise, there is no astronomic record. All we

-know is that the appearance of a Comet is noted in European chronicles.

-It was followed by a virulent outbreak of the black plague.

-

-In the legendary history of Merlin, the ancient British seer, it is

-stated that on the appearance of a Comet this year he prophesied that

-Uter, brother of Ambrosius, on the death of the latter, should rule the

-kingdom; that a ray from the Comet which pointed toward Gaul presaged

-a son who should be born to him and who should be great in power; and

-that the ray “that goes toward Ireland represents a daughter, of whom

-thou shalt be the father, and her sons and grandsons shall reign over

-all the Britons.” These prophecies all came true.

-

-

-451

-

-The Comet which appeared over Europe this year has been proven by

-Laugier to have been Halley’s Comet.

-

-It was seen in France just before the monster battle on the Catalaunian

-Fields (Châlons-sur-Marne), when Aetius, the last of the Romans,

-together with King Theoderic and his Goths, stemmed the tide of Hunnish

-invasion led by Attila, the “Scourge of God.”

-

-Theoderic, together with 148,000 warriors on both sides, were slain in

-this tremendous fight, which alone saved Europe from Tartar savagery.

-

-

-373

-

-Chinese annals of this year record a Comet seen in the northern

-constellation of Ophiuchus in October. This year marks the beginning

-of the tremendous migration of peoples, which started in Mongolia and

-Tartary, and crossing the Volga gradually overflowed all the known

-world, like a huge human deluge.

-

-

-295

-

-The appearance of a Comet this year (identified by Hind with Halley’s)

-was followed by a bloody rebellion of the ancient Britons against the

-Romans, and by another rebellion against Rome by the Egyptians. These

-patriotic uprisings of the people were suppressed with fire and sword

-and both countries ran with blood.

-

-

-218

-

-The Chinese catalogue of Ma-tuan-lin records a Comet with a path

-exactly analogous with the orbit of Halley’s Comet computed for that

-year by Hind. In the Chinese record the Comet is described as “pointed

-and bright.” Its coming was connected with the death of Emperor Ween-te

-directly afterward, and the Civil Wars between various claimants to the

-throne of the Celestial Empire, which then rent China asunder.

-

-Dion Cassius, the Roman historian, describes the Comet of this year as

-“a very fearful star with a tail stretching from the West towards the

-East.”

-

-The Roman augurs explained the Comet as a portent of the bloody death

-of Emperor Macrinus of Rome, who was murdered by his own soldiers on

-the night after the disappearance of the Comet.

-

-

-141

-

-In this year the Chinese astronomers recorded a Comet in March and

-April (the time computed for Halley’s Comet), which they described as

-“a star six or seven cubits long and of a bluish-white colour.” The

-coming of the Comet was followed by a virulent outbreak of the plague

-in China and the Far East, which spread all over the known world. So

-virulent was this pestilence that in the City of Naples alone 400,000

-people died of the disease.

-

-

-65-66

-

-Halley’s Comet, according to astronomic calculations, must have made

-its reappearance during the winter months of 65-66 A. D. The Chinese

-have recorded “two Comets,” one in 65, which was seen for fifty-six

-days, and “the other” in February, 66, which remained visible fifty

-days.

-

-This was the Comet which St. Peter and Josephus saw over the City of

-Jerusalem, before the fall of the Holy City. Josephus wrote of it:

-“Amongst other warnings, a Comet, of the kind called Xiphias, because

-their tails appear to represent the blade of a sword, was seen above

-the doomed city for the space of nearly a whole year.”

-

-Jerusalem was ravaged by pestilence and famine and soon afterward was

-stormed by the Roman soldiery led by Titus. The Temple was burned down

-and the streets of the Holy City ran with blood. It was the end of

-Jerusalem and of the Jews as a free city and people.

-

-

-B. C. 11

-

-This is the farthest back that the appearances of Halley’s Comet

-have been traced in history. For earlier appearances there are no

-sufficiently trustworthy computations or records.

-

-Dion Cassius in his “History of Rome” has recorded “a Comet which hung

-suspended over the City of Rome just before the death of Agrippa,” who

-ruled over the Roman Empire during the absence of Augustus in Greece

-and Asia. Agrippa was so universally beloved, and his death was held to

-be such a loss to Rome that he was buried with imperial honours in the

-tomb intended for Augustus.

-

-The death of Agrippa occurred in the year 12, shortly after the

-disappearance of the Comet which Hind has identified with Halley’s.

-

-       *       *       *       *       *

-

-This completes the record of all the known appearances of Halley’s

-Comet. The record fully justifies Chambers’ dictum, that the “Comet

-known as Halley’s is by far the most interesting of all the Comets

-recorded in history.”

-

-This historic record also appears to justify in no small measure the

-popular beliefs of the last two thousand years concerning Comets, as

-expressed by Leonard Digges in his book on Prognostics, published 350

-years ago:

-

-    “Cometes signifie corruption of the ayre. They are

-     signs of earthquakes, of warres, of changying of

-     Kyngdomes, great dearth of food, yea a common death

-     of man and beast from pestilence.”

-

-

-

-

-THE STORY OF EDMUND HALLEY

-

-

-The great French astronomer Lalande considered Halley the greatest

-astronomer of his time. This opinion is still held. Halley’s “time”

-means the age of Kepler, Sir Isaac Newton, Flamsteed, Hevelius, and

-Leibnitz, all of whom achieved first rank in Astronomy.

-

-Halley’s greatest achievement in Astronomy was the discovery that our

-solar system was but an atom in immeasurable space whence wandering

-stars could be caught within the influence of our Sun, our Earth and

-the other Planets swinging around our Sun.

-

-Halley was the first to discover and to prove that the Comets that come

-within the vision of man have fixed periods of return. He made this

-discovery during the appearance of the great Comet of 1682, which has

-since been known by his name.

-

-In his studies of the motions of Comets, of which Halley computed the

-orbits of twenty-four, he observed that a Comet of similar phenomena,

-recorded by Appian in 1531 and by Kepler in 1607, had swung through the

-same orbit as the Comet under his observation in 1682. Halley surmised

-from this that these Comets might be one and the same, whose intervals

-of return appeared to cover a period of seventy-five or seventy-six

-years. Halley’s surmise seemed to be confirmed by the recorded

-appearance of similar bright Comets in the years 1456, 1378, and 1301,

-the intervals again being seventy-five or seventy-six years.

-

-Halley was deeply imbued with Newton’s new discovery of gravitation,

-for the publication of which Halley paid the expenses, so he brought

-the principles of Newton’s theory of gravitation to bear on his own new

-theory of the motions of Comets. He rightly conjectured that Comets

-were drawn to our Sun across the disturbing orbits of our planetary

-system, and that the comparatively small differences of one or two

-years in the recorded intervals of this one Comet (Halley’s Comet) were

-due to the attraction of the larger planets.

-

-During the previous year, 1681, Halley computed that the Comet had

-passed near the planet Jupiter, the attraction of which must have had a

-considerable influence on the Comet’s motion. Making due allowance for

-this disturbing influence of Jupiter, he computed that the Comet would

-return to the vicinity of our Sun about the end of 1758 or beginning of

-1759.

-

-Halley did not live to see his prediction fulfilled (he died in 1742),

-but he wrote shortly before he died: “If this Comet should return

-according to our predictions about the year 1758, impartial posterity

-will not refuse to acknowledge that this was first discovered by an

-Englishman.”

-

-All through the year 1758 the most noted astronomers of Europe were

-on the lookout for the return of the predicted Comet. One of these

-astronomers, Messier, looked for it through his telescope at the Paris

-Observatory every night from sunset to sunrise throughout that whole

-year. On Christmas night, 1758, the Comet was first seen by a German

-peasant near Dresden, who had heard about the Comet and was looking

-for it. He was a man of unusually good eyesight, yet his discovery was

-doubted until Messier, nearly a month afterward, at Paris, “picked up”

-the Comet with his telescope.

-

-From that time forth this Comet, which returned in 1835, and is

-reappearing in this year (1910), has been known as Halley’s Comet.

-

-[Illustration: EDMUND HALLEY.]

-

-Besides this achievement, Halley accomplished many other noteworthy

-feats in astronomy, such as his discovery of the proper motions of the

-fixed stars; his detection of the “long inequality” of Jupiter and

-Saturn, and of the acceleration of the moon’s mean motion; his theory

-of variation, including the hypothesis of various magnetic poles, with

-his suggestion of the magnetic origin of the aurora borealis; and his

-indication of a method still used for determining the solar parallax by

-means of the transits of Venus.

-

-On the strength of these achievements, Halley for many years was

-elected to serve as secretary to the Royal Society. Commissioned as a

-Captain in the Royal Navy, he also commanded a vessel on a long cruise

-of exploration, and late in life he was made Astronomer Royal.

-

-Although in his sixty-fourth year, he then undertook to observe the

-moon through an entire revolution of her nodes (eighteen years), and

-actually carried out his purpose. To appreciate the full significance

-of so painstaking an achievement it should be borne in mind that

-astronomical observations must be made in a temperature equal to that

-of the open air. Observatories cannot be heated because the heat would

-impair the accuracy of the instruments.

-

-Great astronomers, like poets, are born, not made. Edmund Halley was

-one of these. At the age of seventeen he had already observed the

-change in the variations of the compass. At nineteen he was recognized

-as an astronomer of reputation, having supplied a new and improved

-method of determining the elements of the planetary orbits. His

-detection of considerable errors in the tables then in use led him to

-the conclusion that a more accurate determination of the places of the

-fixed Stars was indispensable to the progress of astronomy. With this

-end in view he set out on a voyage to the other side of the globe, St.

-Helena, where he undertook the task of making complete new observations

-of the entire Southern Hemisphere. Though the Heavens proved clouded

-he succeeded within two years in registering three hundred and sixty

-stars, a colossal achievement which won for him the title of the

-“Southern Tycho.” This was when Halley was barely of age.

-

-(The famous astronomer Tycho Brahe, long before this had won his fame

-by mapping the stars of the Northern Heavens.)

-

-No one could well have begun with prospects more remote from so high a

-career, for Edmund Halley was born in 1656, the son of a soap boiler

-in a shabby London suburb. From the refuse of rancid fat and lye the

-boy was rescued by friends, who procured for him a scholarship at Saint

-Paul’s school. By his brilliant attainments in mathematics he won

-another scholarship to Oxford University.

-

-While at Oxford the youth published a treatise on the planetary orbits

-and argued the Sun’s axial rotation.

-

-On his graduation from Oxford, the young would-be astronomer conceived

-the project of turning his attention to the southern Stars, of which

-no good observations had been made. Shortly before this time a Dutch

-astronomer, named Houtman, had observed these Stars in the island of

-Sumatra; and Blaeu, the best globe maker of the age, had used these

-new observations in the correction of his celestial globes. Halley, on

-examining these corrections, came to the conclusion that he himself

-could do better. He also concluded that the Island of St. Helena might

-be a better point for southern observations. His father, unable to pay

-the expenses of so long a trip, broached the project to some friends.

-The young astronomer was recommended to King Charles II. by Williamson

-and Jones Moore, and the King in turn recommended the youth to the

-Indian Company, which then had control over the island of St. Helena.

-

-After this all was plain sailing. The India Company placed a ship

-at his disposition and promised him all the assistance he required.

-Young Halley provided himself with telescopes, and micrometers, and

-other instruments of the latest approved pattern. In November, 1666,

-at the age of twenty, he sailed for St. Helena. Among his luggage was

-a sextant of five and a half feet and a telescope twenty-four feet in

-length constructed under the supervision of Flamsteed, the Astronomer

-Royal.

-

-Halley was disappointed in the climate of St. Helena. Frequent rains

-and a constantly hazy sky scarcely permitted any observations in the

-months of August and September. Notwithstanding these difficulties, he

-succeeded in observing and cataloguing some 360 Stars.

-

-In addition to his work on the Stars, Halley made some investigations

-on the Moon’s parallax, combining his observations at St. Helena

-with those made in northern skies. He also evolved a new theory of

-the Moon’s motion, which proved of great aid in the determination of

-longitudes.

-

-On November 7, 1677, Halley observed a transit of Mercury which

-suggested to him the important idea of employing similar phenomena for

-the calculation of the Sun’s distance.

-

-Halley returned to England in November, 1678, and was hailed by his

-fellow astronomers as the “Southern Tycho.” He was elected a fellow of

-the Royal Society, and by the King’s command the degree of Master of

-Arts was conferred upon him by the University of Oxford.

-

-Six months later Halley set out for Dantsic for a personal conference

-with Hevelius, the Polish astronomer. Halley wanted to satisfy himself

-as to the accuracy of observations claimed by Hevelius without the

-aid of a telescope. Halley convinced himself that the errors of the

-observations made by Hevelius were less than had been supposed, and did

-not exceed a minute of an arc. The two became life-long friends. Halley

-proceeded to other cities of Europe where there were observatories. In

-Paris he observed with Cassini the great Comet of 1680. This was the

-beginning of Halley’s special study of Comets.

-

-Returning to England, the young astronomer married the daughter of

-Mr. Tooke, auditor of the Exchequer, with whom he lived harmoniously

-until her death, fifty-five years later. The young couple settled at

-Islington, where Halley erected an observatory of his own and engaged

-in constant lunar observations with a view toward finding a method for

-computing longitudes at sea.

-

-Halley’s mind at the same time was busy with the momentous problem of

-gravity, upon which Isaac Newton was working then. Independently of

-Newton, Halley reached the conclusion that the central force of the

-Solar System must decrease inversely as the square of the distance.

-Having applied vainly to his fellow astronomers, Hooke and Wren, Halley

-in August, 1684, made a special journey to Cambridge to consult Isaac

-Newton, who confirmed his conjectures.

-

-Halley and Newton became life-long friends. Halley had Newton elected

-to the Royal Society, and when Newton became too poor to pay his

-quarterly dues, Halley, through his influence with the leading members

-of the Society, had them remitted. It was Halley who encouraged Newton

-to put his momentous discovery and elucidation of the forces of gravity

-into permanent form in his “Principia,” the first volume of which, “De

-Motu,” was presented to the Royal Society at Halley’s suggestion.

-

-In the proceedings of the Royal Society for December, 1684, there is an

-entry that “Mr. Halley had lately seen Mr. Newton at Cambridge, who had

-told him of a curious treatise ‘De Motu,’ which at Mr. Halley’s desire

-he promised to send to the Society to be entered upon their register.

-Mr. Halley was desired to put Mr. Newton in mind of his promise for the

-securing this invention to himself, till such time as he could be at

-leisure to publish it.”

-

-Early in the following year Newton sent his treatise to the Society, to

-whom it was read aloud by Halley. This treatise “De Motu” was the germ

-of the “Principia” and was intended to be a short account of what the

-greater work was to embrace.

-

-During the next two years Newton was hard at work on his “Principia,”

-while Halley was equally hard at work on his computations of the Comet

-of 1682, and on his theory of the orbits and the periodical returns of

-Comets which grew out of his observations.

-

-On April 21, 1686, Halley read to the Royal Society his own “Discourse

-Concerning Gravity and its Properties,” in which he stated that his

-“worthy countryman, Mr. Issac Newton, has an incomparable treatise on

-Motion almost ready for the press,” and that the law of the inverse

-square “is the principle on which Mr. Newton has made out all the

-phenomena of the celestial motions so easily and naturally that its

-truth is past dispute.”

-

-Shortly afterward Newton sent in the manuscript of his great work. The

-Society voted “that a letter of thanks be written to Mr. Newton and

-that the printing of his book be referred to the consideration of the

-council and that in the meantime the book be put into the hands of Mr.

-Halley.”

-

-The truth was that the Royal Society, at that time, did not have money

-enough to print the book. The Society went through the empty form of

-“ordering” that the book be printed “forthwith,” but no printer was

-forthcoming until Halley himself undertook the publication of the great

-work at his own expense.

-

-The delicacy of Halley’s feeling is revealed by his correspondence with

-Newton, in which he informed Newton that the book had “been ordered

-to be printed at the Society’s charge.” The preliminary delay about

-printing he explained to Newton “arose from the President’s attendance

-on the King, and the absence of the vice-presidents, whom the good

-weather had drawn out of town.”

-

-Later Newton came to realize how much he owed to Halley in this matter.

-In his letters to Halley henceforth he always referred to his book

-as if it had been Halley’s book. When the great work was finished at

-last Newton wrote to Halley under the date of July 5, 1687: “I have at

-length brought your book to an end, and hope it will please you.”

-

-The finished work contained a note to this effect: “The inverse law

-of gravity holds in all the celestial motions, as was discovered also

-independently by my countrymen Wren, Hooke, and Halley.”

-

-The book was dedicated to the Royal Society, and to it was prefixed a

-set of Latin hexameters addressed by Halley to the author, ending with

-the well known line:

-

-    “Nec fac est propius mortali attingere divos.”

-

-    (“It is not given to a mortal to get in closer touch

-      with the gods.”)

-

-Halley was fifty years old when he made his famous prediction of

-the return of the Comet of 1682. This was in his “Synopsis of Comet

-Astronomy,” which ended with these words: “Hence I may venture to

-foretell that this Comet will return again in the year 1758.”

-

-Besides being an astronomer of the first class, Halley was also a good

-navigator. In 1698 he was commissioned a captain in the Royal Navy

-and was put in command of the King’s ship, “The Paramour Pink.” With

-this vessel he set out on a long cruise to the Pacific for the purpose

-of making observations on the laws which govern magnetic variations.

-This task he accomplished in a voyage which lasted two years and

-extended to the fifty-second degree of southern latitude, when the ice

-compelled him to turn back. On the return voyage his crew mutinied and

-his lieutenant sided with the mutineers. Halley quelled the mutiny by

-sheer force of personality, and returning to England got rid of his

-lieutenant. The results of his voyage were published in his “General

-Chart of the Variation of the Compass” in 1701. Immediately afterwards

-Halley set out on another King’s ship and executed by royal command

-a careful survey of the tides and coasts of the British Channel, an

-elaborate chart of which he published in 1702.

-

-Next Halley was sent by the King to Dalmatia, for the purpose of

-selecting and fortifying the port of Trieste.

-

-On Halley’s return to England, he was made Savilian professor of

-geometry at Oxford, and received an honorary doctor’s degree. He

-filled two terms of eight years each as secretary to the Royal

-Society, and early in 1720 he succeeded Flamsteed as Astronomer Royal.

-

-He died on January 14, 1742, at the age of eighty-five in the full

-possession of his faculties, the foremost astronomer of the day and a

-man universally beloved and respected. His gravestone stands at the

-Greenwich Observatory.

-

-Halley’s works fill several shelves in the library of the Royal

-Society. His fame is kept green by the periodical return of the

-wandering star known by his name.

-

-

-

-

-WHAT ARE COMETS?

-

-

-The modern answer to the question “What are Comets made of?” is this:

-

-Probably the heads are a mixture of solid and gaseous matter. The tails

-are gaseous—the result of the volatilisation of the solid matter of

-the heads.

-

-The spectroscope shows that gases appear to be a constituent of all

-Comets. The spectra of Comets are very similar to those of a Bunsen

-flame. Recent spectroscopic photographs have revealed the presence of

-hydrocarbons, nitro-carbons, of cyanogen and of the vapours of sodium,

-iron and other metals.

-

-The connection between Comets and Meteors implies the presence in

-Comets of solid matter. A modern theory, voiced by Schiaparelli, is

-that meteor showers are broken up Comets.

-

-The tails of Comets appear to be composed of luminous gases ejected

-from the head of the Comet through a solar force held to be “Light

-Pressure,” which causes these tails to shoot off and disperse into

-space at the rate of 865,000 miles an hour.

-

-The length of some Comets’ tails has been estimated at 125,000,000

-miles, while the Comets’ heads themselves are generally much larger in

-size than our Earth. Halley’s Comet is more than ten-fold the size of

-our Earth.

-

-E. W. Maunder, of the Royal Observatory of Greenwich, a modern

-astronomer, has thus summarized the latest theories of the substance of

-Comets:

-

-“Though the bulk of comets is huge, they contain extraordinarily

-little substance. Their heads must contain some solid matter, but it

-is probably in the form of a loose aggregation of stones enveloped in

-vaporous material. There is some reason to suppose that Comets are apt

-to shed some of these stones as they travel along their paths, for the

-orbits of the meteors that cause some of our greatest ‘star showers’

-are coincident with the paths of Comets that have been observed. But it

-is not only by shedding its loose stones that a Comet diminishes its

-bulk; it loses also through its tail. As the Comet gets close to the

-Sun its head becomes heated, and throws off concentric envelopes, much

-of which consists of matter in an extremely fine station of division.”

-

-The orbits of Comets visible to human eyes are all governed by the Sun.

-In the words of C. L. Poor: “The attraction of the Sun is to the Comet

-like the flame to the moth. The Comet flutters for a moment about the

-Sun, and then swings back into outward space. But not unscathed; like

-the moth, the Comet has been singed. The fierce light of the Sun has

-beaten upon it, and spread out its particles and scattered them along

-its path.”

-

-As a comet swings toward and away from the Sun, it travels at a

-tremendous rate of speed—over a million miles an hour. The distance

-covered from one end of the orbit to the other is 3,370,000,000 miles.

-

-The great majority of Comets appear to travel in parabolas, open curves

-leading from infinite space to and around the Sun, and thence back into

-infinite space to some other fixed star invisible to us. As a matter

-of fact, though, the parabolic curves of Comets’ orbits through the

-gravitational attraction of the planets, whose orbits are crossed by

-it, may be changed into hyperbolic curves and ellipses by planetary

-perturbations. Hence the differences in time between the returns of

-certain Comets, like Halley’s, for instance.

-

-[Illustration: RELATIVE SIZES OF THE EARTH, THE MOON’S ORBIT AND

-HALLEY’S COMET.]

-

-[Illustration: ORBIT OF HALLEY’S COMET. THE TAIL ALWAYS POINTS AWAY

-FROM THE SUN.]

-

-In a general way, it may be said that every Comet comprises a nucleus,

-an envelope (called the “coma”) surrounding the nucleus and measuring

-from 20,000 to 1,000,000 miles in diameter, and a long tail which

-streams behind the nucleus from sixty to a hundred million miles or

-more.

-

-Astronomers have decided that the nucleus is probably a heap of

-meteorites varying in size from a grain to masses weighing several

-tons each; a heap, moreover, so easily sundered that its elements are

-distributed gradually along the orbit. It follows that every Comet must

-eventually perish unless it restores its nucleus by collecting stray

-meteors. That disintegration does occur has been observed time and time

-again.

-

-For example, Biela’s Comet, which was discovered in 1826, burst into

-two fragments, which drifted apart a distance of one million miles.

-Thus it became a twin Comet. Eventually it disappeared as a Comet, and

-in its stead we see a shoal of meteors whenever we cross its track

-every six and a half years.

-

-It is possible that the Comets of 1668, 1843, 1880, 1882 and 1887, all

-travelling in approximately the same path, are fragments of a single

-large body which was broken up by the gravitational action of other

-bodies in the system, or through violent encounter with the Sun’s

-surroundings.

-

-The luminous tail which streams behind the nucleus, which Shakespeare

-described so beautifully as “crystal tresses,” is startling, to say the

-least. Despite a length which may exceed a hundred million miles, it

-is so diaphanously light and subtle that it is difficult to compare it

-with any earthly fabric. The air that we breathe is a dense blanket in

-comparison. Several hundred cubic miles of the matter composing that

-wonderful luminous plume would not outweigh a jarful of air. By reason

-of its fairy lightness, it is possible for a tail occupying a volume

-thousands of times greater than the sun to sweep through our solar

-system without causing any perturbations in planetary movements.

-

-No celestial phenomenon has caused more perplexity than the ghostly

-sheaf of light we call a Comet’s tail. In a day, in a few hours even,

-the form of that wonderful gossamer may change. Hence it is that

-periodic Comets are identified when they return, not by the length and

-arch of their tails, but by their orbits. These alone are permanent.

-

-When a Comet is first seen in the telescope, it appears as a diminutive

-filmy patch, often unadorned by any tail. As it travels on toward the

-Sun, at a speed compared with which a modern rifle bullet would seem to

-crawl, violent eruptions occur in the nucleus.

-

-The ejected matter is bent back to form the cloak called the “coma.”

-With a nearer approach to the sun, the tail begins to sprout,

-increasing in size and brightness as it proceeds. Evidently there is

-some connection between the Sun and the tail, something akin to cause

-and effect.

-

-When the Comet rushes on toward the Sun, invariably the tail drifts

-behind the nucleus like the smoke from a locomotive. But when the Comet

-swings around the Sun and travels away from it, a startling change

-takes place. The tail no longer trails behind, but projects in front as

-if some mighty solar wind were blowing it in advance of the head.

-

-This phenomenon has long been an astronomical riddle. Here was a kind

-of matter that refused to obey the laws of gravitation and yield to the

-enormous pull of the Sun.

-

-[Illustration: OCTOBER 5. OCTOBER 9. DONATI’S COMET OF 1858.]

-

-It was thought for a time that the tail was flung away from the Sun by

-stupendous repelling electrical forces. That electricity plays its part

-in the formation of the fairy plume is conceivable, and even probable;

-but recently the physicist has discovered a new source of repellent

-energy which very plausibly explains the mystery of a Comet’s tail.

-

-This new source of energy is nothing less than the pressure or push of

-the Sun’s light. Solar gravitation is a force more powerful than we can

-realize. If it were possible for us to live on the Sun, we would find

-ourselves pulled down so violently that our body would weigh two tons.

-Our clothing alone would weigh more than one hundred pounds. Running

-would be a very difficult athletic feat. Light-pressure must indeed be

-powerful if it can conquer so relentless a force.

-

-Because we have never seen objects torn from our hands by the pressure

-of light, it may be inferred that this newly discovered force affects

-only bodies that are invisibly small. With the aid of instruments that

-feel what our hands can never feel and see what our eyes can never see,

-the modern physicist has critically analyzed the radiation that beats

-upon the earth from the distant Sun.

-

-Light really does sway infinitely small particles, as was first

-experimentally proved by the Russian Lebedev. Two American astronomers,

-Nichols and Hull, improved upon his method. They cast the solar

-effulgence into mighty mathematical scales and found that the earth

-sustains a light-load of no less than 75,000 tons.

-

-Most city-bred people are familiar with the so-called “Sun

-Motors”—little mills with black and white wings, enclosed in airtight

-vessels, which spin around in “perpetual motion” under the effect of

-“Sun Pressure.”

-

-It remained for the broad mind of a Swedish physicist, Svante

-Arrhenius, to apply the principle of light-pressure cosmically. He

-explained, very simply, that because a Comet’s tail is composed of a

-very fine dust it can easily be driven away from the Sun by radiation

-pressure.

-

-To understand how it is possible for so immaterial a thing as a sunbeam

-to produce so huge an effect, we have only to take a very simple

-example.

-

-Assume that you have before you a block of wood weighing one pound. The

-block exposes a certain amount of surface to the Sun’s light. Saw the

-block in half, and you increase the amount of that surface. Divide each

-half again into half, and the exposed surface is further augmented. If

-this process of subdivision is carried on far enough, the block will be

-reduced to sawdust.

-

-The entire mass of sawdust still weighs one pound; but its surface has

-been vastly enlarged. Indeed, the particles of sawdust, individually

-considered, may be said to consist of much surface and very little

-weight. If it were possible to take each granule of visible sawdust

-and subdivide it into invisible particles, a point would be reached

-where the pressure of light would exactly counterbalance the pull of

-gravitation, so that the particles would remain suspended in space,

-perfectly balanced in the scale of opposing cosmic forces.

-

-Finally, if the subdivision be continued beyond this critical point,

-the particles will be wrenched away from the grip of gravitation and

-hurled out into space by the pressure of light.

-

-So much has been discovered about the particles that compose a Comet’s

-tail that the more progressive scientists of our day have accepted this

-ingenious theory. Thus it has been decided by them that the delicate

-tresses of a Comet are to a large extent composed of fine particles of

-dust and soot.

-

-[Illustration: June 26.]

-

-[Illustration: June 28.]

-

-[Illustration: June 30.]

-

-[Illustration: July 1.]

-

-[Illustration: July 6.]

-

-[Illustration: July 8. CHANGES IN THE COMET OF 1863.]

-

-Before we can completely accept the view that light-pressure forms

-this train of soot we must ascertain whether the pressure of light is

-capable of accounting for the flash-like rapidity with which a Comet’s

-tail changes.

-

-A Comet may throw out a tail sixty million miles long in two days. Is

-it actually possible for light-pressure to accomplish that astonishing

-feat? Arrhenius has computed that 865,000 miles an hour is the speed

-of a light-flung particle of one-half the critical diameter. Because

-they are only one-eighteenth as large as this particle of critical

-diameter, the dust grains in a Comet’s tail would be propelled over the

-same 865,000 miles in less than four minutes. It follows that the solar

-radiation is amply strong enough to toss out a tail of sixty million

-miles in two days.

-

-Photography in the hands of Prof. E. E. Barnard, of the Yerkes

-Observatory, has revealed some extraordinary changes in Comets’ tails,

-changes which are not apparent to the eye and which cannot be explained

-by light-pressure or by solar electrical forces. He has collected a

-formidable mass of photographic evidence which seems to show that

-there are other influences at work besides the Sun’s radiation, and

-that these influences manifest themselves in distorting and breaking a

-Comet’s tail. In some Comets of recent years, streams of matter have

-been shot out in large angles to the main direction of the tail without

-being at all bent by the pressure of light. In Morehouse’s Comet of

-1908, tails were repeatedly formed and discarded to drift bodily out

-into space and melt away. Sometimes the photographic plate has shown

-the tail twisted like a corkscrew and sometimes it has revealed masses

-of matter at some distance from the head, where apparently no supply

-had reached it. At one time the entire tail of Morehouse’s Comet was

-thrown violently forward, a peculiarity so utterly opposed to the laws

-of gravitation that Professor Barnard suspects some unknown force at

-work in planetary space besides a force which undoubtedly resides

-in the Comet itself. If Halley’s Comet serves no other purpose than

-to throw light upon this mystery, its return will more than repay

-astronomers for all their observatory vigils.

-

-From the fact that the matter is ejected from the head to form the

-tail, it would follow that, unless it has the means of rejuvenating

-itself, a comet must eventually be disintegrated. Instances of this

-fragmentation and, eventual disappearance of a Comet are not wanting in

-astronomical annals. It has been stated previously that when Biela’s

-Comet appeared in 1846 it became distorted and elongated, that it

-eventually split up into two separate bodies, that in 1852 it again

-appeared in its double form, and that it has since disappeared.

-

-In a way, Comets may be said to bleed to death. At each return of

-Halley’s Comet, future astronomers will find it less brilliant than it

-was seventy-six or seventy-seven years before. Some time there will

-be no Halley’s Comet left, and the most famous Comet of its kind will

-be reduced to a shoal of meteors varying in weight from a few ounces

-to several tons and faithfully pursuing the orbit which their parent

-traced and retraced century after century.

-

-[Illustration: COGGIA’S COMET, 1874: ON JULY 13.]

-

-

-

-

-THE PERIL OF THE COMET

-

-

-It was Edmund Halley who first revealed a source of danger from Comets,

-of which even medieval superstition had never dreamed.

-

-While he was patiently plotting out the orbit of the Comet of 1680,

-which had inspired no little dismay among his contemporaries, Halley

-found that the Earth’s orbit had been approached by the Comet within

-four thousand miles—half the diameter of the Earth.

-

-If the Earth had been struck by that fiery wanderer?

-

-None had ever thought of the possibility.

-

-Halley began to do some mathematical figuring, and decided that, if a

-Comet’s mass were comparable with that of the Earth, our year would

-have been changed in length because the Earth’s orbit would have been

-altered. He also speculated what would happen to the Earth, and reached

-this conclusion:

-

-    “If so large a body with so rapid a motion were to

-     strike the Earth—a thing by no means impossible—the

-     shock might reduce this beautiful world to its

-     original chaos.”

-

-Halley even thought it probable that the Earth had actually been struck

-by a Comet at some remote period, struck obliquely, moreover, so that

-the axis of rotation had been changed. Thus he was led to infer that

-possibly the North Pole had once been at a point near Hudson’s Bay, and

-that the rigour of North America’s climate might thus be accounted for.

-

-The seed which was thus sown by Halley has borne fruit. In Halley’s

-own time, learned men were brooding over the ultimate destruction of

-the Earth by collision with a Comet.

-

-Dr. Whiston, who succeeded Newton at Cambridge in the Lucasian chair of

-mathematics, was sure that a Comet caused the Deluge, and went so far

-as to prophesy that a Comet, as it passed us on its outward course from

-the Sun, would ultimately bring about a “General Conflagration,” and

-thus envelope the Earth in flames.

-

-One century after Halley, the French astronomer Laplace, whose

-mathematical attainments were surpassed only by those of Newton,

-applied his brilliant mind to the possibility of a collision with a

-Comet, and arrived at this conclusion:

-

-    “The seas would abandon their ancient beds and rush

-     towards the new equator, drowning in one universal

-     deluge the greater part of the human race.... We see,

-     then, in effect, why the ocean has receded from the

-     high lands upon which we find incontestable marks of

-     its sojourn; we see how the animals and plants of the

-     south have been able to exist in the climate of the

-     north, where their remains and imprints have been

-     discovered.”

-

-The famous French mathematician Lalande showed that if a Comet as heavy

-as the Earth were to come within six times the distance of the Moon,

-it would exert such a powerful attraction upon the waters of the globe

-as to pull up a tidal wave 13,000 feet above the ordinary sea-level

-and inundate the continents Every European mountain would be submerged

-except Mt. Blanc, and only the inhabitants of the Rockies, the Andes

-and the Himalayas would escape death.

-

-Since Lalande’s day there has been more than one Comet “scare.” One of

-these startled Europe in 1832. On October 29th of that year, Biela’s

-Comet crossed the Earth’s orbit. The announcement was received with

-stupefaction. It was only when Arago soothingly pointed out that the

-Earth would not reach the exact point where the Comet had intersected

-the Earth’s orbit until November 30, at which time the Comet would be

-50,000,000 miles away, that the popular excitement subsided. A similar

-alarm seized the world in 1857. Some prophet declared that on June 13

-the world would collide with a certain periodic Comet having a period

-of revolution of three centuries. It is related that the churches

-and confessionals were crowded for days. Still another prediction,

-made in 1872 by Plantamour, the distinguished director of the Geneva

-Observatory, set Europe in a ferment. His calculations were based on

-errors, which were pointed out by other astronomers, and the public

-mind was quieted.

-

-Although more than two centuries have passed since Halley was in his

-prime, the possibility of a collision with some vagabond star still

-haunts the mind of the astronomer.

-

-That a collision is apt to occur is an admitted astronomic fact. The

-latest estimate, made in 1909 by Prof. William H. Pickering of Harvard

-University, would seem to prove that the core of one Comet in about

-100,000,000 Comets will hit the earth squarely. An encounter with some

-part of a Comet’s head will happen once in 4,000,000 years. Since

-Comets’ orbit are more thickly distributed near the ecliptic than else

-where in the celestial sphere, the collisions will occur according to

-Pickering, perhaps more frequently than this.

-

-Because Pickering’s figures differ from those other astronomers—Arago

-and Babinet, for instance—it must not be inferred that his

-predecessors are wrong and that he is right in his calculations. The

-problem is too complex for that. Pickering, Arago and Babinet differ

-partly because they have assumed different average sizes for their

-Comets, and partly because their definitions of visible Comets are not

-in accord.

-

-That the possibility is very real, we shall all have an opportunity of

-judging on May 18, 1910. On that date the Earth will be plunged in the

-tail of Halley’s Comet, and the head will be less than 15,000,000 miles

-away—a mere hand’s breadth in the vastness of the universe.

-

-What will happen?

-

-Nobody knows for certain.

-

-By means of the wonderful instrument called the spectroscope, an

-instrument which analyzes a distant star as readily as if it were a

-stone picked up in the road, it has been discovered that a Comet’s tail

-is composed of gases called “hydrocarbons” (combinations of hydrogen

-and carbon), and that it bears a close chemical resemblance to the blue

-flame of a kitchen gas-stove.

-

-Illuminating gas, as we all know, is poisonous. If a Comet’s tail were

-dense enough, it is conceivable, therefore, that every human being on

-this planet might be asphyxiated by breathing the Comet’s poisonous

-vapour as the Earth plowed through it. There is also this possibility,

-suggested by Flammarion, that the gases of a very dense tail might so

-combine with the nitrogen which constitutes nearly 80 per cent. of

-the air we breathe, that the atmosphere would be converted into the

-“laughing gas” employed by dentists. The world would die in a delirium

-of joy. At first a delightful serenity would settle upon mankind. Then

-would follow a contagious gaiety, febrile exaltation, a paroxysm of

-delight, and then madness. Flammarion even conceives the world merrily

-dancing a joyous, hysterical sarabande in which it perishes laughing.

-

-The tail of a Comet is fraught with still other possible dangers. Our

-atmosphere contains a certain amount of hydrogen, a marvellously light

-gas to which balloons owe their buoyancy. Besides its lightness, this

-gas is characterized by an extreme inflammability. The law of the

-diffusion of gases teaches us that part of this hydrogen in the air

-is mechanically mixed with other gases, and that part of it probably

-floats in the upper air, far beyond the reach of any balloon. A Comet

-may be regarded as a huge lighted torch whirling through space, which

-may be brought dangerously near that upper layer of highly inflammable

-hydrogen. If the gas shall ever be touched off by this flying torch,

-our planet will be ignited. The whole atmosphere will become a seething

-ocean of flame, in which forests and cities will burn like straw, in

-which oceans will boil away in vast clouds of steam, and in which all

-animal life will be snuffed out of existence before it shall realize

-that the world is on fire. In a word, the globe will become a planetary

-funeral pyre. Since water results from burning hydrogen in oxygen,

-this same fierce and terrible flame must be speedily extinguished by a

-mighty deluge which will engulf the Earth.

-

-A spectroscope analysis of Halley’s Comet has furthermore revealed

-the presence of cyanogen gas in the tail. Cyanogen is a compound of

-nitrogen and carbon, one of the most poisonous compounds with which the

-chemist is familiar. Prussic acid, potassium cyanide and many other

-cyanides, all of them almost instantaneously fatal if taken into the

-human system, are compounds of cyanogen. If that gas is present in

-large enough quantities, one flick of a Comet’s tail will end all human

-and animal existence.

-

-So much is certain. A collision of the Earth with a Comet will

-undoubtedly prove disastrous—how disastrous will depend largely on the

-size of the Comet’s head and on its speed. That a violent heat will

-be developed, we have every reason to believe, from our knowledge of

-meteors. The mere movement of a meteor through the thin upper layers of

-our atmosphere produces a dazzling trail and reduces the meteor itself

-to a molten metallic mass. Arrest a body in swift motion, and you must

-dissipate its energy in some way. As a rule, the energy is converted

-into heat. A bullet discharged from a rifle is often melted when

-suddenly stopped by steel armour. A Comet travels at a pace compared

-with which a projectile, fired from the most powerful twelve-inch gun,

-seems only to crawl. What, then, must be the frightful effect when it

-strikes the Earth?

-

-A Comet rushes through space not at the bullet’s rate of thousands of

-feet an hour, but of a million miles an hour. The bigger it is, and the

-faster it moves, the greater will be the heat developed by its stoppage.

-

-“At the first contact with the upper regions of the atmosphere,” writes

-Prof. Simon Newcomb, “the whole heavens would be illuminated with a

-resplendence beyond that of a thousand Suns, the sky radiating a light

-which would blind every eye that beheld it, and a heat which would melt

-the hardest rocks.” The same conclusion was reached by Prof. Faye.

-

-When the time comes for a collision with a Comet of formidable size,

-the human race will be in the horrible predicament of knowing the exact

-hour and minute of its doom. The newspapers will print a dispatch from

-some great observatory, reading perhaps like this:

-

-“A telescopic Comet was discovered by Caxton in right ascension 7 hours

-13 minutes 1 second, and declension 17 degrees 28 minutes 31 seconds.

-Moderate motion in a northwest direction.”

-

-[Illustration: “If so large a body with so rapid a motion were to

-strike the Earth—a thing by no means impossible—the shock would

-reduce this beautiful world to its original chaos.”—EDMUND HALLEY.]

-

-At first the discovery produces not even a ripple of excitement.

-Telescopic Comets are discovered too frequently. Three days later the

-discoverer has worked out an ephemeris, which gives the date when the

-body will pass around the Sun, and which indicates the Comet’s path. He

-finds that on a certain date and at a certain hour the Earth and the

-Comet must crash together. Again and again he repeats his calculations,

-hoping that he may have erred. The utmost permissible allowance for

-accelerations and retardations caused by the outer planets of the solar

-system fails to change the result.

-

-The Earth and the Comet must meet. With some hesitation the astronomer

-sends a telegram to a central observatory, which acts as a distributor

-of astronomical news. At first his prediction is discredited and even

-laughed at. Another computation is made at the observatory. Again

-mathematics infallibly indicates the exact time and place of the

-encounter, and the last lingering hope is dispelled. Telegrams are sent

-to astronomical societies, to the leading scientific periodicals and to

-the newspapers.

-

-At first the prediction of the Earth’s doom is received with popular

-incredulity, engendered by years of newspaper misrepresentation. The

-world’s end has been too frequently and too frightfully foretold

-on flamboyant double-page Sunday editions. When the truth is at

-last accepted, after days of insistent repetition of the original

-announcement, a wave of terror runs through the world.

-

-There is no escape. International committees of astronomers meet

-daily to mark the approach of the Comet. Bulletins are published

-announcing the steadily dwindling distance between the world and the

-huge projectile in the sky. The great tail, arching the Heavens as the

-Comet approaches, seems like a mighty, fiery sword held in an unseen

-Titanic hand and relentlessly sweeping down. The temples, churches and

-synagogues are thronged with supplicating multitudes on bended knees,

-in a catalepsy of terror. The stock exchanges, banks, shops and public

-institutions are deserted. Business is at a standstill. The roar of the

-street is hushed. No wagons rattle over the pavement; no hucksters call

-out their wares.

-

-As the Comet draws nearer and nearer, night changes into an awful,

-nocturnal day. Even at noon the Comet outshines the Sun. There is no

-twilight. The Sun sets; but the Comet glows in the sky, another more

-brilliant luminary, marvellously yet fearfully arrayed in a fiery plume

-that overspreads the sky. The Moon is completely lost, and the Stars

-are drowned out in this dazzling glare. Warned by the astronomers,

-mankind takes refuge in subterranean retreats to await its fate.

-

-Long before the actual collision—long before the Earth is reduced

-to a maelstrom of lava, gas, steam and planetary debris—mankind is

-annihilated with merciful swiftness by heat and suffocation. A candle

-flame blown out by a gust of wind is not more quickly extinguished.

-

-When the Comet encounters the upper layers of the atmosphere, there is

-a blinding flash, due to friction between the air and the Comet. A few

-seconds later the crash comes. From within, molten rock and flame, pent

-up for geologic ages, burst forth, geyser-like. The Earth is converted

-into a gigantic volcano, in the eruption of which oceans are spilled

-and continents are torn asunder, to vanish like wax in a furnace.

-

-When it is all over, the Earth swims through space, a blackened

-planetary cinder,—desolate and dead.

-

-

-

-

-THE END OF THE WORLD

-

-

-Camille Flammarion, the French astronomer, in his story, “The End

-of the World,” gives this graphic description of the results of a

-collision between a Comet and our Earth:

-

-In Paris, London, Rome, Berlin, St. Petersburg, Constantinople, New

-York and Chicago—in all the great capitals of the world, in all the

-cities, in all the villages—the frightened people wandered out of

-doors, as one sees ants run about when their ant-hills are disturbed.

-All the affairs of every-day life were forgotten.

-

-All human projects were at a standstill. People seemed to have

-lost interest in all their affairs. They were in a state of

-demoralization—a dejection more abject even than that which is

-produced by sea-sickness.

-

-All places of worship had been crowded on that memorable day when it

-was seen that a collision with a Comet had become inevitable.

-

-In Paris the crowds in the churches were so great that people could

-no longer get near Notre Dame, the Madeleine and the other churches.

-Within the churches, vast congregations of worshippers were on their

-knees praying to God on High. The churches rang with the sounds of

-supplication, but no other sound was heard. The great church organs and

-the bells in the steeples were hushed.

-

-In the streets, on the avenues, in the public squares, there was the

-same dread silence. Nothing was bought or sold. No newspapers were

-hawked about.

-

-The only vehicles seen on the streets were funeral hearses carrying to

-the cemeteries the bodies of the first victims of the Comet. Of these

-there were already many. They were people who had died from fright and

-from heart disease.

-

-With what anxiety everyone waited for the night!

-

-Never, perhaps, was there a more beautiful sunset. Never a clearer sky.

-The sun seemed to dip into a sea of red and gold.

-

-The huge red ball of the sun sank majestically to the horizon. But the

-stars did not appear. Night did not come.

-

-To the solar day succeeded a new day, the daylight of the Comet. Its

-intense light resembled that of an Aurora Borealis, but more vivid,

-coming from a great incandescent spot, which had not been visible

-during the day because it was below the horizon, but which would

-certainly have rivalled the splendour of the Sun.

-

-This luminous spot rose in the East almost at the same time as the full

-Moon. The two luminous bodies rose together, side by side. As they

-rose, the light of the Moon seemed to pale, but the head of the Comet

-increased in splendour with the disappearance of the Sun below the

-western horizon.

-

-Now, after nightfall, the Comet dominated the world—a scarlet-red ball

-with jets of yellow and green flame which seemed to flutter like fiery

-wings.

-

-To the terrified people it seemed like a giant of fire taking

-possession of all Heaven and Earth.

-

-Already the outermost jets of flame had reached the Moon. From one

-instant to the next the flaming rays would descend upon the Earth.

-

-All eyes were distended with horror when it was seen that the horizon

-was lighting up with tiny violet flames as from a vast fire.

-

-An instant afterward, the Comet diminished in brilliancy. This was

-apparently because the Comet, upon touching the atmosphere of our

-Earth, had come within the penumbra of our planet and had lost part of

-its reflected light coming from the Sun. But in reality this apparent

-extinction was the effect of contrast. When the less dazzled eyes of

-the awestruck, human spectators had grown used to this new light, it

-appeared almost as intense as at first, but paler, more sinister and

-sepulchral.

-

-Never before had the Earth been lit up with so sickly a light.

-

-The drouth of the air became intolerable. Heat, as from a huge burning

-oven, came from above. A horrible stench of burning sulphur—due, no

-doubt, to electrified ozone—poisoned the atmosphere.

-

-All the people then saw that their time had come. Many-thousand-throated

-cries rent the air. “The World is burning. We are on fire!” they cried.

-

-All the horizon, in fact, was now lit up with flame, forming a crown

-of blue light. It was, indeed, as had been foreseen by scientists, the

-oxide of carbon igniting in the air and producing anhydrid of carbon.

-Clearly, too, hydrogen from the Comet combined with it.

-

-On a sudden, as the people were gazing terrified, motionless, mute,

-holding their breath, and scared out of their wits, the vault of Heaven

-seemed to be rent asunder from the zenith to the horizon. Through the

-gaping breach there seemed to appear the huge red mouth of a dragon,

-belching forth sheaves of sputtering green flames.

-

-The glare of the atmosphere was so fierce that those who had not

-already hidden themselves in the cellars of their houses, now all

-rushed helter-skelter to the nearest underground openings, be they

-subway steps, cellar doors or sewer manholes. Thousands were crushed or

-maimed during this mad stampede, while many others, frantic from fright

-and stricken with the heat, fell dead from apoplexy.

-

-All reasoning powers seemed to have ceased. Among those cowering in

-dark cellars and subterranean passages below, there was nothing but

-silence, begot by dull resignation and stupor.

-

-Of all this panic-stricken multitude, only the astronomers had remained

-at their posts in the Observatories, making unceasing observations of

-this great astronomic phenomenon. They were the only eye-witnesses of

-the impending collision.

-

-Their calculations had been that the terrestrial globe would penetrate

-into the core of the Comet, as a cannon ball might into a cloud. From

-the first contact of the extreme atmospheric zones of the Earth and of

-the Comet, they had figured, the transit would last four hours and a

-half.

-

-It was easy to compute, since the Comet, being about fifty times as

-large as the Earth, was to be pierced, not in its centre, but at

-one-quarter of the distance from the centre, with a velocity of 173,000

-kilometers an hour.

-

-It was about forty minutes after the first atmospheric impact with the

-Comet, that the heat and horrible stench of burning sulphur became so

-suffocating that a few more moments of this torment would put an end

-to all life. Even the most intrepid of astronomers withdrew into the

-interior of their glass-domed observatories, which they could close

-hermetically as they descended into the deep subterranean vaults.

-

-The longest to stay above was a young assistant astronomer, a girl

-student from California, whose nerves had been steeled during the

-ordeal of the San Francisco earthquake. She remained long enough to

-witness the apparition of a huge, white-hot meteorite, precipitating

-itself southward with the velocity of lightning.

-

-But it was beyond human endurance to remain longer above. It was no

-longer possible to breathe. To the intense heat and atmospheric drouth,

-destroying all vital functions, was added the poisoning of our air by

-the oxide of carbon.

-

-The ears rang as from the tolling of funeral bells, and all hearts were

-in a flutter of feverish palpitation. And always, everywhere, there was

-that suffocating stench of sulphur.

-

-Now a shower of fire fell from the glowing sky. It was raining

-shooting-stars and white-hot meteorites, most of which burst like

-bombs. The fragments of these, like flying shrapnel, crashed through

-the roofs and set fire to the buildings.

-

-To the conflagration of the sky were added the flames of fire

-everywhere on earth.

-

-Claps of ear-splitting thunder followed each other incessantly,

-produced partly by the explosions of the meteors, and partly by a

-tremendous electric thunderstorm. Rifts of lightning zig-zagged hither

-and thither.

-

-A continuous rumbling, like that of distant drums, filled the ears of

-the cowering people below, awaiting their fate. This low rumble was

-interspersed with the deafening detonations of exploding meteors and

-the high shriek of hurtling aerial fragments.

-

-Then followed unearthly noises, like the seething of some immense

-boiling cauldron, the wild wailing of winds, and the quaking of the

-soil where the earth’s crust was giving way.

-

-This unearthly tempest became so frightful, so fraught with agony and

-mad terror, that the multitudes grovelling below were overcome with

-paralysis, and lay prone. Laid low like dumb brutes, they met their

-doom.

-

-The end of all had come.

-

-

-

-

-_COLOPHON_

-

-

-                 _POST HOC, NON PROPTER HOC:

-           Sic veteres de multis rebus opinabantur,

-             Eodemque dicto eas jugiter absolvisse

-                     Recte sibi visi sunt,

-              Vt puta quaecumque et qualiacumque

-            Cometarum saeculares reditus sequuntur.

-               CVR TV ITAQVE, forsitan quaeras,

-          Haec auditu minime jucunda nobis narrasti,

-    Terrae motus, fluminum inundationes, annonae defectus,

-              Pestes mortiferas, incendia, bella,

-                  regumque magnorum excidia?

-                      Si tibi cordi est,

-                   LECTOR BENEVOLENTISSIME,

-                  rationem nostram didicisse,

-                      eia, veram accipe:

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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 66824 ***
+
+Transcriber’s Notes:
+
+  Underscores “_” before and after a word or phrase indicate _italics_
+    in the original text.
+  Equal signs “=” before and after a word or phrase indicate =bold=
+    in the original text.
+  Small capitals have been converted to SOLID capitals.
+  Illustrations have been moved so they do not break up paragraphs.
+  Antiquated words have been preserved.
+  Typographical and punctuation errors have been silently corrected.
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: HALLEY’S COMET OF 1910, AS SEEN IN NEW YORK, LOOKING
+WESTWARD, DURING THE LATTER PART OF MAY.]
+
+
+
+
+                             COMET LORE
+
+                    Halley’s Comet in History and
+                              Astronomy
+
+                                 By
+                            EDWIN EMERSON
+    _Author of “A History of the Nineteenth Century,” Etc._
+
+                             PRINTED BY
+                         THE SCHILLING PRESS
+                      137-139 EAST 25th STREET
+                              NEW YORK
+
+                 Copyrighted, 1910, by EDWIN EMERSON
+                 Entered at Stationers’ Hall, London
+             All rights reserved under Berne Convention
+
+             Printed in the United States of America by
+                   the Schilling Press in New York
+                    from the electrotyped plates
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+                                                          PAGE
+    Halley’s Comet                                           7
+    The Terror of the Comet                                 10
+    Famous Comets of Olden Times                            30
+    The Star of Bethlehem                                   39
+    Great Events and Disasters Linked with Comets           42
+    Halley’s Comet the Bloodiest of All                     60
+    The Story of Edmund Halley                              90
+    What Are Comets?                                       101
+    Our Peril from Collision with the Comet                113
+    The End of the World                                   122
+
+
+
+
+ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+
+                                                                PAGE
+    Cover Designs by William Stevens
+    Halley’s Comet of 1910                             Frontispiece
+    The Terror of the Comet in Antiquity                         13
+    The Terror of the Comet in Mediæval Times                    20
+    The Terror of the Comet at the Present Day                   25
+    The Latest Photograph of the Comet of 1910                   28
+    Napoleon’s Comet of 1811                                     53
+    The Great Comet of 1843                                      56
+    Comet of Tel-el-Kebir, 1882                                  59
+    Halley’s Comet of 1835                                       62
+    Halley’s Comet of 1682                                       69
+    Halley’s Comet of 1066 in the Bayeux Tapestry                78
+    William the Conqueror, an English Dream                      81
+    Portrait of Edmund Halley                                    92
+    The Orbit of Halley’s Comet                                 103
+    Relative Sizes of the Earth, the Moon and Halley’s Comet    103
+    Donati’s Comet of 1858                                      106
+    The Civil War Comet of 1863                                 109
+    Coggia’s Comet of 1874                                      112
+    Halley’s Conception of a Collision with the Comet           119
+
+
+
+
+TO THE COMET
+
+    “Thereby Hangs a Tail.”—_Shakespeare._
+
+    Lone wanderer of the trackless sky!
+    Companionless! Say, dost thou fly
+    Along thy solitary path,
+    A flaming messenger of wrath—
+    Warning with thy portentous train
+    Of earthquake, plague and battle-plain?
+    Some say that thou dost never fail
+    To bring some evil in thy tail.
+                                W. LATTEY.
+
+
+
+
+THE COMING OF THE COMET
+
+
+The Sun will surely rise and set to-morrow.
+
+Just so surely must a Comet flare forth in our Heavens this Spring.
+
+Star gazers, astronomers and learned men have been waiting for this
+Comet all over the earth—in America, in Europe, in far China.
+
+They have known for certain that this Comet would come; and they knew
+just when and where in the Heavens the Comet would first show itself to
+the naked eye—down to the very night.
+
+All this has been known so surely because this same Comet has been seen
+by the people of this earth before.
+
+It came and went seventy-four years ago. Seventy-six years before that,
+it came and went. And seventy-six years before that, the Comet had come
+and gone.
+
+As long as human beings have lived on this earth—for thousands and
+thousands of years—human eyes have beheld this same Comet every
+seventy-six years or so.
+
+The longest time between the Comet’s coming has been seventy-nine
+years. The shortest interval of all—74½ years—was this time.
+
+For thousands of years in the past, wise men have written down records
+of this Comet.
+
+Long, long ago, when white men were still savages who dwelt in caves,
+patient star gazers in China and Chaldea studied the motions of this
+Comet.
+
+Farther back than that, in the hoary days before the art of writing
+was known, ancient bards sang of this Star and its hairy tail. Some of
+their words are still remembered.
+
+Artists have drawn pictures of this Comet. Their pictures are still
+shown.
+
+Women have stitched images of this Comet into their handiwork. Some of
+this handiwork can still be seen.
+
+Coiners have stamped designs of this comet on their coins and medals.
+Those coins are still shown in museums.
+
+Priests, Popes and great Divines have preached about this Comet. Their
+sermons are still preserved in the records of the Church.
+
+Learned men have written in their books what happened when the Comet
+came. Those books are read to-day.
+
+The coming of this Comet in olden times has been fixed in lasting
+records, which he who runs may read.
+
+Nothing in all History is more certain than the story of this Comet.
+
+
+
+
+WHY HALLEY’S COMET?
+
+
+Two hundred and twenty-eight years ago, when this Comet was seen
+shining over the City of London, the great astronomer, Edmund Halley,
+made a special study of it.
+
+Halley was the first to say that this Comet had come before and would
+surely come again. He wrote down the time when the Comet would come
+again, long after he should be dead.
+
+“If it should return,” he wrote, “according to our predictions, about
+the year 1758, impartial posterity will not refuse to acknowledge that
+this was first discovered by an Englishman.”
+
+The Comet returned, as he had foretold, seventeen years after Halley’s
+death, when it was first seen in 1758, on Christmas night, by a man in
+Saxony, named Palitsch, who was looking for the Comet.
+
+From that day this Comet has been called after Halley.
+
+Since then many famous astronomers, such as Clairaut, Pontécoulant and
+Laplace in France, have calculated the dates for the Comet’s return.
+
+Last time, in 1835, Halley’s Comet returned within a few nights of
+their prediction.
+
+This time, so the astronomers figured seventy-five years ago, the Comet
+should be plainly seen after dark late this May.
+
+What they predicted has come true.
+
+
+
+
+THE TERROR OF THE COMET
+
+    “Canst thou fearless gaze
+     Even night by night on that prodigious Blaze,
+     That hairy Comet, that long streaming Star,
+     Which threatens Earth with Famine, Plague and War?”
+                                     —_Sylvester._
+
+
+So long as the memory of man goes back, the appearance of a Comet has
+always been taken as a just cause for dread.
+
+In the train of Comets, it has ever been held, come wars, bloodshed,
+fires, floods, plagues, famine and the fall of mighty rulers.
+
+Our Holy Bible confirms this time-honoured belief.
+
+The Saviour Himself said, according to the Gospel of St. Luke, Chap.
+XXI., Verse 10-11:
+
+    “Nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom
+     against kingdom; and great earthquakes shall be in
+     divers places, and famines and pestilences; and
+     fearful sights and great signs shall there be from
+     Heaven.”
+
+In the Revelation of St. John the Divine (Chap. VIII., Verse 10) we
+read:
+
+    “There fell from Heaven a great star burning as a
+     torch,” and again (Chap. XII., Verse 3):
+
+    “There was seen another sign in Heaven, and behold
+     a great red dragon ... and his tail draweth a third
+     part of the stars in Heaven. And behold the third woe
+     cometh quickly.” (Chap. XII., Verse 14.)
+
+The “flaming sword” in the hands of the angel of the Lord, when Adam
+and Eve were driven from the Garden of Eden, many sacred writers hold,
+can only be interpreted as a Comet.
+
+     “For the Almighty set before the door
+    Of th’ holy park a seraphim that bore
+      A warning sword, whose body shined bright
+    A flaming Comet in the midst of night.”
+                                  —_Todd._
+
+So, too, when Jerusalem was to be wasted by a plague, David beheld a
+Comet in the shape of a flaming sword:
+
+    “And David lifted up his eyes and saw the angel of
+     the Lord stand between the earth and the Heaven,
+     having a drawn sword in his hand stretched out over
+     Jerusalem.”
+                             —_I. Chron. XXI. 16._
+
+The fall of Satan, some sacred writers hold, was marked by the
+appearance of a Comet. In Isaiah (XIV. 12) we find:
+
+    “How art thou fallen from Heaven, O flaming one, son
+     of the morning!”
+
+John Milton, in his “Paradise Lost,” has fixed this image in immortal
+verse:
+
+    “Satan stood
+     Unterrified, and as a Comet burned
+     That fired the length of Ophiuchus huge
+     In th’ arctic sky, and from its horrid hair,
+     Shakes pestilence and war.”
+
+The Great Deluge, described in Holy Writ, came after the appearance
+of a mighty Comet (Halley’s Comet), so Dr. William Whiston, Sir Isaac
+Newton’s successor in the Lucasian chair of Mathematics at Cambridge,
+set forth in a special treatise. The great French astronomer, Laplace,
+also reached the same conclusion.
+
+This same Comet (Halley’s Comet) likewise foretold the final fall of
+the Holy City, Jerusalem, in the year 70 after Christ. This Comet was
+seen by St. Peter. Josephus in his History of the Jewish Wars recorded
+the nightly appearance of this Comet over the City of Jerusalem just
+before the war which ended with the destruction of the Holy City.
+
+    “Amongst other warnings,” writes Josephus, who saw
+     this Comet with his own eyes, “a Comet of the kind
+     called sword-shaped, because their tails appear to
+     represent the blade of a sword, was seen above the
+     city for the space of a whole year.”
+
+Josephus at the time rebuked his Jewish countrymen for listening to
+false prophets while so clear a sign from Heaven was before their very
+eyes.
+
+This same Comet (Halley’s Comet) reappeared at a critical period of the
+rule of Constantine the Great, the first Christian Emperor of Rome. He
+first beheld his sign from Heaven in the midst of battle as it blazed
+overhead in the sign of a Cross. With the help of his mother, the
+sainted Helen, Constantine was moved thereby to turn Christian.
+
+Constantinople, the great capital of the Orient, which owes its name
+to this same Emperor Constantine, was lost to Christendom in the year
+1453, when the Turks overran the great city with fire and sword. This
+event, it is recorded, was heralded by another appearance of a Comet.
+Three years later, when the Turks were about to descend upon Belgrade,
+another Comet (Halley’s Comet) spread consternation throughout Europe.
+
+At that time Pope Calixtus III., on the appearance of this Comet,
+seeing that evils were impending for the human race, called for prayers
+that the Almighty would turn these evils upon the Turks, the enemies of
+the Christian faith.
+
+[Illustration: “A SWORD-SHAPED COMET BLAZED OVER THE DOOMED HOLY CITY.”
+
+—Josephus’ “_History of Judea_.”]
+
+At the same time the Holy Father gave orders for all Church bells to be
+tolled at noon to remind faithful Christians to pray for those battling
+against the Turk.
+
+Into the Ave Maria were put the words: “From the Devil, the Turk and
+the Comet, Good Lord, deliver us!”
+
+Since that time in most Catholic countries the Angelus is still
+regularly rung at noon. In Italy, even to-day, the cakes sold before
+the church doors at noon go by the name of _Comete_.
+
+All the great Fathers of the Church have taught that Comets are to be
+taken as signs from Heaven.
+
+Baeda, the Venerable, declared in the seventh century in England, that
+“Comets portend revolutions of kingdoms, pestilence, war, winds, or
+heat.”
+
+John of Damascus, preaching in the same century in the Orient, laid
+down the same belief.
+
+St. Thomas Aquinas, the great Light of the Church in the thirteenth
+century, accepted and handed down the same opinion.
+
+The sainted Albert the Great, the most noted thinker of the Church in
+the Middle Ages, received and taught the same doctrine.
+
+The teachings of these Church Fathers as to Comets have been commended
+in our own day by Pope Pius IX.
+
+The great teachers of other religions, likewise, have laid down
+identical beliefs as to the meaning of Comets.
+
+The sacred books of India are full of awed references to the baleful
+influence of Comets.
+
+The ancient year books of China, written centuries before white men
+kept any records, tell of the appearance of Comets and of the disasters
+they foretold.
+
+The Mohametans and their wise Arab star gazers, when they saw a Comet
+in the Heavens, knew that it meant war.
+
+The woe of one Comet (Halley’s Comet of 1456), which had the shape of
+a Turkish scimitar, so the Arab soothsayers foretold, would be turned
+against their enemies. This was the same Comet which brought such fear
+to the hearts of Pope Calixtus III. and all his Christian followers.
+
+Thus it can be seen that Comets have been held to foretell disaster on
+one side, and victory on the other.
+
+The Comets which conquerors hailed as their guiding stars, have meant
+war and bloodshed and disaster to those whom they came to conquer.
+
+The same Comets which shone upon the birth of mighty rulers, have
+blazed in warning of their death.
+
+Julius Caesar, who was born under a Comet, saw his bloody end foretold
+by another Comet.
+
+Therefore, Shakespeare in his play “Julius Caesar,” makes Calpurnia say
+to Caesar:
+
+    “When beggars die, there are no Comets seen;
+     The Heavens themselves blaze forth the death of princes.”
+
+On the night of Caesar’s assassination, when the Comet was seen blazing
+at its brightest, the Romans said that it had come to bear away the
+great soul of the murdered Caesar.
+
+At the death of Nero, the Roman Emperor, who persecuted the Christians,
+a Comet blazed forth again. The Roman historian Suetonius, who wrote
+the Life of Emperor Nero, thus described this Comet:
+
+    “A blazing star, which was commonly held to portend
+     destruction to Kings and Princes, reappeared above
+     the horizon several nights in succession.”
+
+Another great Comet (Halley’s again) reappeared when Attila, the King
+of the Huns, the “Scourge of God,” was overthrown in the greatest
+battle of Christendom on the Catalaunian fields.
+
+Claudius, a Roman writer of that period, then stated that “a Comet was
+never seen in the Heavens without implying some dreadful event.”
+
+This has ever been the belief of all the great poets of olden time.
+
+Homer, the greatest poet of Ancient Greece, a thousand years before the
+birth of Christ, sang of:
+
+    “The red star, that from his flaming hair
+     Shakes down diseases, pestilence and war.”
+
+Let it be explained here that the word Comet in Greek means
+“long-haired,” from _kome_,—hair.
+
+Virgil, the greatest Roman poet, sang of “the baleful glare of bloody
+Comets,” and again, of “dreadful Comets blazing in the sky.”
+
+Tasso, the greatest of Italian poets after Dante, sang thus of Comets
+in his “Jerusalem Delivered”:
+
+    “Qual con le chiome sanguinose horrende
+     Splender Cometa suol per l’aria adusta,
+     Che i regni muta, e i feri morbi adduce,
+     Ai purpurei tiranni infausta luce.”
+           —_Gerusalemme Liberata, Canto VII., Stanza 52._
+
+Rendered thus by Wiffen into English:
+
+    “As with its bloody locks let loose in air
+     Horribly bright, the Comet shows whose shine
+     Plagues the parched World, whose looks the Nations scare,
+     Before whose face States change, and Powers decline,
+     To purple Tyrants all, an inauspicious sign.”
+
+The great English poets, on their part, have lifted up their voices to
+sing of the dire effects of Comets.
+
+Shakespeare, the greatest of them all, abounds in allusions to these
+dread wandering stars.
+
+Thus he makes Horatio in the first scene of “Hamlet” speak with awe of:
+
+    “Stars with trains of fire and dews of blood;
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+    And even the like precurse of fierce events,
+    As harbingers preceding still the fates
+    And prologue to the omen coming on.”
+
+More briefly Shakespeare in his “Henry VI.” refers to:
+
+    “A Comet of revenge
+     A prophet to the fall of all our foes”;
+
+and again, in “The Taming of the Shrew” to:
+
+    “Some Comet or unusual prodigy.”
+
+Spenser in his “Faerie Queene” sings of a woman’s hair loosely
+dispersed in the wind:
+
+    “All as a blazing starre doth farre outcast
+     His heavy beames, and flaming lockes dispredd,
+     At sight whereof the people stand aghast;
+     But the sage Wizzard telles, as he has redd,
+     That it importunes death and doleful drearyhedd.”
+
+John Milton, besides likening Satan to a Comet, as before quoted, also
+showed that he shared in the belief that the flaming swords mentioned
+in Holy Writ were Comets:
+
+    “High in front advanced
+     The brandish’d sword of God before them blazed
+     Fierce as a Comet.”
+
+The poet Young, in his “Night Thoughts,” aptly writes of the Comet:
+
+    “Hast thou ne’er seen the Comet’s flaming light?
+     Th’ illustrious stranger passing, terror sheds
+     On gazing Nations, from his fiery train.”
+
+The poets of other nations have written of Comets in like vein. There
+is an old German rhyme, sung by German school children even to-day,
+which has been put into English by Dr. Andrew D. White in his “History
+of the Doctrine of Comets”:
+
+    “Eight things there be a Comet brings,
+     When it on high doth horrid range;
+     Wind, Famine, Plague, and Death to Kings,
+     War, Earthquake, Floods and Direful Change.”
+
+This little rhyme was originally put forth for German school children
+by two Protestant preachers of Basle, Switzerland, at the time of the
+great Comet of 1618, which heralded the outbreak of the great “Thirty
+Years’ War.”
+
+These Protestant ministers got their belief in Comets and their evil
+influence upon mankind not from the Church of Rome, but from the
+Bible teachings of such great Protestant reformers as Martin Luther,
+Melanchthon, Zwingli, Calvin, John Knox of Scotland, Bishop Jeremy
+Taylor and John Howe, the great Nonconformist divine.
+
+Martin Luther preached in one of his Advent sermons:
+
+    “The heathen write that the Comet may arise from
+    natural causes; but God creates not one that does not
+    foretoken a sure calamity.”
+
+Luther’s friend, Melanchthon, in a letter, declared Comets to be
+“heralds of Heaven’s wrath.”
+
+Zwingli, in 1531, declared that the great Comet of that year (Halley’s
+Comet) was sent by God to betoken calamity.
+
+John Knox, preaching in his Scottish kirk at Edinboro, declared that he
+saw in Comets tokens of the wrath of Heaven.
+
+The great divines of the Church of England,—from Cranmer, Bishop
+Latimer, Archbishops Spottiswoode and Bramhall, Bishop Jeremy Taylor,
+down to our own times, clearly preached the doctrine that Comets must
+be taken as tokens from Heaven.
+
+Thus the Comet of 1572 was pointed out from the pulpits of England
+and Scotland as a token of Heaven’s wrath and warning at the St.
+Bartholomew Massacre on the night of August 24, 1572, when thirty
+thousand Huguenots were murdered in the streets of Paris and elsewhere
+in France.
+
+Across the sea, in the new Commonwealth of Massachusetts, the great
+New England divine and President of Harvard College, Increase Mather,
+on the apparition of the great Comet now known as Halley’s, in 1682,
+preached on “Heaven’s Wrath Alarm to the World—wherein is shown that
+fearful sights and signs in the Heavens are the presages of great
+calamities at hand.”
+
+Increase Mather preached on the text taken from the Book of Revelation:
+“And the third Angel sounded, and there fell a great Star burning as a
+Torch, ... and behold the Third Woe cometh quickly.”
+
+In this sermon the great preacher told of the Roman Emperor Vespasian,
+who, when warned of the omen of a Comet, made fun of it, and then died
+miserably.
+
+So Mather preached: “For the Lord hath fired his beacon in the Heavens
+among the stars of God there. The fearful sign is not yet out of
+sight.... Do we not see the sword blazing over us?... Doth God threaten
+our very Heavens? O pray unto Him, that he would not take away stars
+and send Comets to succeed them!”
+
+[Illustration: THE TERROR OF THE COMET OF 1531. FROM AN OLD NUREMBERG
+WOOD-CUT.]
+
+The profound Russian thinker Tolstoy, in his great book “War and
+Peace,” has written of the flaming Comet of 1811. This was the famous
+“Comet of Napoleon,” which blazed over Western Europe when Napoleon was
+gathering his grand army for its disastrous march into Russia and to
+Moscow.
+
+At Moscow, the ancient capital of Russia, this Comet was observed by
+anxious thousands. One night there was this talk between a novice nun
+and the Abbess of her Convent. On their way to vesper service one
+evening in Moscow the nun suddenly beheld the Comet for the first time
+and asked: “What is that star?”
+
+The Abbess answered: “It is not a star. It is a Comet.”
+
+“But what is a Comet?” asked the young nun. “I have never heard that
+word.”
+
+The Abbess then answered: “Comets are signs in Heaven, which God sends
+before misfortunes.”
+
+Shortly after this the bloody battle of Borodino was fought, and
+Napoleon, with his army, appeared before the gates of Moscow. The
+hundred-towered city was abandoned by the Russians and was given over
+to the flames.
+
+Years afterward this same nun thus told her story, as printed in the
+“Revue des Deux Mondes”:
+
+    “Every night the Comet blazed in the Heavens, and we
+     all asked ourselves: What misfortune does it bring?
+     Then the enemy came, and our sacred city was put
+     to the torch. Our convent, together with all other
+     cloisters, monasteries and churches, was burned to
+     the ground.”
+
+Many other writers of the time who saw the great Comets that blazoned
+Napoleon’s destructive wars have recorded how they were universally
+taken as omens of the great conqueror’s bloody trail.
+
+Napoleon himself gloried in this dread omen and hailed the Comet as his
+“guiding star.”
+
+All this has been fully set forth by the famous French astronomer
+Messier, a latter-day observer of Halley’s Comet, who wrote a special
+book on “The Wonderful Comet which appeared at the Birth of Napoleon
+the Great.”
+
+As for the many Comets that have blazed down upon other great
+conquerors and other bloody wars, before the comparatively recent
+Comets of the American Civil War and the Napoleonic Wars, they are all
+set down in a special History of Comets.
+
+In this great work, entitled “A History of All Comets,” the Latin
+scholar Lubienitius has pointed out all the calamities and dire events
+which attended the appearance of each and every Comet recorded in
+history.
+
+
+
+
+THE EFFECTS OF COMETS ON MAN
+
+
+Some thinkers have pointed out that there has often been a direct
+connection between the feelings produced in the human soul by the
+appearance of a Comet and the human deeds of violence or the human
+epidemics and excessive mortality following the widespread terror
+produced by Comets.
+
+Only this year (1910) the appearance of Inness’ Comet over Mexico
+caused a panic-stricken holy pilgrimage to the Shrine of Talpa. In
+China, too, it caused terror, resulting in Christian massacres.
+
+Hence, also, several Jewish massacres inspired by Comets in the past
+and hence also so many terrifying plagues connected with Comets.
+
+Thus Ambroise Paré, the “Father of French Surgery,” who flourished
+in the sixteenth century, has recorded the effect produced upon his
+contemporaries by the Comet of 1528.
+
+“This Comet was so horrible,” wrote Dr. Paré, “so frightful, and it
+produced such great terror among the common people, that many died of
+fear and many others fell sick.”
+
+Dr. Paré himself appears to have come under the influence of this fear,
+judging from his awestruck description of the appearance of this Comet:
+
+    “It appeared to be of excessive length; and was of
+     the colour of blood. At the summit of it was seen the
+     figure of a bent arm, holding in its hand a great
+     sword as if about to strike.
+
+    “At the end of the point there were three stars.
+     On both sides of the rays of this Comet were seen
+     a great number of axes, knives, and blood-coloured
+     swords, among which were a great number of hideous
+     human faces with beards and bristling hair.”
+
+Hannibal committed suicide on account of a Comet. So did Mithridates.
+So did one Toma, in Hungary, only this year.
+
+King Louis “the Debonair” of France, died from fear of a Comet
+(Halley’s Comet) in 837 A. D.
+
+Emperor Charles V., of Germany and Spain, the monarch who boasted that
+“the sun never set on his dominions,” was so moved by the appearance of
+a Comet in 1556, that he gave up his crown and became a monk.
+
+Certain metaphysicians have held that there is a substance in a Comet,
+or in its tail, which has a weird effect on man’s brain, as moonshine
+is believed to have on some men, making them lunatics. As a matter
+of fact, as Arago pointed out, Comets have caused tremendous spring
+tides just like the moon. The same irresistible pull of gravity or
+electricity or light-pressure must perforce affect other substances
+besides water, such as human brains.
+
+According to this metaphysical theory, the close approach of a Comet to
+the earth affects and disturbs men’s brains, so that men are inwardly
+stirred with warlike impulses. Hence the great wars almost invariably
+following the appearance of Comets.
+
+Hence, too, the appeal to Comets made by so many conquerors, from
+William the Conqueror down to Napoleon. In the homely phrase of one
+writer, “the inner eye of man, under the weird effect of a Comet, sees
+red and makes him thirst for blood.”
+
+Those rare beings who have lying latent within them the gift of Second
+Sight or divination, according to this same metaphysical theory, upon
+the near approach of Comets find themselves stirred to prophesy. Hence,
+so many marvellous prophesies inspired by Comets since the ancient days
+of Merlin, the seer.
+
+[Illustration: “THE COMET OF 1910 SO ALARMED THE PEOPLE OF MEXICO THAT
+MANY THOUSANDS WENT ON A HOLY PILGRIMAGE TO THE SHRINE OF TALPA IN
+XALISCO.”—_Mexican Herald._]
+
+
+
+
+THIS YEAR’S PROPHECIES
+
+
+The return of Halley’s Comet in this Year of Our Lord 1910 has already
+called forth several memorable prophesies.
+
+On January 20th the French astrologer and prophetess Madame de Thebes,
+who predicted the disastrous French floods of this year, as well as the
+coming of Inness’ unexpected Comet, uttered the following prophesies:
+
+    “This year, 1910, will be one to look back to with
+    trembling.
+
+    “The earth is under a terrific strain from Comets and
+    planetary revolutions. Human destiny is red. That
+    means blood. Political events are black. Terrible
+    changes are imminent.
+
+    “This winter, France will be swept by terrible
+    floods. Paris will be under water. The influence of
+    form changes in other planets and the coming of a
+    Comet will affect us for the worse.
+
+    “The strain of the stars will be most severely felt
+    in America. The people of America will have to pay
+    dearly for all their riches and sudden prosperity.
+    With the coming of another Comet disaster will
+    descend upon America.
+
+    “A financial crash is impending, to be followed by a
+    long string of suicides. Black ruling us, men will
+    commit all manner of crimes and knaveries for money.
+
+    “The times are swaying toward degeneration. We are
+    swinging within the evil influence of a strange
+    orbit. Our souls are jarred from their proper
+    bearings. I dare not say all that is revealed to me.
+    It would be too terrible.”
+
+Soon after this prophesy was uttered came the first of such suicides.
+Adam Toma, a wealthy landowner of Szozona, Hungary, cut his throat
+because of the Comet. He left a note saying that the Comet was the
+cause of his death.
+
+Cardinal Gibbons later expressed his profound belief that the Paris
+floods of this year were sent by God as a punishment to the Parisians
+for their frivolities and sins, of which the Comet was a fiery warning.
+
+Commenting on Madame de Thebes’ predictions and her connection of the
+Comet of 1910 with this year’s spring-floods in France, Italy and
+Germany, the French astronomer Henri Deslandres, late Director of the
+Astronomical Observatory of Meudon and member of the French Academy of
+Sciences, said:
+
+    “However distant Comets may be, it is not at all
+     impossible that their enormous tails, measuring
+     75,000,000 to 125,000,000 miles in length, may come
+     in contact with our atmosphere. The theory that
+     a Comet may disturb the atmosphere of the earth,
+     causing rains of great duration, and consequently
+     inundations and the sudden overflow of rivers, is
+     not at all absurd. It can be sustained by scientific
+     reasoning.”
+
+It should be remembered here that Laplace, one of the greatest of all
+astronomers, credited the deluge to a Comet.
+
+Before Madame de Thebes’ ominous prophesy concerning Halley’s Comet and
+its effects upon America were cabled over to this country, another,
+no less dire prediction of financial disaster in the United States,
+coincident with the appearance of Halley’s Comet, was made by W. E.
+Corey, the President of the American Steel Trust.
+
+[Illustration: THE COMET OF 1910, FROM A TELESCOPIC PHOTOGRAPH TAKEN AT
+GREENWICH.]
+
+Mr. Corey then warned his friends to “call in their money and get from
+under” because a calamitous financial crash and general business ruin
+would surely come during the Spring of 1910.
+
+The most ominous of all prophesies connected with the coming of
+Halley’s Comet this year was made by the venerable General Ballington
+Booth, the head of the Salvation Army. Speaking in London, immediately
+after Halley’s Comet had been located, early this year, General Booth
+said:
+
+    “We are, this year, rapidly approaching the end of
+     all things, with similar results, but far surpassing
+     in horrors any disaster that has gone before.
+
+     “All things will be wound up. Besides a deluge of
+     water sweeping parts of the world and its inhabitants
+     there will be fierce destruction by fire.”
+
+
+
+
+FAMOUS COMETS OF OLDEN TIMES
+
+
+Bacon, the great English thinker, has said: “Comets have some action
+and effect on the universality of things.”
+
+All Comets recorded in history, so Lubienitius has shown in his
+“Universal History of All Comets,” appeared in connection with some
+great event or catastrophe in the History of Man.
+
+George F. Chambers, one of the most up-to-date writers on Astronomy
+and Comets, on the second page of his “Story of the Comets” (1909),
+declares:
+
+    “It is the general testimony of History during many
+     hundreds of years, one might even say during fully
+     2,000 years, that Comets were always considered to
+     be peculiarly ‘ominous of the wrath of Heaven and as
+     harbingers of wars and famines, of the dethronement
+     of Monarchs and the dissolution of Empires.’”
+
+Reaching back into remotest history, the sacred books of India show
+that the births of Krishna and of Buddha were foretold by moving lights
+in the Heavens.
+
+The ancient records of China tell of the appearance of a moving beacon
+in Heaven at the birth of Yu, the first ruler of the Celestial Empire,
+and again at the birth of the great Chinese prophet, Lao-Tse.
+
+The ancient Greeks have recorded similar appearances of Comets.
+Aesculapius, the divine healer and first physician, was born under a
+Comet.
+
+The oldest traditions of the Jews tell us that when Abraham was born a
+moving star was seen in the East.
+
+Another moving star with long radiant gleams of light streaming behind
+it shone forth at the birth of Moses. This Comet was seen by the Magi
+of Egypt, who pointed it out to the King as an omen meant for him.
+Hence Pharaoh’s order, as recorded in the Old Testament, for the
+slaughter of all male Jewish infants then born in Egypt.
+
+
+
+
+GREAT EVENTS CONNECTED WITH HISTORIC COMETS IN ANTIQUITY
+
+
+The earliest Comet of which there is any historic record was a Comet
+mentioned in the oldest cuneiform inscriptions of Babylonia several
+thousand years before our Christian era, recently found on the north
+bank of Nahr-al-Kalb, near Beyrut in Syria. This Comet is recorded to
+have been visible to the naked eye for 29 nights.
+
+At the time Lubienitius wrote his big “History of all the Comets” the
+exact date of this Comet had not been fixed. Lubienitius, though, had
+a record of this same Comet, the date of which he fixes at the year
+2312 before Christ, the date computed by him and other writers for the
+beginning of the deluge.
+
+In modern times the great French astronomer Laplace credited a Comet
+with causing huge floods at the time of the great Deluge.
+
+Two hundred and eighty-eight years after the great Deluge, according to
+the records of the Chaldean star gazers, there appeared another Comet.
+This is the date, computed by Lubienitius, for the building of the
+Tower of Babel and the confusion of tongues.
+
+Two thousand and sixty-four years before Christ, another Comet
+appeared, as recorded by the Chaldeans. This is the date given for the
+birth of Abraham.
+
+When Abraham was seventy years old, in the year 1949 B. C., a Comet was
+seen shining over the Valley of Siddim for twenty-two nights. This is
+the date given by Bible historians for the destruction of Sodom and
+Gomorrah, the two cities of iniquity which lay in the Vale of Siddim.
+
+Jewish annalists record a Comet in Egypt in the year corresponding to
+B. C. 1841. This Comet shone at the time of the bitter persecution of
+the Jews by the Egyptians.
+
+Arabian star gazers have recorded a Comet shining over Arabia 1732 B.
+C. In that year there was a terrible famine, of which mention is made
+in the Old Testament.
+
+The ancient Chinese year books record the appearance of a Comet over
+northern China and Manchuria in the year corresponding to 1537 B.
+C. The appearance of the Comet, so the Chinese chronicles tell, was
+followed by a great flood and disastrous famine.
+
+The next Comet of which we have any record, appeared 1515 B. C. This
+was at the time of the expulsion of the Jews from Egypt.
+
+In the year B. C. 1194, we are told by Hyginus that “On the fall of
+Troy, one of the Pleiades group of stars rushed along the Heavens
+toward the Arctic pole, where the star remained visible with
+dishevelled hair, to which the name of Comet is applied.”
+
+We are informed by Pliny, the Roman historian, that in B. C. 975, the
+“Egyptians and Ethiopians suffered from a terrible famine, the dire
+effects of a Comet. It appeared all on fire, and was twisted in the
+form of a wreath, and had a hideous aspect. It seemed not to be a star,
+but rather a knot of fire.”
+
+Babylonian cuneiform inscriptions tell us that about 575 B. C., when
+Nebuchadnezzar overran Elam, “a star arose whose head was bright as
+day, while from its luminous body a tail extended like the sting of a
+scorpion.”
+
+According to Pliny, again, a Comet in the form of a horn was seen in
+the year B. C. 480, just before the great invasion of Greece by Xerxes
+ending in the bloody sea fight of Salamis.
+
+The next Comet mentioned by Lubienitius appeared in B. C. 466, when it
+was seen for 75 nights all over Greece. In that year Greece was ravaged
+by war between the Spartans and Athenians, and the city of Sparta was
+all but destroyed by an earthquake.
+
+The next Comet appeared one generation later in 431 B. C., and was seen
+through 60 nights all over the ancient world. This Comet was followed
+by a terrible pestilence which swept over Aethiopia, Egypt, Athens, and
+Rome. War broke out all over Greece. It was the beginning of the great
+Peloponnesian War, which devastated Greece for a generation to follow.
+
+In the year 394 B. C., there was another Comet seen in Greece, followed
+by the great Corinthian War with the bloody battles of Knidus and
+Koronea.
+
+Aristotle records a Comet seen by him in his fifteenth year, 371 B. C.
+The sight of it inspired the youth to a special study of astronomy.
+The Comet was visible until the end of the first week of July. On July
+eighth was fought the great battle between the Thebans and Spartans,
+when Epaminondas, one of the greatest generals of antiquity, overthrew
+the Spartans.
+
+The next Comet, that of 338 B. C., which was likewise observed by
+Aristotle, who had then become the teacher of Alexander the Great,
+marked Alexander’s first public entry into the history of the world.
+The Comet blazed its brightest on the eve of the bloody battle of
+Chaeronea, Alexander’s first victory and achievement in war.
+
+In the year 344 B. C., there was another Comet, followed by another
+war in Greece and Sicily. Diodorus of Sicily wrote of this Comet: “On
+the departure of the expedition of Timoleon from Corinth for Sicily
+with all his war ships, the Gods foretold success by an extraordinary
+prodigy: A burning torch appeared in the Heavens for an entire night
+and went before the fleet into Sicily.”
+
+
+_The Comets of Carthage._
+
+Nearly a hundred years passed before the appearance of another Comet in
+240 B. C. This is the first recorded appearance of Halley’s Comet. By
+the light of this Comet, Hamilcar, the great Carthaginian general, made
+his young son Hannibal swear eternal enmity to the Romans. Hamilcar was
+then in the midst of preparations for the war against Rome, which broke
+out soon afterward.
+
+Comets appear to have been stars of special omen to Hannibal and to his
+native city, Carthage. Twenty years later, appeared another Comet which
+shone over Carthage for 22 nights. Its appearance was followed by the
+outbreak of the great war between Hannibal and the Romans, and by a
+terrible earthquake in Greece.
+
+The next Comet shone in 204 B. C., when Hannibal suffered his first
+bloody defeat by Sempronius, while Scipio, Hannibal’s arch enemy, was
+crossing over to Africa, for the first attack upon Carthage.
+
+The appearance of the next Comet, twenty years later, 184 B. C., which
+shone through 88 nights over Asia Minor “with a horrible lustre” was
+followed by the death of Hannibal. Soothsayers at the court of King
+Prusias of Bithynia, in Asia Minor, whither Hannibal had fled from
+the Romans, told the King that the Comet betokened Hannibal’s early
+death. This so wrought on Hannibal’s spirit that he ended his life with
+poison.
+
+In the year 150 B. C., appeared another Comet “of horrible size.” It
+was seen for many nights running all over the Mediterranean Sea. Its
+appearance was followed by the outbreak of the third great Punic War
+between Rome and Carthage.
+
+Within four years another Comet, blazing over northern Africa in 146 B.
+C., was followed by the fall of Carthage, which was stormed and utterly
+destroyed by the Romans.
+
+
+_Mithridates’ Star._
+
+Mithridates, King of Pontus, and conqueror of Asia Minor, another arch
+foe of the Romans, having been born under a Comet, seems to have fallen
+under the bane of Comets.
+
+During the Winter of 134-135 B. C., preceding Mithridates’ birth, a
+Comet of unusual lustre flared over Asia Minor through 72 days. This
+Comet was so bright that its long, flaming tail was plainly visible
+even in day time. The ancient historian Justinus thus described it:
+
+“Its splendour eclipsed that of the midday sun and occupied the fourth
+part of Heaven.”
+
+The next Comet, burning through 72 nights again, preceded Mithridates’
+accession to the throne of Pontus, 119 B. C.
+
+Mithridates’ fourth Comet, now identified as Halley’s Comet, was seen
+over Asia Minor through the Winter months of 87-88 B. C., just before
+the horrible massacre of 150,000 Italians ordered by Mithridates.
+
+Twenty-five years later, 63 B. C., Mithridates saw his Comet for the
+last time when his own son rose up in arms against him. The omen of the
+Comet so wrought on Mithridates that he first poisoned himself and then
+had one of his own soldiers despatch him with his sword.
+
+No other Comet is recorded in ancient history during this century,
+except the one which was seen shining over Italy preceding the birth
+(July 11, 100 B. C.) of Julius Caesar, destined to become “The foremost
+man of all this world,” as Shakespeare calls him.
+
+“Caesar’s Comet” as it came to be known (now identified as Halley’s
+Comet) appeared again over Italy during the great Civil War between
+Marius and Sylla, when Caesar was first entering into public affairs
+and earned his spurs as a warrior.
+
+“Caesar’s Comet” shone again over Rome in the year 60 B. C., when
+Julius Caesar, together with Pompey and Crassus, took charge of the
+government of Rome and presently seized supreme power as Consul of Rome.
+
+Ten years later “Caesar’s Comet” was seen once more in Italy in the
+Winter months of 49-50 B. C., when Caesar, returning from his conquest
+of Gaul, crossed the Rubicon and began the great Civil War against his
+rival for power, Pompey.
+
+The last appearance of “Caesar’s Comet,” was in 44 B. C., on the
+death of Caesar. Its coming was foreseen in a dream by Caesar’s wife
+Calpurnia, who warned him of the omen, as immortalized in Shakespeare’s
+lines, put into the mouth of Caesar’s wife:
+
+    “When beggars die, there are no Comets seen,
+     The Heavens themselves blaze forth the death of Princes”;
+
+followed by Caesar’s famous answer, as culled from Plutarch by
+Shakespeare:
+
+    “What can be avoided,
+     Whose end is purposed by the mighty gods?
+     Yet Caesar shall go forth; for these predictions
+     Are to the world in general as to Caesar.”
+
+On the following morning Caesar was murdered at the foot of Pompey’s
+statue in the Curia.
+
+Immediately after Caesar’s death, records the Roman historian Suetonius
+in his “Life of Caesar”: “A Comet blazed for seven nights together,
+rising always about eleven o’clock, visible to all in Rome. It was
+taken by all to be the soul of Caesar, now received into Heaven; for
+which reason, accordingly, Caesar is represented in his statue with a
+star on his brow.”
+
+Only one more Comet is recorded in ancient history before the birth of
+Christ. This was the Comet, now identified as Halley’s Comet, which
+shone over the dense forests of Germany, eleven years before the birth
+of Christ, when Drusus, the brother of Tiberius, was warring against
+the ancient Germans and robbing them of their last vestige of liberty.
+At the same time fell the death of Agrippa, who ruled over the Roman
+Empire in the absence of Augustus.
+
+
+_THE STAR OF BETHLEHEM_
+
+The coming of the Messia, according to the sacred legends of the Jews,
+was to be foretold by a flaming star.
+
+Many sacred writers have held, and many still hold, as did the
+distinguished American astronomer R. A. Proctor, that the “Star of
+Bethlehem,” whose shining trail guided the Wise Men from The East, was
+a Comet. Lubienitius in his “History of Comets” expressly mentions the
+Star of Bethlehem as the most important Comet of history.
+
+As a matter of fact our modern astronomical computations prove that a
+Comet appeared in that year so as to be visible to the naked eye over
+Arabia, Syria, and the Holy Land.
+
+When this Comet appeared Herod was King of Judea. On the appearance of
+the Comet, Herod consulted the oracle of the Sibyl in Rome. She told
+him that the Comet shone in token of a boy destined to be far greater
+than he.
+
+Herod grew so afraid at this that he caused to be murdered his own
+two infant sons, Aristobolus and Alexander, and after that his eldest
+son, the boy Antipater. Herod further ordered the massacre of all
+male infants born in Judea under this Comet, as told in the Gospel of
+Matthew (Chap. II., Verse 1). As the Comet kept on blazing in the sky,
+Herod, becoming desperate, tried to kill himself. Five days after this
+he died of a loathsome disease.
+
+Christian painters and writers from olden times until now, accordingly
+have pictured the Star of Bethlehem as a Comet.
+
+Take for instance this description of “The Light in the Sky” as given
+by Lew Wallace in his “Ben Hur: A Tale of the Christ”:
+
+    “About midnight some one on the roof cried out:
+    ‘What light is that in the sky? Awake, brethren,
+     awake and see!’
+
+     The people, half asleep, sat up and looked; then
+     they became wide awake, though wonder struck....
+     Soon the entire tenantry of the house and court and
+     enclosure were out gazing at the sky.
+
+     And this is what they saw: A ray of light, beginning
+     at a height immeasurably beyond the nearest stars,
+     and dropping obliquely to the earth; at its top, a
+     diminishing point; at its base, many furlongs in
+     width; its sides blending softly with the darkness
+     of night; its core a roseate electrical splendour.
+     The apparition seemed to rest on the nearest mountain
+     southeast of the town, making a pale corona along the
+     line of the summit. The khan was touched luminously
+     so that those upon the roof saw each others’ faces
+     all filled with wonder.
+
+     Steadily the ray lingered....
+
+    ‘Saw you ever the like?’ asked one.
+
+    ‘Can it be that a star has burst and fallen?’ asked
+     another, his tongue faltering.
+
+    ‘When a star falls its light goes out.’
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+     After that there was silence on the housetop, broken
+     but once again while the mystery continued.
+
+    ‘Brethren!’ exclaimed a Jew of venerable mien, ‘what
+     we see is the ladder our father Jacob saw in his
+     dream. Blessed be the Lord God of Our Fathers!’”
+
+Meanwhile the Wise Men from the East, as described in the same story,
+were travelling over the desert, on the alert for the apparition of the
+star, whose coming had been revealed to them.
+
+    “Suddenly, in the air before them, not farther up
+     than a low hill-top,” writes Lew Wallace, “flared a
+     lambent flame; as they looked at it, the apparition
+     contracted into a focus of dazzling lustre. Their
+     hearts beat fast; their souls thrilled; and they
+     shouted as with one voice: ‘The Star! the Star! God
+     is with us!’”
+
+
+
+
+GREAT EVENTS LINKED WITH COMETS SINCE CHRIST
+
+
+Since the time of Christ, thanks to the spread of Christianity and
+learning, with the growing zeal for keeping records and studying the
+stars, a far greater number of Comets and events connected therewith
+have been recorded.
+
+A number of learned writers have made a special study of the history of
+Comets and their effect upon man. Long before Lubienitius’ ponderous
+work on the subject there were other histories written in Latin and
+Arabic, with references to which his book abounds.
+
+Since then others have followed in the same direction, notably Pingré,
+Hind, Lalande, Messier, Chambers and latterly Messrs. Crommelin and
+Cowell, of the Greenwich Observatory.
+
+The number of known Comets has grown immeasurably since Galileo’s
+invention of the telescope, 300 years ago, and our later perfections
+of this instrument, together with latter-day devices for photographing
+Comets invisible to the naked eye.
+
+It would carry us too far to trace the possible connection between
+modern events and Comets that were seen only by astronomers. Since
+our record of Comets is already too full, we shall limit our story of
+the Comets and their influence upon man to a bare recital of the most
+important events connected with the more memorable and conspicuous
+Comets from the time of Christ until now.
+
+
+
+
+DATES OF COMETS FOLLOWED BY IMPORTANT EVENTS
+
+
+    =A. D.=
+
+        14—A Comet preceded the death of Augustus, the first
+           Emperor of Rome. Earthquake in Italy.
+
+        55—Suicide of Pontius Pilate, the judge who condemned
+           Christ.
+
+        68—Halley’s Comet. Suicide of Nero, persecutor of
+           Christians. Siege of Jerusalem.
+
+        73—A Comet shone 180 days over Cyprus. Earthquake in
+           Cypress in which 10,000 persons perished.
+
+        79—Death of Emperor Vespasian, who began the siege of
+           Jerusalem. The Roman historians Dion Cassius and
+           Suetonius relate that Vespasian, when taken sick,
+           heard his astrologers discussing in a low tone
+           of voice the Comet which was then visible, which
+           they said predicted his death. The Emperor roused
+           angrily and said: “This hairy star is not meant for
+           me. It must be meant for my enemy, the King of the
+           Parthians, for he is hairy, while I am bald.”
+
+           On the following night Vespasian died in great pain,
+           and the Comet was seen no more.
+
+           Shortly after Vespasian’s death followed the fierce
+           eruption of Mt. Vesuvius, Nov. 1, which destroyed the
+           two flourishing cities of Herculaneum and Pompeii.
+
+       130—A Comet shone over Holy Land for 39 nights,
+           followed by destructive earthquake in Holy Land.
+
+       145—One week’s Comet over Island of Rhodus. Earthquake
+           in Rhodus, followed by famine and pestilence.
+
+       217—From a Comet which shone for eighteen nights
+           soothsayers predicted the death of the Roman
+           Emperor, Caracalla. The Emperor was murdered
+           immediately afterwards by his rival Macrinus.
+
+       312—A Comet in the sign of a cross seen by Constantine
+           the Great during battle of Saxa Rubra under the
+           walls of Rome. Constantine was victorious and
+           afterward turned to Christian faith.
+
+       337—A Comet seen just before death of Constantine the
+           Great.
+
+       373—Halley’s Comet. Beginning of tremendous migration
+           of peoples which overran all Central Asia and
+           Europe.
+
+       399—This Comet was described by Nicephorus as “of
+           prodigious magnitude and horrible aspect, with a
+           point like a sword and fiery hair reaching nearly
+           to the ground, from which a great peril to the
+           people was predicted.” Its appearance was followed
+           by the conquest and capture of Rome by Gainas.
+
+       410—A sword-shaped Comet shone over Italy for four
+           months until the third week in August. On Aug. 24
+           Rome was taken and plundered by Alaric, King of
+           the Visigoths. This marks the end of the old Roman
+           Empire.
+
+       442—First appearance in Europe of Attila, “The Scourge
+           of God,” and his Hunnic hordes.
+
+     449-50—Two Comets (now believed to be coming and going
+            of Halley’s Comet) were observed over England and
+            France. First invasion of England by the
+            Anglo-Saxons under Hengist and Horsa. Attila
+            overthrown in the great battle on the Catalaunian
+            Fields, at which a hundred and eighty thousand
+            warriors fell, among them Theoderic, the King of
+            the Goths. The Roman historian Callimachus recorded
+            that this battle was preceded by a brilliant Comet
+            and an earthquake.
+
+       453—Death of Attila and end of his Hunnic empire.
+
+       530—Halley’s Comet. Merlin, the British seer,
+           prophesied from this Comet. His prophesies came true.
+
+       531—Comet observed in Constantinople by the astronomers
+           of Emperor Justinian. Earthquake in Constantinople
+           followed by famine and uprising of the people in
+           which two thousand were killed. Pestilence.
+
+       538—Terrible famine throughout civilized world, so that
+           many people became cannibals.
+
+       547—A lance-shaped Comet over Italy. Ostro-Goths under
+           Totila overrun Italy. Totila storms Rome.
+
+
+_Mohamet’s Star._
+
+     570—Scimitar-shaped Comet over Arabia. Birth of Mohamet.
+
+     610—Another scimitar-shaped Comet over Arabia. Mohamet
+         begins preaching the Koran.
+
+     622—Flight of Mohamet to Medina.
+
+     624—Fourth scimitar-shaped Comet over Arabia and Holy
+         Land. Mohamet’s first battle for the new faith. His
+         massacre of 700 Jews.
+
+     632—Last appearance of Mohamet’s Comet during first
+         week of June. Death of Mohamet on June 8 at Medina.
+
+     800—A Comet seen during Coronation of Charlemagne as
+         Emperor of Rome.
+
+     814—Torch-shaped Comet seen in Germany during the first
+         three weeks of January. Death of Charlemagne on
+         Jan. 28, at Aix la Chappelle. The monk Eginard
+         relates in his chronicles that on the appearance
+         of the Comet all those at Charlemagne’s court
+         feared for the Emperor’s life. Eginard preached to
+         them from the text of Isaiah not to believe in the
+         signs of the heathens. But Charlemagne reproved
+         him, saying that he felt that he had reason to
+         thank God for having sent him a timely warning of
+         his impending death. Thereupon the Emperor made
+         his testament and divided his empire among his
+         successors. On the day following the disappearance
+         of the Comet, he died.
+
+     837—Halley’s Comet observed in France by King Louis the
+         Debonair, who died from fear of it.
+
+     876—Disastrous flood in Italy, followed by plague.
+
+     900—Another Comet over Italy. Saracens invade Italy.
+
+     944—Comet with an immense tail over Italy, followed by
+         disastrous earthquake.
+
+    1000—In January of this year a Comet was observed all
+         over Europe. Gigibertus describes it “shaped like
+         a horrible serpent and so bright that its light
+         was seen even indoors.” It was generally taken to
+         foretell the end of the world,—the millennium
+         prophesied in the Apocalypse. When it was followed
+         soon by earthquakes, floods and famine there was
+         universal panic which was not allayed until the end
+         of the “fateful year.”
+
+    1002—A Comet over England and Scandinavia. Massacre of
+         all Danes in England by King Ethelred.
+
+    1066—Halley’s Comet. It appeared in May at Easter time
+         and shone for forty nights, waxing and waning with
+         the moon. William the Conqueror haled it as an omen
+         of destruction to Harold of England just before the
+         battle of Hastings.
+
+    1077—Comet over Italy and Germany. Emperor Henry IV. of
+         Germany was excommunicated by the Pope, followed by
+         war in Italy and Germany.
+
+
+_Crusaders’ Comets._
+
+    1099—Arabic astronomers record a Comet in the shape of
+         a scimitar over Arabia and the Holy Land for six
+         weeks in Spring and early Summer. First crusade
+         and storming of Jerusalem by the crusaders on July
+         15 after a siege of five weeks. Bloody massacre of
+         Mohammedans.
+
+    1109—Emperor Henry V. of Germany enters Rome and makes
+         Pope prisoner.
+
+    1148-9—Second crusade. Utter destruction of whole army
+         of French and German crusaders.
+
+    1200—Comet recorded by Hal Ben Rodoan, an Arab
+         astronomer, over North Africa. Bloody revolt of
+         Arab warriors in Morocco.
+
+    1212—Lance-shaped Comet shining over western Europe for
+         eighteen nights. The Children’s Crusade. Thousands
+         of German and French boy crusaders perished or were
+         sold into slavery. Bloody invasion of Tartar hordes
+         into Russia and Poland.
+
+    1223—Preaching of fifth crusade. Outbreak of “Guelph and
+         Ghibelline” war between Emperor Frederick II. of
+         Germany and Pope Gregory the IX.
+
+    1264—Very bright Comet observed shining all over Europe
+         for three months. Pope Urban IV. died on the night
+         of the Comet’s disappearance. A Latin verse gained
+         great currency in which it was said that the
+         Comet portended “disasters, sickness, hunger, and
+         war.” The chronicles of that age ascribe to this
+         Comet besides the death of the Pope a famine and
+         pestilence in Italy, the ravages of the Russians
+         into Poland and of the Slavs into Prussia.
+
+
+_Comets of Bloodshed._
+
+    1282—An immense Comet over Italy. Disastrous earthquake
+         in southern Italy. On March 30, a fortnight after
+         the first appearance of the Comet followed the
+         massacre of all Frenchmen in Sicily on the evening
+         of Easter Monday, known in history as the “Sicilian
+         Vespers.”
+
+    1298—Because of the appearance of a Comet over middle
+         Germany, there were riots in Nuremberg and other
+         neighbouring cities followed by a general massacre
+         of the Jews in those cities.
+
+    1300—A brilliant Comet preceded the Jubilee of Pope
+         Boniface the VIII. The Pope interpreted the Comet
+         as a happy omen, but because of the popular dread
+         of the Comet there were riots and blood shed in
+         Rome and elsewhere in Italy. The chroniclers of the
+         times pointed out the significant fact that shortly
+         after his jubilee Pope Boniface was made a prisoner
+         by King Philip of France, causing him to die of rage.
+
+
+_Plague Comets._
+
+    1305—A Comet “of horrible aspect” burning all through
+         Passion Week preceded the outbreak of the terrible
+         black plague which swept from the Orient all over
+         Europe and Asia.
+
+    1333—Chinese and Arab astronomers record a bright
+         Comet over China, Turkestan and Persia. Birth
+         of Tamerlane, the “Scourge of the Nations” at
+         Samarkand, in Turkestan.
+
+    1347—A Comet precedes the “Black Death,” a terrible
+         pestilence followed by famine all over the world.
+         One-fourth of all the people of Europe died.
+         Fifteen million deaths in China,—twenty-five
+         million in Europe.
+
+    1363—A Comet of immense size shone for three months over
+         northern Europe. Pestilence and famine in England,
+         Poland and Russia.
+
+    1378—Halley’s Comet. Pestilence in Germany. Holy Church
+         is rent by the great schism, with rival popes at
+         Rome and Avignon.
+
+
+_Tamerlane’s Star._
+
+    1382—Arab astronomers and Chinese report a very bright
+         Comet which shone a fortnight. Tamerlane and his
+         hordes overrun Central Asia. Pestilence breaks out
+         there and spreads all over the world.
+
+    1402—Arab astronomers report another Comet seen all over
+         the East. Tamerlane carries war into Europe and
+         takes Constantinople by storm. Sultan Bayezid is
+         taken prisoner by Tamerlane and is carried to Asia
+         in a cage.
+
+    1405—Chinese astronomers record a spear-shaped Comet
+         over China. Tamerlane dies while invading China.
+
+    1456—Halley’s Comet. Bloody war between the Christians
+         and the Turks. Battle of Belgrade.
+
+    1492—Arab astronomers record a Comet over northern
+         Africa and Spain. Final conquest of Granada from
+         the Moors by Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain.
+         Discovery of the New World.
+
+    1500—Sword-shaped Comet over northern Europe, followed
+         by Tartar invasion into Russia and Poland.
+
+    1528—A Comet noted by Ambroise Paré, who recorded that
+         many people fell sick and died of fright. War
+         between Emperor Charles V. of Germany and Francis
+         I. of France, with fighting in France, Germany and
+         Italy.
+
+    1531—Halley’s Comet. Plague in Italy. Great schism in
+         the Church. Defection of German Protestants from
+         Rome. Henry VIII. of England declares English
+         Church independent of Rome. Sultan Soleyman ravaged
+         Hungary. Disastrous floods in Holland, where
+         400,000 people were drowned.
+
+    1556—Emperor Charles V. of Germany and Spain, on account
+         of his fear of the Comet that appeared in that
+         year, abdicated his throne and became a monk.
+         Wide-spread wars all over Europe. The Turks ravaged
+         Hungary. Persecutions of English Protestants under
+         “Bloody Mary.” Many Protestants burned at the
+         stake, beheaded or broken on the rack.
+
+    1572—St. Bartholomew’s Comet. Massacre of St.
+         Bartholomew, when 30,000 Huguenots were slaughtered
+         in France.
+
+    1577—General persecution of Huguenots in France,
+         followed by Civil War in France.
+
+    1607—A Comet seen over Constantinople for several weeks.
+         Wide-spread war on the part of the Turks against
+         the Persians on one side, the Poles on another, and
+         against Venice on the third.
+
+    1618—A blood-coloured Comet observed just before the
+         execution of Sir Walter Raleigh in England. A
+         bloody rising of the Protestants in Bohemia,
+         followed by the outbreak of the terrible Thirty
+         Years’ War in Germany and the Netherlands. This
+         was the Comet which gave rise to the German school
+         rhyme:
+
+              “Eight things a Comet always brings,
+               Wind, Famine, Plague and Death to Kings,
+               War, Earthquake, Floods and Dire Things.”
+
+
+_Louis XIV.’s Star._
+
+    1661—Inspired by the appearance of a Comet, a horde
+         of fanatics under Venner, a cooper, preached the
+         coming of the “Fifth Monarchy” in England, and
+         proclaimed Jesus Christ as their only King. The
+         fanatics were routed and put to death. Death of
+         Mazarin, the “Master of France.” Rise of Louis
+         XIV., the most powerful ruler of France. French war
+         against the Pope.
+
+    1680—This Comet was studied by Halley, in Paris, and
+         by Newton, in England. It was called “Heaven’s
+         Chariot.” Plague in Europe. The French overrun
+         Alsace and carried war into Germany. War between
+         Venice and the Turks.
+
+    1682—Halley’s Comet. War in Italy. War in Hungary
+         against the Turks.
+
+    1689—A remarkable Comet observed all over Europe,
+         followed by war all over Europe. Wars between
+         France, Germany, England, Spain and Italy. The
+         Rhine lands were harried by the French with fire
+         and sword, rendering 4,000,000 people homeless.
+         Burning of the castle of Heidelberg by the French.
+         Religious war in Ireland and Scotland. Siege of
+         Londonderry and Dundee. Battle of Newton Butler
+         in Ireland.
+
+    1729—War between France, England and Spain.
+
+
+_Frederick the Great’s Star._
+
+    1744—A six-tailed Comet observed in Germany just before
+         the death of Emperor Charles VII. His death
+         followed by war between Frederick the Great and
+         Maria Teresa of Austria. War spreads to England,
+         Holland, France, Spain and Italy. A British fleet
+         beaten by French and Spaniards off Toulon.
+
+    1755—A Comet precedes earthquake of Lisbon, by which
+         40,000 people lost their lives.
+
+    1759—Halley’s Comet. Seven Years’ War in Germany.
+         Frederick the Great overthrown in four bloody
+         battles. French lose Canada by their disastrous
+         defeat of the plains of Abraham, and lose India by
+         the loss of their fleet through three successive
+         defeats on the sea.
+
+
+_Napoleon’s Star._
+
+    1769—“Napoleon’s Comet.” A Comet of unusual red lustre
+         was observed over Italy and France. French overrun
+         Corsica. Bloody massacre of Corsicans. Birth of
+         Napoleon on August 15 in Corsica, just after the
+         Comet was seen no more.
+
+    1811-12—This huge Comet was one of the most famous
+         Comets of modern times. It was first seen in France
+         on March 26, 1811, and was last observed over
+         southern Russia on August 17, 1812—an appearance
+         of seventeen months, the longest on record. For
+         a while it had two tails, then only one. The
+         length of this tail was estimated as 100,000,000
+         miles. It was called “Napoleon’s Comet.” Under its
+         lustre Napoleon gathered his “grand armée,” the
+         greatest army assembled in Europe since Xerxes, and
+         invaded Russia. Wars were fought at the same time
+         in Portugal and Spain, where the British stormed
+         Ciudad Rodrigo and Badajos; and in America, where
+         Harrison’s victory over the Indians under Tecumseh
+         at Tippecanoe, and the seafight between the
+         “President” and “Little Belt” ushered in the War of
+         1812. In Egypt the Comet was taken as an omen of the
+         bloody massacre of the Mamelukes perpetrated at Cairo.
+
+[Illustration: THE GREAT COMET OF 1811.]
+
+    1821—“Napoleon’s Comet.” Seen one night only over France
+         and over St. Helena the night before the death of
+         Napoleon at St. Helena.
+
+    1823—A Comet much mentioned by Spanish writers.
+         While it shone over Spain, South America and
+         the Mediterranean, the French overran Spain and
+         reinstated the Spanish king. Revival of the
+         Spanish Inquisition and bloody persecutions of the
+         revolutionists. War of Independence in Central and
+         South America. Bloody war of Greek Independence.
+
+    1835-6—Halley’s Comet. New York City all but destroyed
+         by fire. Zulu massacre of Boers at Weenen. Mexican
+         massacre of Americans at the Alamo. Wars throughout
+         South America.
+
+    1843—Another famous Comet seen all over the world during
+         the Spring of that year. Especially brilliant in
+         the Southern Hemisphere and in India. War in India
+         on the part of the British against Afghanistan,
+         Beluchistan, Scinde and against the Sikhs.
+
+    1848—Encke’s famous periodic Comet. Bloody revolutionary
+         risings and civil wars in France, Hungary, Bohemia,
+         Austria, Germany, Italy and Poland.
+
+    1858-9—Donati’s Comet. This Comet, which appeared to be
+         charging straight down from the zenith, and had a
+         curved tail, was observed from June 1858 to April
+         1859. It was seen at its brightest in the South, in
+         Italy, Mexico and in the Far East. While it shone
+         over the Far East there were bloody wars between
+         the British and the risen people of India; between
+         the British and the Chinese, who objected to
+         having opium thrust upon them; while Japan was in
+         the throes of revolution and civil war. In Mexico
+         the standard of revolt against the clericals was
+         raised by Juarez, thus plunging Mexico into civil
+         war and war with France. Immediately after the
+         disappearance of the Comet war broke out in Italy
+         between the French and Italians on one side and the
+         Austrians on the other, ending in the bloody Battle
+         of Solferino.
+
+
+_Civil War Comets._
+
+    1861—“First Civil War Comet.” The brightest Comet of
+         the nineteenth century. Sir John Herschel, the
+         great English astronomer, said of this Comet: “It
+         far exceeded in brightness any Comet I have before
+         observed, those of 1811 and the recent splendid one
+         of 1858 not excepted.” The Comet was first seen
+         by a layman, and appeared at its brightest during
+         the Summer months in North America. Its coming was
+         heralded as a token of the great Civil War which
+         broke out then in America.
+
+    1862—“Second Civil War Comet.” Another Comet of very
+         peculiar appearance, with jets of flame flaring
+         from its head, showed itself during the Summer
+         months in North America. The Civil War was then at
+         its height. The coming of the Comet was taken to
+         herald the bloody battles of Shiloh, Williamsburg,
+         Seven Days, Seven Pines, Cedar Mountain and
+         Antietam, all fought that year after the Comet’s
+         appearance.
+
+[Illustration: THE GREAT COMET OF 1843 AS SEEN ON MARCH 17 FROM
+BLACKHEATH, KENT.]
+
+    1874—Coggia’s Comet. This Comet was seen at its
+         brightest over Southern France and Spain during the
+         Summer months of that year. Spain was then in the
+         throes of the bloody Carlist War.
+
+
+_Garfield’s Comet._
+
+    1881—Garfield’s Comet. This Comet showed itself for a
+         few nights only in March during the week following
+         President Garfield’s inauguration. It was observed
+         also in Russia. On March 13, Emperor Alexander II.
+         of Russia, was assassinated with a bomb. Three
+         months later President Garfield was assassinated in
+         Washington.
+
+
+_War Comets._
+
+    1882—Comet of Tel-el-Kebir. A Comet with two tails was
+         seen at its brightest over Egypt during the first
+         two weeks of September. Egypt was then in the midst
+         of Arabi Pasha’s uprising against the British. On
+         September 18, when the Comet was last seen, Arabi
+         Pasha was overthrown by General Wolseley in the
+         bloody battle of Tel-el-Kebir.
+
+    1904-5—Manchurian War Comet. From the early part of
+         February, 1904, until Midsummer, 1905, Chinese
+         observers recorded the appearance of a Comet over
+         Northern China. Throughout that period Manchuria
+         was ravaged by the bloody war between the Japanese
+         and Russians.
+
+
+_Earthquake Comets._
+
+    1906—San Francisco Comet. A Comet discovered by Ross on
+         March 17, remaining visible for one month. Observed
+         from the Lick Observatory in California. On April
+         17 came the California earthquake and burning of
+         San Francisco.
+
+    1908—Morehouse’s Comet. Visible for more than a month,
+         during the autumn. In Italy it was interpreted
+         afterward as an omen foreboding the Messina
+         earthquake late in the year.
+
+
+_This Year’s Comets._
+
+    1910—Inness’ Comet, otherwise known as “1910 A”. An
+         unexpected Comet of short duration during January.
+         On the appearance of this Comet Madame de Thebes,
+         a French astrologer, predicted floods and general
+         disaster for France. The disappearance of the Comet
+         in France was followed by unprecedented rains and
+         floods which covered one-fourth of France with
+         water and inundated Paris, completely submerging
+         all the bridges over the Seine. Floods also in
+         Italy and Germany. This Comet was likewise observed
+         in China late in January, where it caused universal
+         consternation.
+
+    1910—Pidoux’s Comet. Another unexpected Comet was first
+         observed by Pidoux, in Geneva, during a few nights
+         late in February. It is recorded astronomically as
+         “1910 B”. Its fleeting observations by astronomers
+         were followed by Socialist franchise riots in
+         Germany and by the labour riots of Philadelphia,
+         with widespread bloodshed between the rioters and
+         the constabulary.
+
+    1910—Halley’s Comet of this year was first “picked
+         up” by Dr. Wolf, in Germany. Already various
+         astrologers have foretold disaster from its coming.
+         It remains to be seen whether their predictions
+         will come true.
+
+[Illustration: THE GREAT COMET OF 1882, ON OCTOBER 9, AT 4 A. M.]
+
+
+
+
+HALLEY’S BALEFUL COMET
+
+
+Among all the stars known in astronomy, the periodically returning
+Comet now known as Halley’s Comet has the most baleful record.
+
+In this Comet’s wake, after every one of its recorded appearances,
+there have always followed terrible disasters.
+
+Not only war and battles, or other deeds of bloodshed, such as
+massacres and murders, but each of the dread disasters that are held to
+go with Comets have followed along one after the other in this Comet’s
+train.
+
+Of the eight baneful after-effects of Comets mentioned in the old
+German ditty that has been sung in the Fatherland ever since the great
+Comet which ushered in the dreadful Thirty Years’ War,
+
+    “Wind, Famine, Plague and Death to Kings
+     War, Earthquakes, Floods and Dire Things.”
+
+Halley’s Comet is known to have preceded each and every form of these
+evils in turn.
+
+Directly after each return of Halley’s Comet there has always followed
+somewhere within the influence of its rays one or other of those “dire
+things,”—a flood, an earthquake, a hurricane, famine, plague, war,
+bloodshed, or the sudden death of a ruler.
+
+Thanks to the careful work of such painstaking astronomers and
+historians as Lubienitius, Pingré, Dionys de Séjour, J. Russell Hind,
+Laugier, and Messrs. Cowell and Crommelin, the records of great events
+connected with Halley’s Comet have been traced back nearly 2,000 years,
+to the days before Christ.
+
+Among the signal events following in the train of this Comet there have
+been so many bloody massacres and appalling disasters that Halley’s
+Comet now has the ominous distinction of being the bloodiest of all
+stars of ill omen.
+
+Herewith follows the story of this Comet’s periodic appearances in
+history and of the events connected therewith, as traced back from its
+last return in 1835 to its first recorded entrance into the history of
+mankind.
+
+
+1835-1836
+
+Halley’s Comet last appeared in the Summer of 1835, and was seen until
+Spring of the following year.
+
+It was first discerned by Father Dumouchel with a powerful telescope
+from the observatory of the Collegio Romano in Rome on the night of
+August 6, 1835. Father Dumouchel, who had been watching for it many
+months, picked it up close to the spot in the heavens that Rosenberger,
+a German astronomer, had predicted for its appearance on that date.
+
+The last astronomer to see the Comet was Sir John Herschel, who
+observed it from the Cape of Good Hope until the middle of May, 1836.
+
+Other noted astronomers who made observations of it were Arago, Struve,
+Bessel, Kaiser, Sir Thomas Maclear, Admiral Smyth, Baron Damoiseau and
+Count Pontécoulant.
+
+This last astronomer, many years before, had computed the exact time
+of its coming and came within four days of it. For this brilliant feat
+Count Pontécoulant received a gold medal from the French Academy of
+Sciences.
+
+[Illustration: HALLEY’S COMET OF 1835. FROM A DRAWING BY ROSENBERGER.]
+
+The German astronomer, Rosenberger, who had likewise computed the
+Comet’s return, coming within five days of its passage nearest to the
+Sun, received a similar gold medal from the Royal Astronomical Society
+of Great Britain.
+
+Professor Struve, who studied the Comet through the great telescope
+at Dorpat in Russia, described it as “glowing like a red-hot coal of
+oblong form.”
+
+Bessel, who observed it from the Koenigsberg observatory in Northern
+Germany, described the Comet’s appearance as that of “a blazing rocket,
+the flame from which was driven aside as by a strong gale, or as the
+stream of fire from the discharge of a cannon when the sparks and smoke
+are carried backwards by the wind.”
+
+Struve at Koenigsberg and Kaiser at Leyden were the first to see the
+Comet with their naked eyes in the third week of September.
+
+Immediately after the Comet became generally visible in the Old World
+the bubonic plague, known of old as the “Black Death,” broke out in
+Egypt. In the City of Alexandria alone 9,000 people died on one day.
+By the Moslems this calamity was generally attributed to the evil
+influence of the Comet.
+
+In America the Comet became visible to the naked eye only late in the
+year. Then, on its approach to the Sun, it was lost to view and passed
+over to the Southern Hemisphere where it was next observed by Sir John
+Herschel in South Africa.
+
+Shortly after its brief blaze over North America the great “New York
+Fire” laid waste the entire business section of the biggest city in the
+New World. All the commercial centre of the city, including the richest
+firms and largest commercial warehouses, were laid in ashes. The fire
+raged through days and nights. In all, 530 houses burned down and
+$18,000,000 of property was consumed. Owing to the intense cold, the
+sufferings of the homeless were pitiable.
+
+Down in Florida, at the same time, Osceola, the chieftain of the
+Seminole Indians, called upon the Comet as a signal for war against the
+whites. The Indians called the Comet “Big Knife in the Sky.”
+
+The war began with a bloody massacre of American soldiers under General
+Wiley Thompson at Fort King. All were slaughtered. Osceola scalped
+General Thompson with his own hands.
+
+On the same day, Major Dade of the American Army, who was leading a
+relief expedition into Florida from Tampa Bay, was ambushed by the
+Indians near Wahoo Swamp and was massacred with his men. Of the whole
+expedition only four men escaped death.
+
+Within forty-eight hours of this horrible massacre came another bloody
+Indian fight on the banks of the Big Withlacoochee.
+
+With the passing of the Comet to the Southern Hemisphere, bloody wars
+broke out one after another in Mexico, Cuba, Central America, Ecuador,
+Bolivia, Peru and Argentina. All those countries were in a welter of
+blood.
+
+At the same time the American settlers of Texas declared themselves
+independent and made open war on Mexico. The war began with the bloody
+battle of Gonzales, in which 500 American frontiersmen fought and
+defeated over a thousand Mexican soldiers. This was followed by other
+fierce fights at Goliad and Bexar.
+
+Next came the bloody massacre of the Alamo, when all of Jim Bowie’s and
+Davy Crockett’s American followers were killed in an all night fight.
+Out of 200 Americans every man fell at his post. This was the deed of
+blood on which Joaquin Miller wrote his stirring Ballad of the Alamo.
+
+    “Santa Ana came storming as a storm might come,—
+     There was rumble of cannon; there was rattle of blade;
+     There was cavalry, infantry, bugle and drum,—
+     Full seven thousand, in pomp and parade,
+     The chivalry, flower of Mexico,
+     And a gaunt two hundred in the Alamo.”
+
+One month before the final disappearance of the Comet, the Texas War
+came to an end with the bloody battle of San Jacinto, when Sam Houston,
+with 800 American frontiersmen, defeated 1,500 Mexicans, and made a
+prisoner of President Santa Ana of Mexico.
+
+When the Comet had passed to the Southern Hemisphere, it was seen at
+its brightest in South Africa.
+
+The pious Boers of Cape Colony understood it to be a sign from heaven
+and forthwith set out on their great trek across the Orange and Vaal
+rivers, where they founded the Orange Free State and Transvaal Republic.
+
+Thus the Comet was the signal for the first blood drawn in the long
+fight between the British and Boers.
+
+A little later, though, the Boers found another, more woeful
+significance for the blazing of the Comet.
+
+Under the leadership of Piet Relief, a thousand Boer families had
+trekked across the Drakensberg Mountains into Natal. A solemn treaty
+of peace with the Zulu warriors was entered into with Dingaan, the
+chief of the Zulus at Dingaan’s Kraal. Suddenly the Zulus pounced upon
+the unsuspecting Piet Relief and his sixty-five Boer followers and
+massacred them to a man.
+
+Then the Zulus, numbering some 10,000 warriors, swept out into the
+veldt and made for the Boer wagon trains. Near Colenso, at a spot
+called Weenen (weeping), in remembrance of the dreadful tragedy there
+perpetrated, the Zulus overwhelmed the Boer laager and slaughtered all
+its inmates—41 men, 56 women, 185 children and 250 Kaffir slaves.
+
+After this bloody massacre, equalling in horror the Massacre of the
+Alamo on the other side of the world, the Comet of 1835-36 was seen no
+more.
+
+
+1758-1759
+
+This was the first return of the Comet predicted by Halley. Hence it
+must be reckoned as the first appearance of “Halley’s Comet” under his
+name.
+
+It was first seen on Christmas night, 1758, by John Palitsch, a Saxon
+farmer, near Dresden, who was looking for it with a self-constructed
+telescope of eight-foot focus. The Comet did not become visible to the
+naked eye until well into 1759. It passed around the sun on March 12,
+1759. After that it was seen throughout Europe during April and May,
+appearing at its brightest during the first week in May. Later it was
+seen to advantage in the Southern Hemisphere.
+
+In Germany, where it was seen at its fiercest, the Comet was taken as
+a token of the bloody Seven Years’ War, which was then being fought
+between Frederick the Great and his enemies on all sides.
+
+The ominous Comet had scarcely vanished from view when all Germany was
+overrun by marching armies from France, from Austria, from Russia.
+
+The French, under the Duke of Broglie, overthrew the Germans, under
+the Duke of Brunswick, at Bergen, and seized the city of Frankfurt.
+Then came the bloody battle of Minden, in which two large French armies
+were beaten. Meanwhile the Russians were marching into Prussia, and
+another bloody battle was fought at Kay in midsummer.
+
+Within a fortnight King Frederick the Great and his whole army were
+overthrown by the Austrians and Russians in the disastrous battle of
+Kunersdorf.
+
+Another Prussian army was overcome at Maxen, where 13,000 Prussians
+were taken.
+
+Altogether, during this year’s campaigns, several hundred thousand
+soldiers lost their lives.
+
+It was the worst year of the Seven Years’ War for Frederick the Great
+and his soldiers, who attributed their bloody defeats to the ill omen
+of the Comet.
+
+In other parts of the world, likewise, the coming of the Comet was
+followed by widespread war and bloody fighting.
+
+For the French, the Comet signalled disaster after disaster. After
+their armies had been beaten in Germany, their navy was defeated on
+August 17 in a great sea fight in the Bay of Lagos, on the coast of
+Portugal. Six weeks later there was another bloody sea fight between
+the British and French, when Admiral Pocock inflicted a telling defeat
+on the French fleet.
+
+Then came the final French naval disaster off Quiberon, in the Bay of
+Biscay, when Admiral Hawke destroyed French naval power by sinking
+or blowing up over a score of the French fighting ships. This bloody
+defeat was a disaster of untold consequences to the French, since it
+meant the loss of India.
+
+But this was not all that this Comet of ill omen had brought to the
+French.
+
+On September 13th of that year the French lost their strongest hold on
+America in the disastrous defeat inflicted upon them by General Wolfe
+in the bloody battle on the Plains of Abraham, where Wolfe himself fell
+fighting. On the French side, General Montcalm, the Commander-in-Chief,
+was mortally wounded. This meant the loss of Quebec and of all Canada
+to the French, an event of far-reaching importance that has changed the
+destiny of all America and of the modern world.
+
+
+1682
+
+The Comet which put Halley on the right track in his theories of
+Comets, first came into view on the night of August 15, 1682. It was
+first detected by Flamsteed’s assistant at the Greenwich Observatory,
+while searching the northern heavens with a telescope.
+
+Flamsteed, the first Astronomer Royal, and Halley, his successor, kept
+a close watch upon the Comet every night, and followed its course over
+the sky. Others who watched it were Sir Isaac Newton, Cassini, Picard
+and La Hire in Paris, Baert at Toulon, Kirch and Zimmermann in Germany,
+Montanari at Padua, and Hevelius in Dantsic. They observed that the
+tail lengthened considerably as the Comet came nearer the sun. Later
+a jet of luminous matter was seen shooting out toward the sun, which
+afterward fell back into the tail. Hevelius has left us a drawing of
+this phenomenon.
+
+On November 11th, Halley found that the Comet had come within a
+semi-diameter of the path of our earth. This startling discovery
+caused Halley to reflect what might happen if the earth and the Comet
+had arrived at the same time at the spot in space where their two
+orbits intersect. Assuming as he did that the mass of the Comet was
+considerably larger than our earth, he declared: “If so large a body
+with so rapid a motion were to strike the earth—a thing by no means
+impossible—the shock might reduce this beautiful world to its original
+chaos.”
+
+[Illustration: HALLEY’S COMET, JANUARY 9, 1683, AS DRAWN BY HEVELIUS.]
+
+[Illustration: THE COMET OF 1682, AS REPRESENTED IN THE NUREMBURG
+CHRONICLE.]
+
+[Illustration: MEDAL STRUCK IN GERMANY TO ALLAY THE TERROR CAUSED BY
+THE COMET OF 1680-81.
+
+TRANSLATION OF INSCRIPTION:
+
+    “THE STAR THREATENS EVIL THINGS—ONLY TRUST!
+     GOD WILL MAKE IT TURN OUT WELL.”]
+
+Others beside Halley took alarm at the Comet. They called it “The
+Chariot of Fire.”
+
+Dr. Whiston—he who succeeded Newton in the Lucasian chair of
+mathematics at Cambridge—in a moment of prophetic vision fervently
+declared that this Comet was God’s agent that would bring about the
+General Conflagration by involving the world in flames.
+
+In America, the Rev. Increase Mather, President of Harvard College, on
+the appearance of the Comet in New England, preached his great sermon
+on “Heaven’s Alarm to the World ... wherein is shown that fearful
+sights and signs in the Heavens are the presages of great calamities at
+hand.”
+
+Increase Mather’s warning was handed down as an inspired prophesy,
+in view of the fact that the English settlers in North America soon
+afterwards got into bloody warfare with the Indians. The war raged at
+its fiercest in the Carolinas, where the English settlers made war upon
+the redskins simply for the purpose of taking them captive and selling
+them into slavery in the West Indies.
+
+To the Indians the Comet appeared as a sign of ill omen, as shown by
+their frequent references to it during the parleys with the white men.
+
+The Comet was shining at its fiercest when the six greatest chiefs of
+the Susquehanna nation were enticed into a pretended council of peace
+with the white men, only to be foully murdered with all their followers.
+
+While this was going on in America, the Comet gave the signal in India
+for the first hostilities there upon the white settlers from Portugal,
+as well as for the outbreak of the bloody Mahratta War, which ravaged
+India for a generation to come.
+
+Nearer East, the Turks, under the leadership of Mohammed Bey, ravaged
+Egypt, while, on the other side, a Turkish army under Kara Mustapha
+carried war into Hungary, to the very gates of Vienna, until Emperor
+Leopold felt constrained to call for help from Sobieski, the warrior
+king of the Poles.
+
+In Europe the French overran Alsace, and suddenly seized the German
+city of Strasburg.
+
+At the same time the bubonic plague broke out in North Germany. In the
+little university town of Halle alone, within a few days, 4,397 people
+died out of a total population of ten thousand.
+
+It was then that medals were struck off in Germany with a design of
+the comet on their face, and an inscription imploring God to avert the
+evils threatened by the Comet:
+
+    “The star threatens evil things;
+      Only trust! God will make it right.”
+
+
+1607
+
+The Comet this year was seen all over Europe. The best observations of
+it were made by Kepler and Longomontanus (Langberger). It was seen at
+its brightest in England.
+
+Shortly after its appearance over England, there came freshets and
+floods which completely submerged the richest counties of England. In
+Somersetshire and Gloucestershire the water rose above the tops of the
+houses. This was followed by a visitation of the plague.
+
+In Ireland the Comet was taken as an omen of the fate of Londonderry,
+where the Irish rebels, suddenly seizing the city, massacred Sir George
+Powlett and all his English garrison.
+
+In Germany the Comet was taken as a token of the war then brewing
+between the Emperor and the German Protestant Princes—the so-called
+Protestant League—which ushered in the dreadful Thirty Years’ War in
+Germany.
+
+Off Gibraltar, a Dutch fleet completely destroyed a fleet of Spanish
+war galleons, thereby crippling Spanish sea power for a generation to
+come.
+
+Meanwhile, in America, the early settlers in Virginia, led by John
+Smith, found themselves beset by the redskins, who were incited to
+war by the appearance of the Comet. They called it “Red Knife in the
+Sky.” During the war, John Smith was taken prisoner, and escaped with
+his life only through the intercession of Pocahontas, the daughter of
+Powhattan.
+
+
+1531
+
+The Comet was first sighted by the German astronomer Bienewitz
+(“Apianus”) in midsummer of this year. Zwingli preached about it as an
+omen of disaster.
+
+German astrologers regarded it as a herald of the wars between Spain
+and France, which broke out in that year, and of the bloody war carried
+into Hungary by the Turks under Soleyman, who ravaged the Danube
+country to the very walls of Vienna. These wars were followed by a
+visitation of the black plague.
+
+In the Netherlands the breaking of the ocean dykes caused terrific
+floods, in which over 400,000 people were drowned.
+
+Toward the close of the year the Comet passed over to the Southern
+Hemisphere.
+
+To the aborigines of South America it proved a star of dreadful omen.
+During this year the most cruel of Spanish conquerors did their
+bloodiest work in the New World—Cortez in Mexico, Alvarado at the
+Equator, and Pizarro in Peru. Before the Comet disappeared from view,
+several hundred thousand wretched Incas and Aztecs had been slaughtered
+by the Spaniards, while many more hundred thousands were worked to
+death as slaves.
+
+
+1456
+
+The Comet this year was observed throughout Europe and also in China.
+It came into view over Europe on the 29th of May, and was seen gliding
+over the sky towards the moon.
+
+Writers of that period say that it shone with exceeding brightness and
+spread out a fan-shaped train of fire. The Arab astronomers describe
+its shape as that of a Turkish scimitar, which, blazing against the
+dark sky, was regarded as a sign from heaven of the war then raging
+against the Christian infidels.
+
+A clear story of the Comet’s appearance has been left by the Bavarian
+Jesuit, Brueckner (Pontanus). He based his story on the record of
+Georgos Phranza, Grandmaster of the Wardrobes to the Emperor of
+Constantinople. There the Comet is described as “rising in the West;
+moving towards the East, and approaching the Moon.”
+
+By the Chinese this Comet was described as having a tail sixty degrees
+long, and a head “which at one time was round, and the size of a bull’s
+eye, the tail being like a peacock’s.”
+
+    Halley wrote of this Comet in 1686: “In the summer
+    of the year 1456 a Comet was seen, which passed in a
+    retrograde direction between the earth and the sun.
+    From its period and path, I infer that it was the
+    same Comet as that of the years 1531, 1607 and 1682.
+    I may therefore with confidence predict its return in
+    the year 1758.”
+
+The appearance of the Comet in 1456 was so well remembered even 225
+years later, because this was the scimitar-shaped Comet hailed by the
+conquering Turks as their guiding star, against the evil influence of
+which Pope Calixtus III. exhorted all Christians to pray to God.
+
+This story has been denied by certain latter-day sceptics, but the
+medieval historian Platina, who was living in Rome at the time, and who
+knew whereof he spoke, wrote in his “Lives of the Popes” in 1470:
+
+    “A hairy and fiery star having then made its
+     appearance for several days, the mathematicians
+     declared that there would follow grievous pestilence,
+     dearth and some great calamity. Calixtus, to avert
+     the wrath of God, ordered supplications that if evils
+     were impending for the human race He would turn all
+     upon the Turks, the enemies of the Christian name. He
+     likewise ordered, to move God by continual entreaty,
+     that notice should be given by the bells to call the
+     faithful at midday to aid by their prayers those
+     engaged in battle with the Turk.”
+
+In truth, all Christendom appeared indeed to have fallen under the
+“wrath of God,” for the Turks; having wrested Constantinople away from
+the Christians, now came ravaging up the Danube countries and laid
+siege to the Christian city of Belgrade. Bloody battles were fought
+between the Magyars and Turks on the Danube, until Hunyadi, the great
+Magyar leader, at last overthrew the Turks under Mahomet II., under
+the walls of Belgrade, in a great battle, in which no less than 24,000
+Turks were slain. This was on July 21st, on the eve of which day the
+Comet had been seen to blaze at its fiercest.
+
+
+1378
+
+The Comet appeared late in the year, and was seen at its brightest over
+Northern Europe, in Scotland, Scandinavia, Russia and Poland.
+
+All these countries, during the same period and immediately afterwards,
+were cursed by the terrible pestilence called the “Black Death,” now
+known to have been the worst visitation of the bubonic plague known in
+history. Wherever the dread sickness appeared, the people “died like
+rats.” So many succumbed to the disease, and so many others fled aghast
+from the pestilence, that whole cities and towns were left empty, and
+no labourers could be found to till the fields.
+
+
+1301
+
+The Comet this year was first observed by German and Flemish
+astrologers during the late Summer and Autumn. It was interpreted as an
+ill omen of the wars which then ravaged Europe. Immediately after the
+appearance of the Comet, Emperor Albrecht of Germany ravaged the Rhine
+lands with fire and sword. Afterwards the German astrologers explained
+the Comet as a warning omen of the death of the Emperor’s son Rudolf,
+who died within a twelvemonth of his coronation as King of Bohemia.
+
+In Flanders the Comet was taken as a heavenly token of the fierce war
+which followed the bloodstained massacre of 3,000 French soldiers by
+the enraged people of Flanders.
+
+Soon after this came Robert of Artois’ bloody defeat at Coutrai, the
+famous “Battle of the Spurs,” so called from the thousands of gilt
+spurs that were taken afterwards from the feet of the slain French
+cavaliers.
+
+
+1222
+
+The Comet during this year is recorded by the Chinese astronomers
+in the months of September and October. During these months, and
+immediately afterwards, Jenghis Khan, the bloody Mongol conqueror, with
+his fierce Mongol hordes, was ravaging all China, Persia, India and the
+Caucasus country as far as the River Don.
+
+The Comet was taken as a special omen of the terrible fate of the City
+of Herat and its surrounding country, where the bloodthirsty conqueror
+caused to be slaughtered over a million of people. Jenghis Khan, who
+believed in stars and omens, having been born with bloodstained hands,
+hailed the Comet as his special Star. Under its rays he extended his
+immense Empire to its outermost boundaries from the China seas to the
+banks of the Dniepr in Russia. After the Comet’s disappearance, Jenghis
+Khan regarded the planets that had crossed its orbit as stars of ill
+omen, betokening his death, so he set his face backward from his march
+of conquest, and soon afterwards died in Mongolia.
+
+
+1145
+
+The Comet appeared over Europe early in Spring. It was seen at Rome in
+March and April.
+
+Inspired by the appearance of the Comet, Pope Eugenius III. called for
+a crusade against the Moslems. St. Bernard in France took up the cry,
+and preached a holy war all over France. On Easter Sunday, King Louis
+VII. of France, his Queen and all his nobles, received the Cross from
+St. Bernard at Vizelay.
+
+In Rome, however, the Comet was taken as a token of the Pope’s
+downfall. Arnold of Brescia preached against the Pope and aroused the
+Roman populace against him. The Holy Father had to flee.
+
+On the disappearance of the Comet, the Pope returned and excommunicated
+the Patricians of Rome. Arnold of Brescia was taken and strangled in
+his cell. Later historians, like Lubienitius, accordingly interpreted
+the Comet as a sign of warning rather than as an ill omen.
+
+
+1066
+
+This is the most famous appearance of the Comet now known as Halley’s
+Comet. Under its seven rays, that year, William the Conqueror felt
+inspired to fall upon England, while Harold, the Saxon, on the other
+hand, saw in the Comet a star of dread foreboding and of doom.
+
+The medieval chronicles of this year all make special mention of the
+Comet. A picture of the Comet, as it appeared to the doomed Harold, was
+embroidered by Matilde of France, on the famous coloured tapestry of
+the Norman Conquest, which is still preserved at Bayeux in Normandy.
+
+Zonares, the Greek historian, in his account of the death of Emperor
+Constantinus Ducas (who died in May, 1067), writes of the Comet as
+“large as the full moon, and at first without a tail, on the appearance
+of which the star dwindled in size.”
+
+The Chinese astronomers have recorded that this Comet had seven tails,
+and was seen for sixty-seven days, after which “the star, the blaze,
+and the star’s tails all drew away.”
+
+[Illustration: HALLEY’S COMET, 1066. (_From the Bayeux Tapestry._)]
+
+
+The Christian chroniclers record that this Comet, “in size and
+brightness equalled the full moon, while its tail, slowly lengthening
+as it came near the Sun, spread out into seven rays and arched over the
+heavens in the shape of a dragon’s tail.”
+
+Sigebert of Brabant, the Belgian chronicler of that time, wrote of it:
+“Over the island of Britain was seen a star of a wonderful bigness, to
+the train of which hung a fiery sword not unlike a dragon’s tail; and
+out of the dragon’s mouth issued two vast rays, whereof one reached as
+far as France, and the other, divided into seven lesser rays, stretched
+away towards Ireland.”
+
+William of Malmesbury wrote how the apparition affected the mind of
+a fellow monk of his monastery in England. His words were: “Soon
+after the death of Henry, King of France, by poison, a wonderful star
+appeared trailing its long tail over the sky. Wherefore, a certain monk
+of our monastery, by name Elmir, bowed down with terror at the sight of
+the strange star, wisely exclaimed, ‘Thou art come back at last, thou
+that will cause so many mothers to weep; many years have I seen thee
+shine, but thou seemest to me more terrible now that thou foretellest
+the ruin of my country.’”
+
+Another old Norman chronicler, by way of defending the divine right
+of William of Normandy to invade England, wrote: “How a Starre with
+seven long Tayles appeared in the Skye. How the Learned sayd that newe
+Starres only shewed themselves when a Kingdom wanted a King, and how
+the sayd Starre was yclept a Comette.”
+
+William himself appealed to the Comet as his guiding star. It shone
+at its brightest during the Summer months while William was preparing
+his expedition at St. Valery. When the spirits of his followers failed
+them, William pointed to the blazing Comet and bid monks and priests
+who accompanied his expedition to preach stirring sermons on the
+“wonderful Sign from Heaven.”
+
+The trip across the English Channel, late in September, was lighted up
+by the Comet, and under its lustre the Norman invaders first pitched
+their camp at Pevensey.
+
+Once more, when William’s Norman followers quailed at the fierce work
+before them, William pointed to the Comet as a token of coming victory.
+
+A fortnight later, directly after the disappearance of the Comet, the
+Battle of Hastings was fought, in which King Harold and his Saxon
+thanes lost their lives and their country.
+
+Afterwards, when Queen Matilda and her court ladies embroidered the
+pictorial story of her husband’s Conquest of England in the huge
+tapestry of Bayeux, they did not forget the Comet. They represented
+Harold cowering in alarm on his throne, whilst his people are huddled
+together, pointing with their fingers at the fearful omen in the sky,
+the birds even being upset at the sight. The Latin legend over the
+picture “Isti Mirant Stella” (they marvel at the star), makes it all
+plain.
+
+As I. C. Bruce, the editor of “The Bayeux Tapestry Elucidated,” has
+said: “This embroidery is remarkable for furnishing us with the
+earliest human representation we have of a Comet.”
+
+The Comet of 1066 will ever be famous for ushering in a new era for
+England. Even to-day Halley’s Comet is remembered as “The Comet of the
+Conquest.”
+
+[Illustration: WILLIAM THE CONQUEROR. (An English Dream.)
+
+Halley’s Comet appeared in 1066—When William the Conqueror took
+England. Halley’s Comet is here to-day.—Kladderadatsch (Berlin).]
+
+
+989
+
+The appearance of the Comet this year was marked by bloody wars all
+over Europe. The Lombards under Otho were harrying the ancient Roman
+Empire, while the heathen Danes and Wends ravaged Germany.
+
+
+912
+
+The Comet appeared early in the year and was seen over Germany, as
+noted in the chronicles of the monks of St. Gallus in Switzerland.
+Immediately after the appearance of the Comet, Germany was ravaged by
+war, both inside and outside, the Empire being invaded on all sides by
+the Danes in the North, the Slavs in the Northeast, and the Magyars
+from Hungary.
+
+
+837
+
+The Chinese Astronomers record two Comets for this year, one in
+February, and the other in April. But the modern view is that this was
+the same Comet, as seen going to the Sun, and afterward, when it was
+coming away from the Sun.
+
+Immediately after the appearance of the Comet there followed a
+widespread rebellion in China with much bloodshed and fierce reprisals.
+
+The only Christian record of the Comet we have is that of Eginard, an
+astrologer employed at the Court of Louis the Debonair, in France. This
+is Eginard’s account of the Comet: “In the midst of the holy festival
+of Easter there shone forth in our sky a sign always ominous and of
+sad foreboding. As soon as the Emperor—who was in the habit of gazing
+up into the sky at night—first saw the Comet, he had me called before
+him, together with another learned star gazer. As soon as I came
+before him he asked me what I thought of the sign in heaven.”
+
+“‘Let me have but a little time,’ I asked of him, ‘that I may study
+this sign and see the exact constellation of the other stars around
+it, thus to gather from the stars the true meaning of this portent,’
+promising him that I would tell him on the morrow of the results of my
+studies.
+
+“But the Emperor, guessing that I was trying to gain time—as was
+indeed the truth, lest I be driven to tell him something unlucky and
+fatal to him—he said to me:
+
+“‘Go up on the terrace of the palace and look. Then come back at once
+and tell me what thou hast seen! For I did not see this star last
+night; nor didst thou point it out to me; but I know that sign in
+heaven is a Comet. Thou must tell me true what it forebodes to me!’
+
+“Then, before I could say anything, he said: ‘There is another thing
+thou art hiding from me. It is that changes in Kingdoms and the deaths
+of rulers are foretold by this sign.’
+
+“To soothe him I reminded the Emperor of the words of the Prophet
+Isaiah, who said: ‘Fear not signs in the Heaven, like unto the Heathen.’
+
+“But the Emperor smiled sadly and said: ‘We should believe only in God
+on High, who has created us and also all Stars in Heaven. Since He has
+sent this Star, and since this unlooked for Sign may be meant for us,
+let us look upon it as a warning from Heaven.’”
+
+Thereupon Louis the Debonair betook himself to fasting, prayers, and
+the building of churches and shrines, he and all his Court. Shortly
+thereafter he died.
+
+The French chronicler, Raoul Glaber, afterward wrote in his chronicle:
+“Comets never show themselves to man without foreboding surely some
+coming event, marvellous or terrible.”
+
+
+760
+
+A Comet appeared in the Spring of this year, which without any doubt
+whatever was Halley’s. It was recorded in detail both by European and
+Chinese annalists, and its orbit has been calculated and identified by
+Laugier.
+
+A Greek record of Constantinople tells how “a Comet like a great beam”
+and very brilliant was observed in the twentieth year of Emperor
+Constantine V., surnamed Copronymus, first in the East and then in the
+West, for about thirty days. Its appearance was followed next Winter
+by a biting frost throughout the Orient, which endured 150 days, from
+October until February, blighting all crops in Egypt and elsewhere in
+the Eastern Empire.
+
+
+684
+
+Chinese annals record a Comet observed in the West in September and
+October. This accords with the computed time for the course of Halley’s
+Comet that year. Immediately after the Comet’s appearance, China and
+the Far East were ravaged by the black plague. Millions died of it.
+Baeda the Venerable, in his “Chronicle of the English People,” records
+that the plague also reached England.
+
+
+607
+
+All Europe and the former Roman Empire were in such dire confusion
+during this period that no records of this year, either astronomic
+or historical, have come down to us. Messrs. Cowell and Crommelin,
+however, have computed astronomically that the Comet must have appeared
+during this year. All we know is that Italy and the Latin World were
+overrun by ravaging Slavonian hordes from Hungary, who made all the
+country run with blood.
+
+
+530
+
+Of the Comet this year, likewise, there is no astronomic record. All we
+know is that the appearance of a Comet is noted in European chronicles.
+It was followed by a virulent outbreak of the black plague.
+
+In the legendary history of Merlin, the ancient British seer, it is
+stated that on the appearance of a Comet this year he prophesied that
+Uter, brother of Ambrosius, on the death of the latter, should rule the
+kingdom; that a ray from the Comet which pointed toward Gaul presaged
+a son who should be born to him and who should be great in power; and
+that the ray “that goes toward Ireland represents a daughter, of whom
+thou shalt be the father, and her sons and grandsons shall reign over
+all the Britons.” These prophecies all came true.
+
+
+451
+
+The Comet which appeared over Europe this year has been proven by
+Laugier to have been Halley’s Comet.
+
+It was seen in France just before the monster battle on the Catalaunian
+Fields (Châlons-sur-Marne), when Aetius, the last of the Romans,
+together with King Theoderic and his Goths, stemmed the tide of Hunnish
+invasion led by Attila, the “Scourge of God.”
+
+Theoderic, together with 148,000 warriors on both sides, were slain in
+this tremendous fight, which alone saved Europe from Tartar savagery.
+
+
+373
+
+Chinese annals of this year record a Comet seen in the northern
+constellation of Ophiuchus in October. This year marks the beginning
+of the tremendous migration of peoples, which started in Mongolia and
+Tartary, and crossing the Volga gradually overflowed all the known
+world, like a huge human deluge.
+
+
+295
+
+The appearance of a Comet this year (identified by Hind with Halley’s)
+was followed by a bloody rebellion of the ancient Britons against the
+Romans, and by another rebellion against Rome by the Egyptians. These
+patriotic uprisings of the people were suppressed with fire and sword
+and both countries ran with blood.
+
+
+218
+
+The Chinese catalogue of Ma-tuan-lin records a Comet with a path
+exactly analogous with the orbit of Halley’s Comet computed for that
+year by Hind. In the Chinese record the Comet is described as “pointed
+and bright.” Its coming was connected with the death of Emperor Ween-te
+directly afterward, and the Civil Wars between various claimants to the
+throne of the Celestial Empire, which then rent China asunder.
+
+Dion Cassius, the Roman historian, describes the Comet of this year as
+“a very fearful star with a tail stretching from the West towards the
+East.”
+
+The Roman augurs explained the Comet as a portent of the bloody death
+of Emperor Macrinus of Rome, who was murdered by his own soldiers on
+the night after the disappearance of the Comet.
+
+
+141
+
+In this year the Chinese astronomers recorded a Comet in March and
+April (the time computed for Halley’s Comet), which they described as
+“a star six or seven cubits long and of a bluish-white colour.” The
+coming of the Comet was followed by a virulent outbreak of the plague
+in China and the Far East, which spread all over the known world. So
+virulent was this pestilence that in the City of Naples alone 400,000
+people died of the disease.
+
+
+65-66
+
+Halley’s Comet, according to astronomic calculations, must have made
+its reappearance during the winter months of 65-66 A. D. The Chinese
+have recorded “two Comets,” one in 65, which was seen for fifty-six
+days, and “the other” in February, 66, which remained visible fifty
+days.
+
+This was the Comet which St. Peter and Josephus saw over the City of
+Jerusalem, before the fall of the Holy City. Josephus wrote of it:
+“Amongst other warnings, a Comet, of the kind called Xiphias, because
+their tails appear to represent the blade of a sword, was seen above
+the doomed city for the space of nearly a whole year.”
+
+Jerusalem was ravaged by pestilence and famine and soon afterward was
+stormed by the Roman soldiery led by Titus. The Temple was burned down
+and the streets of the Holy City ran with blood. It was the end of
+Jerusalem and of the Jews as a free city and people.
+
+
+B. C. 11
+
+This is the farthest back that the appearances of Halley’s Comet
+have been traced in history. For earlier appearances there are no
+sufficiently trustworthy computations or records.
+
+Dion Cassius in his “History of Rome” has recorded “a Comet which hung
+suspended over the City of Rome just before the death of Agrippa,” who
+ruled over the Roman Empire during the absence of Augustus in Greece
+and Asia. Agrippa was so universally beloved, and his death was held to
+be such a loss to Rome that he was buried with imperial honours in the
+tomb intended for Augustus.
+
+The death of Agrippa occurred in the year 12, shortly after the
+disappearance of the Comet which Hind has identified with Halley’s.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+This completes the record of all the known appearances of Halley’s
+Comet. The record fully justifies Chambers’ dictum, that the “Comet
+known as Halley’s is by far the most interesting of all the Comets
+recorded in history.”
+
+This historic record also appears to justify in no small measure the
+popular beliefs of the last two thousand years concerning Comets, as
+expressed by Leonard Digges in his book on Prognostics, published 350
+years ago:
+
+    “Cometes signifie corruption of the ayre. They are
+     signs of earthquakes, of warres, of changying of
+     Kyngdomes, great dearth of food, yea a common death
+     of man and beast from pestilence.”
+
+
+
+
+THE STORY OF EDMUND HALLEY
+
+
+The great French astronomer Lalande considered Halley the greatest
+astronomer of his time. This opinion is still held. Halley’s “time”
+means the age of Kepler, Sir Isaac Newton, Flamsteed, Hevelius, and
+Leibnitz, all of whom achieved first rank in Astronomy.
+
+Halley’s greatest achievement in Astronomy was the discovery that our
+solar system was but an atom in immeasurable space whence wandering
+stars could be caught within the influence of our Sun, our Earth and
+the other Planets swinging around our Sun.
+
+Halley was the first to discover and to prove that the Comets that come
+within the vision of man have fixed periods of return. He made this
+discovery during the appearance of the great Comet of 1682, which has
+since been known by his name.
+
+In his studies of the motions of Comets, of which Halley computed the
+orbits of twenty-four, he observed that a Comet of similar phenomena,
+recorded by Appian in 1531 and by Kepler in 1607, had swung through the
+same orbit as the Comet under his observation in 1682. Halley surmised
+from this that these Comets might be one and the same, whose intervals
+of return appeared to cover a period of seventy-five or seventy-six
+years. Halley’s surmise seemed to be confirmed by the recorded
+appearance of similar bright Comets in the years 1456, 1378, and 1301,
+the intervals again being seventy-five or seventy-six years.
+
+Halley was deeply imbued with Newton’s new discovery of gravitation,
+for the publication of which Halley paid the expenses, so he brought
+the principles of Newton’s theory of gravitation to bear on his own new
+theory of the motions of Comets. He rightly conjectured that Comets
+were drawn to our Sun across the disturbing orbits of our planetary
+system, and that the comparatively small differences of one or two
+years in the recorded intervals of this one Comet (Halley’s Comet) were
+due to the attraction of the larger planets.
+
+During the previous year, 1681, Halley computed that the Comet had
+passed near the planet Jupiter, the attraction of which must have had a
+considerable influence on the Comet’s motion. Making due allowance for
+this disturbing influence of Jupiter, he computed that the Comet would
+return to the vicinity of our Sun about the end of 1758 or beginning of
+1759.
+
+Halley did not live to see his prediction fulfilled (he died in 1742),
+but he wrote shortly before he died: “If this Comet should return
+according to our predictions about the year 1758, impartial posterity
+will not refuse to acknowledge that this was first discovered by an
+Englishman.”
+
+All through the year 1758 the most noted astronomers of Europe were
+on the lookout for the return of the predicted Comet. One of these
+astronomers, Messier, looked for it through his telescope at the Paris
+Observatory every night from sunset to sunrise throughout that whole
+year. On Christmas night, 1758, the Comet was first seen by a German
+peasant near Dresden, who had heard about the Comet and was looking
+for it. He was a man of unusually good eyesight, yet his discovery was
+doubted until Messier, nearly a month afterward, at Paris, “picked up”
+the Comet with his telescope.
+
+From that time forth this Comet, which returned in 1835, and is
+reappearing in this year (1910), has been known as Halley’s Comet.
+
+[Illustration: EDMUND HALLEY.]
+
+Besides this achievement, Halley accomplished many other noteworthy
+feats in astronomy, such as his discovery of the proper motions of the
+fixed stars; his detection of the “long inequality” of Jupiter and
+Saturn, and of the acceleration of the moon’s mean motion; his theory
+of variation, including the hypothesis of various magnetic poles, with
+his suggestion of the magnetic origin of the aurora borealis; and his
+indication of a method still used for determining the solar parallax by
+means of the transits of Venus.
+
+On the strength of these achievements, Halley for many years was
+elected to serve as secretary to the Royal Society. Commissioned as a
+Captain in the Royal Navy, he also commanded a vessel on a long cruise
+of exploration, and late in life he was made Astronomer Royal.
+
+Although in his sixty-fourth year, he then undertook to observe the
+moon through an entire revolution of her nodes (eighteen years), and
+actually carried out his purpose. To appreciate the full significance
+of so painstaking an achievement it should be borne in mind that
+astronomical observations must be made in a temperature equal to that
+of the open air. Observatories cannot be heated because the heat would
+impair the accuracy of the instruments.
+
+Great astronomers, like poets, are born, not made. Edmund Halley was
+one of these. At the age of seventeen he had already observed the
+change in the variations of the compass. At nineteen he was recognized
+as an astronomer of reputation, having supplied a new and improved
+method of determining the elements of the planetary orbits. His
+detection of considerable errors in the tables then in use led him to
+the conclusion that a more accurate determination of the places of the
+fixed Stars was indispensable to the progress of astronomy. With this
+end in view he set out on a voyage to the other side of the globe, St.
+Helena, where he undertook the task of making complete new observations
+of the entire Southern Hemisphere. Though the Heavens proved clouded
+he succeeded within two years in registering three hundred and sixty
+stars, a colossal achievement which won for him the title of the
+“Southern Tycho.” This was when Halley was barely of age.
+
+(The famous astronomer Tycho Brahe, long before this had won his fame
+by mapping the stars of the Northern Heavens.)
+
+No one could well have begun with prospects more remote from so high a
+career, for Edmund Halley was born in 1656, the son of a soap boiler
+in a shabby London suburb. From the refuse of rancid fat and lye the
+boy was rescued by friends, who procured for him a scholarship at Saint
+Paul’s school. By his brilliant attainments in mathematics he won
+another scholarship to Oxford University.
+
+While at Oxford the youth published a treatise on the planetary orbits
+and argued the Sun’s axial rotation.
+
+On his graduation from Oxford, the young would-be astronomer conceived
+the project of turning his attention to the southern Stars, of which
+no good observations had been made. Shortly before this time a Dutch
+astronomer, named Houtman, had observed these Stars in the island of
+Sumatra; and Blaeu, the best globe maker of the age, had used these
+new observations in the correction of his celestial globes. Halley, on
+examining these corrections, came to the conclusion that he himself
+could do better. He also concluded that the Island of St. Helena might
+be a better point for southern observations. His father, unable to pay
+the expenses of so long a trip, broached the project to some friends.
+The young astronomer was recommended to King Charles II. by Williamson
+and Jones Moore, and the King in turn recommended the youth to the
+Indian Company, which then had control over the island of St. Helena.
+
+After this all was plain sailing. The India Company placed a ship
+at his disposition and promised him all the assistance he required.
+Young Halley provided himself with telescopes, and micrometers, and
+other instruments of the latest approved pattern. In November, 1666,
+at the age of twenty, he sailed for St. Helena. Among his luggage was
+a sextant of five and a half feet and a telescope twenty-four feet in
+length constructed under the supervision of Flamsteed, the Astronomer
+Royal.
+
+Halley was disappointed in the climate of St. Helena. Frequent rains
+and a constantly hazy sky scarcely permitted any observations in the
+months of August and September. Notwithstanding these difficulties, he
+succeeded in observing and cataloguing some 360 Stars.
+
+In addition to his work on the Stars, Halley made some investigations
+on the Moon’s parallax, combining his observations at St. Helena
+with those made in northern skies. He also evolved a new theory of
+the Moon’s motion, which proved of great aid in the determination of
+longitudes.
+
+On November 7, 1677, Halley observed a transit of Mercury which
+suggested to him the important idea of employing similar phenomena for
+the calculation of the Sun’s distance.
+
+Halley returned to England in November, 1678, and was hailed by his
+fellow astronomers as the “Southern Tycho.” He was elected a fellow of
+the Royal Society, and by the King’s command the degree of Master of
+Arts was conferred upon him by the University of Oxford.
+
+Six months later Halley set out for Dantsic for a personal conference
+with Hevelius, the Polish astronomer. Halley wanted to satisfy himself
+as to the accuracy of observations claimed by Hevelius without the
+aid of a telescope. Halley convinced himself that the errors of the
+observations made by Hevelius were less than had been supposed, and did
+not exceed a minute of an arc. The two became life-long friends. Halley
+proceeded to other cities of Europe where there were observatories. In
+Paris he observed with Cassini the great Comet of 1680. This was the
+beginning of Halley’s special study of Comets.
+
+Returning to England, the young astronomer married the daughter of
+Mr. Tooke, auditor of the Exchequer, with whom he lived harmoniously
+until her death, fifty-five years later. The young couple settled at
+Islington, where Halley erected an observatory of his own and engaged
+in constant lunar observations with a view toward finding a method for
+computing longitudes at sea.
+
+Halley’s mind at the same time was busy with the momentous problem of
+gravity, upon which Isaac Newton was working then. Independently of
+Newton, Halley reached the conclusion that the central force of the
+Solar System must decrease inversely as the square of the distance.
+Having applied vainly to his fellow astronomers, Hooke and Wren, Halley
+in August, 1684, made a special journey to Cambridge to consult Isaac
+Newton, who confirmed his conjectures.
+
+Halley and Newton became life-long friends. Halley had Newton elected
+to the Royal Society, and when Newton became too poor to pay his
+quarterly dues, Halley, through his influence with the leading members
+of the Society, had them remitted. It was Halley who encouraged Newton
+to put his momentous discovery and elucidation of the forces of gravity
+into permanent form in his “Principia,” the first volume of which, “De
+Motu,” was presented to the Royal Society at Halley’s suggestion.
+
+In the proceedings of the Royal Society for December, 1684, there is an
+entry that “Mr. Halley had lately seen Mr. Newton at Cambridge, who had
+told him of a curious treatise ‘De Motu,’ which at Mr. Halley’s desire
+he promised to send to the Society to be entered upon their register.
+Mr. Halley was desired to put Mr. Newton in mind of his promise for the
+securing this invention to himself, till such time as he could be at
+leisure to publish it.”
+
+Early in the following year Newton sent his treatise to the Society, to
+whom it was read aloud by Halley. This treatise “De Motu” was the germ
+of the “Principia” and was intended to be a short account of what the
+greater work was to embrace.
+
+During the next two years Newton was hard at work on his “Principia,”
+while Halley was equally hard at work on his computations of the Comet
+of 1682, and on his theory of the orbits and the periodical returns of
+Comets which grew out of his observations.
+
+On April 21, 1686, Halley read to the Royal Society his own “Discourse
+Concerning Gravity and its Properties,” in which he stated that his
+“worthy countryman, Mr. Issac Newton, has an incomparable treatise on
+Motion almost ready for the press,” and that the law of the inverse
+square “is the principle on which Mr. Newton has made out all the
+phenomena of the celestial motions so easily and naturally that its
+truth is past dispute.”
+
+Shortly afterward Newton sent in the manuscript of his great work. The
+Society voted “that a letter of thanks be written to Mr. Newton and
+that the printing of his book be referred to the consideration of the
+council and that in the meantime the book be put into the hands of Mr.
+Halley.”
+
+The truth was that the Royal Society, at that time, did not have money
+enough to print the book. The Society went through the empty form of
+“ordering” that the book be printed “forthwith,” but no printer was
+forthcoming until Halley himself undertook the publication of the great
+work at his own expense.
+
+The delicacy of Halley’s feeling is revealed by his correspondence with
+Newton, in which he informed Newton that the book had “been ordered
+to be printed at the Society’s charge.” The preliminary delay about
+printing he explained to Newton “arose from the President’s attendance
+on the King, and the absence of the vice-presidents, whom the good
+weather had drawn out of town.”
+
+Later Newton came to realize how much he owed to Halley in this matter.
+In his letters to Halley henceforth he always referred to his book
+as if it had been Halley’s book. When the great work was finished at
+last Newton wrote to Halley under the date of July 5, 1687: “I have at
+length brought your book to an end, and hope it will please you.”
+
+The finished work contained a note to this effect: “The inverse law
+of gravity holds in all the celestial motions, as was discovered also
+independently by my countrymen Wren, Hooke, and Halley.”
+
+The book was dedicated to the Royal Society, and to it was prefixed a
+set of Latin hexameters addressed by Halley to the author, ending with
+the well known line:
+
+    “Nec fac est propius mortali attingere divos.”
+
+    (“It is not given to a mortal to get in closer touch
+      with the gods.”)
+
+Halley was fifty years old when he made his famous prediction of
+the return of the Comet of 1682. This was in his “Synopsis of Comet
+Astronomy,” which ended with these words: “Hence I may venture to
+foretell that this Comet will return again in the year 1758.”
+
+Besides being an astronomer of the first class, Halley was also a good
+navigator. In 1698 he was commissioned a captain in the Royal Navy
+and was put in command of the King’s ship, “The Paramour Pink.” With
+this vessel he set out on a long cruise to the Pacific for the purpose
+of making observations on the laws which govern magnetic variations.
+This task he accomplished in a voyage which lasted two years and
+extended to the fifty-second degree of southern latitude, when the ice
+compelled him to turn back. On the return voyage his crew mutinied and
+his lieutenant sided with the mutineers. Halley quelled the mutiny by
+sheer force of personality, and returning to England got rid of his
+lieutenant. The results of his voyage were published in his “General
+Chart of the Variation of the Compass” in 1701. Immediately afterwards
+Halley set out on another King’s ship and executed by royal command
+a careful survey of the tides and coasts of the British Channel, an
+elaborate chart of which he published in 1702.
+
+Next Halley was sent by the King to Dalmatia, for the purpose of
+selecting and fortifying the port of Trieste.
+
+On Halley’s return to England, he was made Savilian professor of
+geometry at Oxford, and received an honorary doctor’s degree. He
+filled two terms of eight years each as secretary to the Royal
+Society, and early in 1720 he succeeded Flamsteed as Astronomer Royal.
+
+He died on January 14, 1742, at the age of eighty-five in the full
+possession of his faculties, the foremost astronomer of the day and a
+man universally beloved and respected. His gravestone stands at the
+Greenwich Observatory.
+
+Halley’s works fill several shelves in the library of the Royal
+Society. His fame is kept green by the periodical return of the
+wandering star known by his name.
+
+
+
+
+WHAT ARE COMETS?
+
+
+The modern answer to the question “What are Comets made of?” is this:
+
+Probably the heads are a mixture of solid and gaseous matter. The tails
+are gaseous—the result of the volatilisation of the solid matter of
+the heads.
+
+The spectroscope shows that gases appear to be a constituent of all
+Comets. The spectra of Comets are very similar to those of a Bunsen
+flame. Recent spectroscopic photographs have revealed the presence of
+hydrocarbons, nitro-carbons, of cyanogen and of the vapours of sodium,
+iron and other metals.
+
+The connection between Comets and Meteors implies the presence in
+Comets of solid matter. A modern theory, voiced by Schiaparelli, is
+that meteor showers are broken up Comets.
+
+The tails of Comets appear to be composed of luminous gases ejected
+from the head of the Comet through a solar force held to be “Light
+Pressure,” which causes these tails to shoot off and disperse into
+space at the rate of 865,000 miles an hour.
+
+The length of some Comets’ tails has been estimated at 125,000,000
+miles, while the Comets’ heads themselves are generally much larger in
+size than our Earth. Halley’s Comet is more than ten-fold the size of
+our Earth.
+
+E. W. Maunder, of the Royal Observatory of Greenwich, a modern
+astronomer, has thus summarized the latest theories of the substance of
+Comets:
+
+“Though the bulk of comets is huge, they contain extraordinarily
+little substance. Their heads must contain some solid matter, but it
+is probably in the form of a loose aggregation of stones enveloped in
+vaporous material. There is some reason to suppose that Comets are apt
+to shed some of these stones as they travel along their paths, for the
+orbits of the meteors that cause some of our greatest ‘star showers’
+are coincident with the paths of Comets that have been observed. But it
+is not only by shedding its loose stones that a Comet diminishes its
+bulk; it loses also through its tail. As the Comet gets close to the
+Sun its head becomes heated, and throws off concentric envelopes, much
+of which consists of matter in an extremely fine station of division.”
+
+The orbits of Comets visible to human eyes are all governed by the Sun.
+In the words of C. L. Poor: “The attraction of the Sun is to the Comet
+like the flame to the moth. The Comet flutters for a moment about the
+Sun, and then swings back into outward space. But not unscathed; like
+the moth, the Comet has been singed. The fierce light of the Sun has
+beaten upon it, and spread out its particles and scattered them along
+its path.”
+
+As a comet swings toward and away from the Sun, it travels at a
+tremendous rate of speed—over a million miles an hour. The distance
+covered from one end of the orbit to the other is 3,370,000,000 miles.
+
+The great majority of Comets appear to travel in parabolas, open curves
+leading from infinite space to and around the Sun, and thence back into
+infinite space to some other fixed star invisible to us. As a matter
+of fact, though, the parabolic curves of Comets’ orbits through the
+gravitational attraction of the planets, whose orbits are crossed by
+it, may be changed into hyperbolic curves and ellipses by planetary
+perturbations. Hence the differences in time between the returns of
+certain Comets, like Halley’s, for instance.
+
+[Illustration: RELATIVE SIZES OF THE EARTH, THE MOON’S ORBIT AND
+HALLEY’S COMET.]
+
+[Illustration: ORBIT OF HALLEY’S COMET. THE TAIL ALWAYS POINTS AWAY
+FROM THE SUN.]
+
+In a general way, it may be said that every Comet comprises a nucleus,
+an envelope (called the “coma”) surrounding the nucleus and measuring
+from 20,000 to 1,000,000 miles in diameter, and a long tail which
+streams behind the nucleus from sixty to a hundred million miles or
+more.
+
+Astronomers have decided that the nucleus is probably a heap of
+meteorites varying in size from a grain to masses weighing several
+tons each; a heap, moreover, so easily sundered that its elements are
+distributed gradually along the orbit. It follows that every Comet must
+eventually perish unless it restores its nucleus by collecting stray
+meteors. That disintegration does occur has been observed time and time
+again.
+
+For example, Biela’s Comet, which was discovered in 1826, burst into
+two fragments, which drifted apart a distance of one million miles.
+Thus it became a twin Comet. Eventually it disappeared as a Comet, and
+in its stead we see a shoal of meteors whenever we cross its track
+every six and a half years.
+
+It is possible that the Comets of 1668, 1843, 1880, 1882 and 1887, all
+travelling in approximately the same path, are fragments of a single
+large body which was broken up by the gravitational action of other
+bodies in the system, or through violent encounter with the Sun’s
+surroundings.
+
+The luminous tail which streams behind the nucleus, which Shakespeare
+described so beautifully as “crystal tresses,” is startling, to say the
+least. Despite a length which may exceed a hundred million miles, it
+is so diaphanously light and subtle that it is difficult to compare it
+with any earthly fabric. The air that we breathe is a dense blanket in
+comparison. Several hundred cubic miles of the matter composing that
+wonderful luminous plume would not outweigh a jarful of air. By reason
+of its fairy lightness, it is possible for a tail occupying a volume
+thousands of times greater than the sun to sweep through our solar
+system without causing any perturbations in planetary movements.
+
+No celestial phenomenon has caused more perplexity than the ghostly
+sheaf of light we call a Comet’s tail. In a day, in a few hours even,
+the form of that wonderful gossamer may change. Hence it is that
+periodic Comets are identified when they return, not by the length and
+arch of their tails, but by their orbits. These alone are permanent.
+
+When a Comet is first seen in the telescope, it appears as a diminutive
+filmy patch, often unadorned by any tail. As it travels on toward the
+Sun, at a speed compared with which a modern rifle bullet would seem to
+crawl, violent eruptions occur in the nucleus.
+
+The ejected matter is bent back to form the cloak called the “coma.”
+With a nearer approach to the sun, the tail begins to sprout,
+increasing in size and brightness as it proceeds. Evidently there is
+some connection between the Sun and the tail, something akin to cause
+and effect.
+
+When the Comet rushes on toward the Sun, invariably the tail drifts
+behind the nucleus like the smoke from a locomotive. But when the Comet
+swings around the Sun and travels away from it, a startling change
+takes place. The tail no longer trails behind, but projects in front as
+if some mighty solar wind were blowing it in advance of the head.
+
+This phenomenon has long been an astronomical riddle. Here was a kind
+of matter that refused to obey the laws of gravitation and yield to the
+enormous pull of the Sun.
+
+[Illustration: OCTOBER 5. OCTOBER 9. DONATI’S COMET OF 1858.]
+
+It was thought for a time that the tail was flung away from the Sun by
+stupendous repelling electrical forces. That electricity plays its part
+in the formation of the fairy plume is conceivable, and even probable;
+but recently the physicist has discovered a new source of repellent
+energy which very plausibly explains the mystery of a Comet’s tail.
+
+This new source of energy is nothing less than the pressure or push of
+the Sun’s light. Solar gravitation is a force more powerful than we can
+realize. If it were possible for us to live on the Sun, we would find
+ourselves pulled down so violently that our body would weigh two tons.
+Our clothing alone would weigh more than one hundred pounds. Running
+would be a very difficult athletic feat. Light-pressure must indeed be
+powerful if it can conquer so relentless a force.
+
+Because we have never seen objects torn from our hands by the pressure
+of light, it may be inferred that this newly discovered force affects
+only bodies that are invisibly small. With the aid of instruments that
+feel what our hands can never feel and see what our eyes can never see,
+the modern physicist has critically analyzed the radiation that beats
+upon the earth from the distant Sun.
+
+Light really does sway infinitely small particles, as was first
+experimentally proved by the Russian Lebedev. Two American astronomers,
+Nichols and Hull, improved upon his method. They cast the solar
+effulgence into mighty mathematical scales and found that the earth
+sustains a light-load of no less than 75,000 tons.
+
+Most city-bred people are familiar with the so-called “Sun
+Motors”—little mills with black and white wings, enclosed in airtight
+vessels, which spin around in “perpetual motion” under the effect of
+“Sun Pressure.”
+
+It remained for the broad mind of a Swedish physicist, Svante
+Arrhenius, to apply the principle of light-pressure cosmically. He
+explained, very simply, that because a Comet’s tail is composed of a
+very fine dust it can easily be driven away from the Sun by radiation
+pressure.
+
+To understand how it is possible for so immaterial a thing as a sunbeam
+to produce so huge an effect, we have only to take a very simple
+example.
+
+Assume that you have before you a block of wood weighing one pound. The
+block exposes a certain amount of surface to the Sun’s light. Saw the
+block in half, and you increase the amount of that surface. Divide each
+half again into half, and the exposed surface is further augmented. If
+this process of subdivision is carried on far enough, the block will be
+reduced to sawdust.
+
+The entire mass of sawdust still weighs one pound; but its surface has
+been vastly enlarged. Indeed, the particles of sawdust, individually
+considered, may be said to consist of much surface and very little
+weight. If it were possible to take each granule of visible sawdust
+and subdivide it into invisible particles, a point would be reached
+where the pressure of light would exactly counterbalance the pull of
+gravitation, so that the particles would remain suspended in space,
+perfectly balanced in the scale of opposing cosmic forces.
+
+Finally, if the subdivision be continued beyond this critical point,
+the particles will be wrenched away from the grip of gravitation and
+hurled out into space by the pressure of light.
+
+So much has been discovered about the particles that compose a Comet’s
+tail that the more progressive scientists of our day have accepted this
+ingenious theory. Thus it has been decided by them that the delicate
+tresses of a Comet are to a large extent composed of fine particles of
+dust and soot.
+
+[Illustration: June 26.]
+
+[Illustration: June 28.]
+
+[Illustration: June 30.]
+
+[Illustration: July 1.]
+
+[Illustration: July 6.]
+
+[Illustration: July 8. CHANGES IN THE COMET OF 1863.]
+
+Before we can completely accept the view that light-pressure forms
+this train of soot we must ascertain whether the pressure of light is
+capable of accounting for the flash-like rapidity with which a Comet’s
+tail changes.
+
+A Comet may throw out a tail sixty million miles long in two days. Is
+it actually possible for light-pressure to accomplish that astonishing
+feat? Arrhenius has computed that 865,000 miles an hour is the speed
+of a light-flung particle of one-half the critical diameter. Because
+they are only one-eighteenth as large as this particle of critical
+diameter, the dust grains in a Comet’s tail would be propelled over the
+same 865,000 miles in less than four minutes. It follows that the solar
+radiation is amply strong enough to toss out a tail of sixty million
+miles in two days.
+
+Photography in the hands of Prof. E. E. Barnard, of the Yerkes
+Observatory, has revealed some extraordinary changes in Comets’ tails,
+changes which are not apparent to the eye and which cannot be explained
+by light-pressure or by solar electrical forces. He has collected a
+formidable mass of photographic evidence which seems to show that
+there are other influences at work besides the Sun’s radiation, and
+that these influences manifest themselves in distorting and breaking a
+Comet’s tail. In some Comets of recent years, streams of matter have
+been shot out in large angles to the main direction of the tail without
+being at all bent by the pressure of light. In Morehouse’s Comet of
+1908, tails were repeatedly formed and discarded to drift bodily out
+into space and melt away. Sometimes the photographic plate has shown
+the tail twisted like a corkscrew and sometimes it has revealed masses
+of matter at some distance from the head, where apparently no supply
+had reached it. At one time the entire tail of Morehouse’s Comet was
+thrown violently forward, a peculiarity so utterly opposed to the laws
+of gravitation that Professor Barnard suspects some unknown force at
+work in planetary space besides a force which undoubtedly resides
+in the Comet itself. If Halley’s Comet serves no other purpose than
+to throw light upon this mystery, its return will more than repay
+astronomers for all their observatory vigils.
+
+From the fact that the matter is ejected from the head to form the
+tail, it would follow that, unless it has the means of rejuvenating
+itself, a comet must eventually be disintegrated. Instances of this
+fragmentation and, eventual disappearance of a Comet are not wanting in
+astronomical annals. It has been stated previously that when Biela’s
+Comet appeared in 1846 it became distorted and elongated, that it
+eventually split up into two separate bodies, that in 1852 it again
+appeared in its double form, and that it has since disappeared.
+
+In a way, Comets may be said to bleed to death. At each return of
+Halley’s Comet, future astronomers will find it less brilliant than it
+was seventy-six or seventy-seven years before. Some time there will
+be no Halley’s Comet left, and the most famous Comet of its kind will
+be reduced to a shoal of meteors varying in weight from a few ounces
+to several tons and faithfully pursuing the orbit which their parent
+traced and retraced century after century.
+
+[Illustration: COGGIA’S COMET, 1874: ON JULY 13.]
+
+
+
+
+THE PERIL OF THE COMET
+
+
+It was Edmund Halley who first revealed a source of danger from Comets,
+of which even medieval superstition had never dreamed.
+
+While he was patiently plotting out the orbit of the Comet of 1680,
+which had inspired no little dismay among his contemporaries, Halley
+found that the Earth’s orbit had been approached by the Comet within
+four thousand miles—half the diameter of the Earth.
+
+If the Earth had been struck by that fiery wanderer?
+
+None had ever thought of the possibility.
+
+Halley began to do some mathematical figuring, and decided that, if a
+Comet’s mass were comparable with that of the Earth, our year would
+have been changed in length because the Earth’s orbit would have been
+altered. He also speculated what would happen to the Earth, and reached
+this conclusion:
+
+    “If so large a body with so rapid a motion were to
+     strike the Earth—a thing by no means impossible—the
+     shock might reduce this beautiful world to its
+     original chaos.”
+
+Halley even thought it probable that the Earth had actually been struck
+by a Comet at some remote period, struck obliquely, moreover, so that
+the axis of rotation had been changed. Thus he was led to infer that
+possibly the North Pole had once been at a point near Hudson’s Bay, and
+that the rigour of North America’s climate might thus be accounted for.
+
+The seed which was thus sown by Halley has borne fruit. In Halley’s
+own time, learned men were brooding over the ultimate destruction of
+the Earth by collision with a Comet.
+
+Dr. Whiston, who succeeded Newton at Cambridge in the Lucasian chair of
+mathematics, was sure that a Comet caused the Deluge, and went so far
+as to prophesy that a Comet, as it passed us on its outward course from
+the Sun, would ultimately bring about a “General Conflagration,” and
+thus envelope the Earth in flames.
+
+One century after Halley, the French astronomer Laplace, whose
+mathematical attainments were surpassed only by those of Newton,
+applied his brilliant mind to the possibility of a collision with a
+Comet, and arrived at this conclusion:
+
+    “The seas would abandon their ancient beds and rush
+     towards the new equator, drowning in one universal
+     deluge the greater part of the human race.... We see,
+     then, in effect, why the ocean has receded from the
+     high lands upon which we find incontestable marks of
+     its sojourn; we see how the animals and plants of the
+     south have been able to exist in the climate of the
+     north, where their remains and imprints have been
+     discovered.”
+
+The famous French mathematician Lalande showed that if a Comet as heavy
+as the Earth were to come within six times the distance of the Moon,
+it would exert such a powerful attraction upon the waters of the globe
+as to pull up a tidal wave 13,000 feet above the ordinary sea-level
+and inundate the continents Every European mountain would be submerged
+except Mt. Blanc, and only the inhabitants of the Rockies, the Andes
+and the Himalayas would escape death.
+
+Since Lalande’s day there has been more than one Comet “scare.” One of
+these startled Europe in 1832. On October 29th of that year, Biela’s
+Comet crossed the Earth’s orbit. The announcement was received with
+stupefaction. It was only when Arago soothingly pointed out that the
+Earth would not reach the exact point where the Comet had intersected
+the Earth’s orbit until November 30, at which time the Comet would be
+50,000,000 miles away, that the popular excitement subsided. A similar
+alarm seized the world in 1857. Some prophet declared that on June 13
+the world would collide with a certain periodic Comet having a period
+of revolution of three centuries. It is related that the churches
+and confessionals were crowded for days. Still another prediction,
+made in 1872 by Plantamour, the distinguished director of the Geneva
+Observatory, set Europe in a ferment. His calculations were based on
+errors, which were pointed out by other astronomers, and the public
+mind was quieted.
+
+Although more than two centuries have passed since Halley was in his
+prime, the possibility of a collision with some vagabond star still
+haunts the mind of the astronomer.
+
+That a collision is apt to occur is an admitted astronomic fact. The
+latest estimate, made in 1909 by Prof. William H. Pickering of Harvard
+University, would seem to prove that the core of one Comet in about
+100,000,000 Comets will hit the earth squarely. An encounter with some
+part of a Comet’s head will happen once in 4,000,000 years. Since
+Comets’ orbit are more thickly distributed near the ecliptic than else
+where in the celestial sphere, the collisions will occur according to
+Pickering, perhaps more frequently than this.
+
+Because Pickering’s figures differ from those other astronomers—Arago
+and Babinet, for instance—it must not be inferred that his
+predecessors are wrong and that he is right in his calculations. The
+problem is too complex for that. Pickering, Arago and Babinet differ
+partly because they have assumed different average sizes for their
+Comets, and partly because their definitions of visible Comets are not
+in accord.
+
+That the possibility is very real, we shall all have an opportunity of
+judging on May 18, 1910. On that date the Earth will be plunged in the
+tail of Halley’s Comet, and the head will be less than 15,000,000 miles
+away—a mere hand’s breadth in the vastness of the universe.
+
+What will happen?
+
+Nobody knows for certain.
+
+By means of the wonderful instrument called the spectroscope, an
+instrument which analyzes a distant star as readily as if it were a
+stone picked up in the road, it has been discovered that a Comet’s tail
+is composed of gases called “hydrocarbons” (combinations of hydrogen
+and carbon), and that it bears a close chemical resemblance to the blue
+flame of a kitchen gas-stove.
+
+Illuminating gas, as we all know, is poisonous. If a Comet’s tail were
+dense enough, it is conceivable, therefore, that every human being on
+this planet might be asphyxiated by breathing the Comet’s poisonous
+vapour as the Earth plowed through it. There is also this possibility,
+suggested by Flammarion, that the gases of a very dense tail might so
+combine with the nitrogen which constitutes nearly 80 per cent. of
+the air we breathe, that the atmosphere would be converted into the
+“laughing gas” employed by dentists. The world would die in a delirium
+of joy. At first a delightful serenity would settle upon mankind. Then
+would follow a contagious gaiety, febrile exaltation, a paroxysm of
+delight, and then madness. Flammarion even conceives the world merrily
+dancing a joyous, hysterical sarabande in which it perishes laughing.
+
+The tail of a Comet is fraught with still other possible dangers. Our
+atmosphere contains a certain amount of hydrogen, a marvellously light
+gas to which balloons owe their buoyancy. Besides its lightness, this
+gas is characterized by an extreme inflammability. The law of the
+diffusion of gases teaches us that part of this hydrogen in the air
+is mechanically mixed with other gases, and that part of it probably
+floats in the upper air, far beyond the reach of any balloon. A Comet
+may be regarded as a huge lighted torch whirling through space, which
+may be brought dangerously near that upper layer of highly inflammable
+hydrogen. If the gas shall ever be touched off by this flying torch,
+our planet will be ignited. The whole atmosphere will become a seething
+ocean of flame, in which forests and cities will burn like straw, in
+which oceans will boil away in vast clouds of steam, and in which all
+animal life will be snuffed out of existence before it shall realize
+that the world is on fire. In a word, the globe will become a planetary
+funeral pyre. Since water results from burning hydrogen in oxygen,
+this same fierce and terrible flame must be speedily extinguished by a
+mighty deluge which will engulf the Earth.
+
+A spectroscope analysis of Halley’s Comet has furthermore revealed
+the presence of cyanogen gas in the tail. Cyanogen is a compound of
+nitrogen and carbon, one of the most poisonous compounds with which the
+chemist is familiar. Prussic acid, potassium cyanide and many other
+cyanides, all of them almost instantaneously fatal if taken into the
+human system, are compounds of cyanogen. If that gas is present in
+large enough quantities, one flick of a Comet’s tail will end all human
+and animal existence.
+
+So much is certain. A collision of the Earth with a Comet will
+undoubtedly prove disastrous—how disastrous will depend largely on the
+size of the Comet’s head and on its speed. That a violent heat will
+be developed, we have every reason to believe, from our knowledge of
+meteors. The mere movement of a meteor through the thin upper layers of
+our atmosphere produces a dazzling trail and reduces the meteor itself
+to a molten metallic mass. Arrest a body in swift motion, and you must
+dissipate its energy in some way. As a rule, the energy is converted
+into heat. A bullet discharged from a rifle is often melted when
+suddenly stopped by steel armour. A Comet travels at a pace compared
+with which a projectile, fired from the most powerful twelve-inch gun,
+seems only to crawl. What, then, must be the frightful effect when it
+strikes the Earth?
+
+A Comet rushes through space not at the bullet’s rate of thousands of
+feet an hour, but of a million miles an hour. The bigger it is, and the
+faster it moves, the greater will be the heat developed by its stoppage.
+
+“At the first contact with the upper regions of the atmosphere,” writes
+Prof. Simon Newcomb, “the whole heavens would be illuminated with a
+resplendence beyond that of a thousand Suns, the sky radiating a light
+which would blind every eye that beheld it, and a heat which would melt
+the hardest rocks.” The same conclusion was reached by Prof. Faye.
+
+When the time comes for a collision with a Comet of formidable size,
+the human race will be in the horrible predicament of knowing the exact
+hour and minute of its doom. The newspapers will print a dispatch from
+some great observatory, reading perhaps like this:
+
+“A telescopic Comet was discovered by Caxton in right ascension 7 hours
+13 minutes 1 second, and declension 17 degrees 28 minutes 31 seconds.
+Moderate motion in a northwest direction.”
+
+[Illustration: “If so large a body with so rapid a motion were to
+strike the Earth—a thing by no means impossible—the shock would
+reduce this beautiful world to its original chaos.”—EDMUND HALLEY.]
+
+At first the discovery produces not even a ripple of excitement.
+Telescopic Comets are discovered too frequently. Three days later the
+discoverer has worked out an ephemeris, which gives the date when the
+body will pass around the Sun, and which indicates the Comet’s path. He
+finds that on a certain date and at a certain hour the Earth and the
+Comet must crash together. Again and again he repeats his calculations,
+hoping that he may have erred. The utmost permissible allowance for
+accelerations and retardations caused by the outer planets of the solar
+system fails to change the result.
+
+The Earth and the Comet must meet. With some hesitation the astronomer
+sends a telegram to a central observatory, which acts as a distributor
+of astronomical news. At first his prediction is discredited and even
+laughed at. Another computation is made at the observatory. Again
+mathematics infallibly indicates the exact time and place of the
+encounter, and the last lingering hope is dispelled. Telegrams are sent
+to astronomical societies, to the leading scientific periodicals and to
+the newspapers.
+
+At first the prediction of the Earth’s doom is received with popular
+incredulity, engendered by years of newspaper misrepresentation. The
+world’s end has been too frequently and too frightfully foretold
+on flamboyant double-page Sunday editions. When the truth is at
+last accepted, after days of insistent repetition of the original
+announcement, a wave of terror runs through the world.
+
+There is no escape. International committees of astronomers meet
+daily to mark the approach of the Comet. Bulletins are published
+announcing the steadily dwindling distance between the world and the
+huge projectile in the sky. The great tail, arching the Heavens as the
+Comet approaches, seems like a mighty, fiery sword held in an unseen
+Titanic hand and relentlessly sweeping down. The temples, churches and
+synagogues are thronged with supplicating multitudes on bended knees,
+in a catalepsy of terror. The stock exchanges, banks, shops and public
+institutions are deserted. Business is at a standstill. The roar of the
+street is hushed. No wagons rattle over the pavement; no hucksters call
+out their wares.
+
+As the Comet draws nearer and nearer, night changes into an awful,
+nocturnal day. Even at noon the Comet outshines the Sun. There is no
+twilight. The Sun sets; but the Comet glows in the sky, another more
+brilliant luminary, marvellously yet fearfully arrayed in a fiery plume
+that overspreads the sky. The Moon is completely lost, and the Stars
+are drowned out in this dazzling glare. Warned by the astronomers,
+mankind takes refuge in subterranean retreats to await its fate.
+
+Long before the actual collision—long before the Earth is reduced
+to a maelstrom of lava, gas, steam and planetary debris—mankind is
+annihilated with merciful swiftness by heat and suffocation. A candle
+flame blown out by a gust of wind is not more quickly extinguished.
+
+When the Comet encounters the upper layers of the atmosphere, there is
+a blinding flash, due to friction between the air and the Comet. A few
+seconds later the crash comes. From within, molten rock and flame, pent
+up for geologic ages, burst forth, geyser-like. The Earth is converted
+into a gigantic volcano, in the eruption of which oceans are spilled
+and continents are torn asunder, to vanish like wax in a furnace.
+
+When it is all over, the Earth swims through space, a blackened
+planetary cinder,—desolate and dead.
+
+
+
+
+THE END OF THE WORLD
+
+
+Camille Flammarion, the French astronomer, in his story, “The End
+of the World,” gives this graphic description of the results of a
+collision between a Comet and our Earth:
+
+In Paris, London, Rome, Berlin, St. Petersburg, Constantinople, New
+York and Chicago—in all the great capitals of the world, in all the
+cities, in all the villages—the frightened people wandered out of
+doors, as one sees ants run about when their ant-hills are disturbed.
+All the affairs of every-day life were forgotten.
+
+All human projects were at a standstill. People seemed to have
+lost interest in all their affairs. They were in a state of
+demoralization—a dejection more abject even than that which is
+produced by sea-sickness.
+
+All places of worship had been crowded on that memorable day when it
+was seen that a collision with a Comet had become inevitable.
+
+In Paris the crowds in the churches were so great that people could
+no longer get near Notre Dame, the Madeleine and the other churches.
+Within the churches, vast congregations of worshippers were on their
+knees praying to God on High. The churches rang with the sounds of
+supplication, but no other sound was heard. The great church organs and
+the bells in the steeples were hushed.
+
+In the streets, on the avenues, in the public squares, there was the
+same dread silence. Nothing was bought or sold. No newspapers were
+hawked about.
+
+The only vehicles seen on the streets were funeral hearses carrying to
+the cemeteries the bodies of the first victims of the Comet. Of these
+there were already many. They were people who had died from fright and
+from heart disease.
+
+With what anxiety everyone waited for the night!
+
+Never, perhaps, was there a more beautiful sunset. Never a clearer sky.
+The sun seemed to dip into a sea of red and gold.
+
+The huge red ball of the sun sank majestically to the horizon. But the
+stars did not appear. Night did not come.
+
+To the solar day succeeded a new day, the daylight of the Comet. Its
+intense light resembled that of an Aurora Borealis, but more vivid,
+coming from a great incandescent spot, which had not been visible
+during the day because it was below the horizon, but which would
+certainly have rivalled the splendour of the Sun.
+
+This luminous spot rose in the East almost at the same time as the full
+Moon. The two luminous bodies rose together, side by side. As they
+rose, the light of the Moon seemed to pale, but the head of the Comet
+increased in splendour with the disappearance of the Sun below the
+western horizon.
+
+Now, after nightfall, the Comet dominated the world—a scarlet-red ball
+with jets of yellow and green flame which seemed to flutter like fiery
+wings.
+
+To the terrified people it seemed like a giant of fire taking
+possession of all Heaven and Earth.
+
+Already the outermost jets of flame had reached the Moon. From one
+instant to the next the flaming rays would descend upon the Earth.
+
+All eyes were distended with horror when it was seen that the horizon
+was lighting up with tiny violet flames as from a vast fire.
+
+An instant afterward, the Comet diminished in brilliancy. This was
+apparently because the Comet, upon touching the atmosphere of our
+Earth, had come within the penumbra of our planet and had lost part of
+its reflected light coming from the Sun. But in reality this apparent
+extinction was the effect of contrast. When the less dazzled eyes of
+the awestruck, human spectators had grown used to this new light, it
+appeared almost as intense as at first, but paler, more sinister and
+sepulchral.
+
+Never before had the Earth been lit up with so sickly a light.
+
+The drouth of the air became intolerable. Heat, as from a huge burning
+oven, came from above. A horrible stench of burning sulphur—due, no
+doubt, to electrified ozone—poisoned the atmosphere.
+
+All the people then saw that their time had come. Many-thousand-throated
+cries rent the air. “The World is burning. We are on fire!” they cried.
+
+All the horizon, in fact, was now lit up with flame, forming a crown
+of blue light. It was, indeed, as had been foreseen by scientists, the
+oxide of carbon igniting in the air and producing anhydrid of carbon.
+Clearly, too, hydrogen from the Comet combined with it.
+
+On a sudden, as the people were gazing terrified, motionless, mute,
+holding their breath, and scared out of their wits, the vault of Heaven
+seemed to be rent asunder from the zenith to the horizon. Through the
+gaping breach there seemed to appear the huge red mouth of a dragon,
+belching forth sheaves of sputtering green flames.
+
+The glare of the atmosphere was so fierce that those who had not
+already hidden themselves in the cellars of their houses, now all
+rushed helter-skelter to the nearest underground openings, be they
+subway steps, cellar doors or sewer manholes. Thousands were crushed or
+maimed during this mad stampede, while many others, frantic from fright
+and stricken with the heat, fell dead from apoplexy.
+
+All reasoning powers seemed to have ceased. Among those cowering in
+dark cellars and subterranean passages below, there was nothing but
+silence, begot by dull resignation and stupor.
+
+Of all this panic-stricken multitude, only the astronomers had remained
+at their posts in the Observatories, making unceasing observations of
+this great astronomic phenomenon. They were the only eye-witnesses of
+the impending collision.
+
+Their calculations had been that the terrestrial globe would penetrate
+into the core of the Comet, as a cannon ball might into a cloud. From
+the first contact of the extreme atmospheric zones of the Earth and of
+the Comet, they had figured, the transit would last four hours and a
+half.
+
+It was easy to compute, since the Comet, being about fifty times as
+large as the Earth, was to be pierced, not in its centre, but at
+one-quarter of the distance from the centre, with a velocity of 173,000
+kilometers an hour.
+
+It was about forty minutes after the first atmospheric impact with the
+Comet, that the heat and horrible stench of burning sulphur became so
+suffocating that a few more moments of this torment would put an end
+to all life. Even the most intrepid of astronomers withdrew into the
+interior of their glass-domed observatories, which they could close
+hermetically as they descended into the deep subterranean vaults.
+
+The longest to stay above was a young assistant astronomer, a girl
+student from California, whose nerves had been steeled during the
+ordeal of the San Francisco earthquake. She remained long enough to
+witness the apparition of a huge, white-hot meteorite, precipitating
+itself southward with the velocity of lightning.
+
+But it was beyond human endurance to remain longer above. It was no
+longer possible to breathe. To the intense heat and atmospheric drouth,
+destroying all vital functions, was added the poisoning of our air by
+the oxide of carbon.
+
+The ears rang as from the tolling of funeral bells, and all hearts were
+in a flutter of feverish palpitation. And always, everywhere, there was
+that suffocating stench of sulphur.
+
+Now a shower of fire fell from the glowing sky. It was raining
+shooting-stars and white-hot meteorites, most of which burst like
+bombs. The fragments of these, like flying shrapnel, crashed through
+the roofs and set fire to the buildings.
+
+To the conflagration of the sky were added the flames of fire
+everywhere on earth.
+
+Claps of ear-splitting thunder followed each other incessantly,
+produced partly by the explosions of the meteors, and partly by a
+tremendous electric thunderstorm. Rifts of lightning zig-zagged hither
+and thither.
+
+A continuous rumbling, like that of distant drums, filled the ears of
+the cowering people below, awaiting their fate. This low rumble was
+interspersed with the deafening detonations of exploding meteors and
+the high shriek of hurtling aerial fragments.
+
+Then followed unearthly noises, like the seething of some immense
+boiling cauldron, the wild wailing of winds, and the quaking of the
+soil where the earth’s crust was giving way.
+
+This unearthly tempest became so frightful, so fraught with agony and
+mad terror, that the multitudes grovelling below were overcome with
+paralysis, and lay prone. Laid low like dumb brutes, they met their
+doom.
+
+The end of all had come.
+
+
+
+
+_COLOPHON_
+
+
+                 _POST HOC, NON PROPTER HOC:
+           Sic veteres de multis rebus opinabantur,
+             Eodemque dicto eas jugiter absolvisse
+                     Recte sibi visi sunt,
+              Vt puta quaecumque et qualiacumque
+            Cometarum saeculares reditus sequuntur.
+               CVR TV ITAQVE, forsitan quaeras,
+          Haec auditu minime jucunda nobis narrasti,
+    Terrae motus, fluminum inundationes, annonae defectus,
+              Pestes mortiferas, incendia, bella,
+                  regumque magnorum excidia?
+                      Si tibi cordi est,
+                   LECTOR BENEVOLENTISSIME,
+                  rationem nostram didicisse,
+                      eia, veram accipe:
+                     MVNDVS VVLT DECIPI._
+
+
+_FINIS._
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 66824 ***
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-<div style='text-align:center; font-size:1.2em; font-weight:bold'>The Project Gutenberg eBook of Comet Lore, by Edwin Emerson</div>

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-<p style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Title: Comet Lore</p>

-

-<div style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Author: Edwin Emerson</div>

-

-<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>Release Date: November 26, 2021 [eBook #66824]</div>

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-

-<div style='margin-top:2em; margin-bottom:4em'>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK COMET LORE ***</div>

-

-<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" />

-

-<div id="FRONTIS" class="figcenter">

-  <img  src="images/frontispiece.jpg" alt="" width="400" height="637" />

-  <p class="center">HALLEY’S COMET OF 1910, AS SEEN IN NEW YORK,<br />

-              LOOKING WESTWARD, DURING THE LATTER PART OF MAY.</p>

-</div>

-

-<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" />

-<h1>COMET LORE<br /><span class="h_subtitle"><br />Halley’s Comet

-in History<br /> and Astronomy</span></h1>

-

-<p class="center space-above3">By</p>

-<p class="f150">EDWIN EMERSON</p>

-<p class="f90"><i>Author of “A History of the Nineteenth Century,” Etc.</i></p>

-

-<p class="center space-above3">PRINTED BY<br />

-THE SCHILLING PRESS<br />137-139 EAST 25th STREET<br />

-NEW YORK</p>

-

-<p class="center space-above2">Copyrighted, 1910, by <span class="smcap">Edwin Emerson</span><br />

-Entered at Stationers’ Hall, London<br />All rights reserved under Berne Convention</p>

-

-<p class="center space-above2">Printed in the United States of America by<br />

-the Schilling Press in New York<br />from the electrotyped plates</p>

-

-<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" />

-

-<div class="chapter">

-<h2 class="nobreak">CONTENTS</h2>

-</div>

-

-<table border="0" cellspacing="0" summary="TOC" cellpadding="0" >

-  <tbody><tr>

-      <td class="tdr" colspan="2"><small>PAGE</small></td>

-   </tr><tr>

-      <td class="tdl">Halley’s Comet</td>

-      <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_7">&nbsp;7</a></td>

-   </tr><tr>

-      <td class="tdl">The Terror of the Comet</td>

-      <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_10">10</a></td>

-   </tr><tr>

-      <td class="tdl">Famous Comets of Olden Times</td>

-      <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_30">30</a></td>

-   </tr><tr>

-      <td class="tdl">The Star of Bethlehem</td>

-      <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_39">39</a></td>

-   </tr><tr>

-      <td class="tdl">Great Events and Disasters Linked with Comets<span class="ws2">&nbsp;</span></td>

-      <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_42">42</a></td>

-   </tr><tr>

-      <td class="tdl">Halley’s Comet the Bloodiest of All</td>

-      <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_60">60</a></td>

-   </tr><tr>

-      <td class="tdl">The Story of Edmund Halley</td>

-      <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_90">90</a></td>

-   </tr><tr>

-      <td class="tdl">What Are Comets?</td>

-      <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_101">101</a></td>

-   </tr><tr>

-      <td class="tdl">Our Peril from Collision with the Comet</td>

-      <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_113">113</a></td>

-   </tr><tr>

-      <td class="tdl">The End of the World</td>

-      <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_122">122</a></td>

-   </tr>

- </tbody>

-</table>

-

-<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" />

-

-<div class="chapter">

-<h2 class="nobreak">ILLUSTRATIONS</h2>

-</div>

-

-<table border="0" cellspacing="0" summary="LOI" cellpadding="0" >

-  <tbody><tr>

-      <td class="tdr" colspan="2"><small>PAGE</small></td>

-   </tr><tr>

-      <td class="tdl">Cover Designs by William Stevens</td>

-      <td class="tdr">&nbsp;</td>

-   </tr><tr>

-      <td class="tdl">Halley’s Comet of 1910</td>

-      <td class="tdr"><a href="#FRONTIS">Frontispiece</a></td>

-   </tr><tr>

-      <td class="tdl">The Terror of the Comet in Antiquity</td>

-      <td class="tdr"><a href="#I013">13</a></td>

-   </tr><tr>

-      <td class="tdl">The Terror of the Comet in Mediæval Times</td>

-      <td class="tdr"><a href="#I020">20</a></td>

-   </tr><tr>

-      <td class="tdl">The Terror of the Comet at the Present Day</td>

-      <td class="tdr"><a href="#I025">25</a></td>

-   </tr><tr>

-      <td class="tdl">The Latest Photograph of the Comet of 1910</td>

-      <td class="tdr"><a href="#I028">28</a></td>

-   </tr><tr>

-      <td class="tdl">Napoleon’s Comet of 1811</td>

-      <td class="tdr"><a href="#I053">53</a></td>

-   </tr><tr>

-      <td class="tdl">The Great Comet of 1843</td>

-      <td class="tdr"><a href="#I056">56</a></td>

-   </tr><tr>

-      <td class="tdl">Comet of Tel-el-Kebir, 1882</td>

-      <td class="tdr"><a href="#I059">59</a></td>

-   </tr><tr>

-      <td class="tdl">Halley’s Comet of 1835</td>

-      <td class="tdr"><a href="#I062">62</a></td>

-   </tr><tr>

-      <td class="tdl">Halley’s Comet of 1682</td>

-      <td class="tdr"><a href="#I069">69</a></td>

-   </tr><tr>

-      <td class="tdl">Halley’s Comet of 1066 in the Bayeux Tapestry</td>

-      <td class="tdr"><a href="#I078">78</a></td>

-   </tr><tr>

-      <td class="tdl">William the Conqueror, an English Dream</td>

-      <td class="tdr"><a href="#I081">81</a></td>

-   </tr><tr>

-      <td class="tdl">Portrait of Edmund Halley</td>

-      <td class="tdr"><a href="#I092">92</a></td>

-   </tr><tr>

-      <td class="tdl">The Orbit of Halley’s Comet</td>

-      <td class="tdr"><a href="#I103A">103</a></td>

-   </tr><tr>

-      <td class="tdl">Relative Sizes of the Earth, the Moon and Halley’s Comet</td>

-      <td class="tdr"><a href="#I103B">103</a></td>

-   </tr><tr>

-      <td class="tdl">Donati’s Comet of 1858</td>

-      <td class="tdr"><a href="#I106">106</a></td>

-   </tr><tr>

-      <td class="tdl">The Civil War Comet of 1863</td>

-      <td class="tdr"><a href="#I109">109</a></td>

-   </tr><tr>

-      <td class="tdl">Coggia’s Comet of 1874</td>

-      <td class="tdr"><a href="#I112">112</a></td>

-   </tr><tr>

-      <td class="tdl">Halley’s Conception of a Collision with the Comet</td>

-      <td class="tdr"><a href="#I119">119</a></td>

-   </tr>

- </tbody>

-</table>

-

-<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" />

-

-<p class="f150"><b>TO THE COMET</b></p>

-

-<div class="poetry-container">

-<div class="poetry">

-  <div class="stanza">

-    <div class="verse indent0">“Thereby Hangs a Tail.”&mdash;<i>Shakespeare.</i></div>

-  </div>

-  <div class="stanza">

-    <div class="verse indent0">Lone wanderer of the trackless sky!</div>

-    <div class="verse indent0">Companionless! Say, dost thou fly</div>

-    <div class="verse indent0">Along thy solitary path,</div>

-    <div class="verse indent0">A flaming messenger of wrath&mdash;</div>

-    <div class="verse indent0">Warning with thy portentous train</div>

-    <div class="verse indent0">Of earthquake, plague and battle-plain?</div>

-    <div class="verse indent0">Some say that thou dost never fail</div>

-    <div class="verse indent0">To bring some evil in thy tail.</div>

-    <div class="verse indent28"><span class="smcap">W. Lattey.</span></div>

-  </div>

-</div>

-</div>

-

-<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" />

-

-<div class="chapter">

-<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_7">[Pg 7]</span></p>

-<h2 class="nobreak">THE COMING OF THE COMET</h2>

-</div>

-

-<p class="drop-cap"><span class="smcap">The</span> Sun will surely rise and set to-morrow.</p>

-

-<p>Just so surely must a Comet flare forth in our Heavens this Spring.</p>

-

-<p>Star gazers, astronomers and learned men have been waiting for this

-Comet all over the earth&mdash;in America, in Europe, in far China.</p>

-

-<p>They have known for certain that this Comet would come; and they knew

-just when and where in the Heavens the Comet would first show itself to

-the naked eye&mdash;down to the very night.</p>

-

-<p>All this has been known so surely because this same Comet has been seen

-by the people of this earth before.</p>

-

-<p>It came and went seventy-four years ago. Seventy-six years before that,

-it came and went. And seventy-six years before that, the Comet had come

-and gone.</p>

-

-<p>As long as human beings have lived on this earth&mdash;for thousands and

-thousands of years&mdash;human eyes have beheld this same Comet every

-seventy-six years or so.</p>

-

-<p>The longest time between the Comet’s coming has been seventy-nine

-years. The shortest interval of all&mdash;74½ years&mdash;was this time.</p>

-

-<p>For thousands of years in the past, wise men have written down records

-of this Comet.</p>

-

-<p>Long, long ago, when white men were still savages who dwelt in caves,

-patient star gazers in China and Chaldea studied the motions of this Comet.

-<span class="pagenum" id="Page_8">[Pg 8]</span></p>

-

-<p>Farther back than that, in the hoary days before the art of writing

-was known, ancient bards sang of this Star and its hairy tail. Some of

-their words are still remembered.</p>

-

-<p>Artists have drawn pictures of this Comet. Their pictures are still

-shown.</p>

-

-<p>Women have stitched images of this Comet into their handiwork. Some of

-this handiwork can still be seen.</p>

-

-<p>Coiners have stamped designs of this comet on their coins and medals.

-Those coins are still shown in museums.</p>

-

-<p>Priests, Popes and great Divines have preached about this Comet. Their

-sermons are still preserved in the records of the Church.</p>

-

-<p>Learned men have written in their books what happened when the Comet

-came. Those books are read to-day.</p>

-

-<p>The coming of this Comet in olden times has been fixed in lasting

-records, which he who runs may read.</p>

-

-<p>Nothing in all History is more certain than the story of this Comet.</p>

-

-<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" />

-

-<div class="chapter">

-<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_9">[Pg 9]</span></p>

-<h2 class="nobreak">WHY HALLEY’S COMET?</h2>

-</div>

-

-<p class="drop-cap"><span class="smcap">Two</span> hundred and

-twenty-eight years ago, when this Comet was seen shining over the City

-of London, the great astronomer, Edmund Halley, made a special study of it.</p>

-

-<p>Halley was the first to say that this Comet had come before and would

-surely come again. He wrote down the time when the Comet would come

-again, long after he should be dead.</p>

-

-<p>“If it should return,” he wrote, “according to our predictions, about

-the year 1758, impartial posterity will not refuse to acknowledge that

-this was first discovered by an Englishman.”</p>

-

-<p>The Comet returned, as he had foretold, seventeen years after Halley’s

-death, when it was first seen in 1758, on Christmas night, by a man in

-Saxony, named Palitsch, who was looking for the Comet.</p>

-

-<p>From that day this Comet has been called after Halley.</p>

-

-<p>Since then many famous astronomers, such as Clairaut, Pontécoulant and

-Laplace in France, have calculated the dates for the Comet’s return.</p>

-

-<p>Last time, in 1835, Halley’s Comet returned within a few nights of

-their prediction.</p>

-

-<p>This time, so the astronomers figured seventy-five years ago, the Comet

-should be plainly seen after dark late this May.</p>

-

-<p>What they predicted has come true.</p>

-<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" />

-

-<div class="chapter">

-<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_10">[Pg 10]</span></p>

-<h2 class="nobreak">THE TERROR OF THE COMET</h2>

-</div>

-

-<div class="poetry-container">

-<div class="poetry">

-  <div class="stanza">

-    <div class="verse indent3">“Canst thou fearless gaze</div>

-    <div class="verse indent4">Even night by night on that prodigious Blaze,</div>

-    <div class="verse indent4">That hairy Comet, that long streaming Star,</div>

-    <div class="verse indent4">Which threatens Earth with Famine, Plague and War?”</div>

-    <div class="verse indent36">&mdash;<i>Sylvester.</i></div>

-  </div>

-</div>

-</div>

-

-<p class="drop-cap"><span class="smcap">So long</span> as the memory

-of man goes back, the appearance of a Comet has always been taken as a

-just cause for dread.</p>

-

-<p>In the train of Comets, it has ever been held, come wars, bloodshed,

-fires, floods, plagues, famine and the fall of mighty rulers.</p>

-

-<p>Our Holy Bible confirms this time-honoured belief.</p>

-

-<p>The Saviour Himself said, according to the Gospel of St. Luke, Chap.

-XXI., Verse 10-11:</p>

-

-<p class="blockquot">“Nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom

-against kingdom; and great earthquakes shall be in divers places, and

-famines and pestilences; and fearful sights and great signs shall there

-be from Heaven.”</p>

-

-<p>In the Revelation of St. John the Divine (Chap. VIII., Verse 10) we read:</p>

-

-<div class="blockquot">

-<p>“There fell from Heaven a great star burning as a torch,” and again

-(Chap. XII., Verse 3):</p>

-

-<p>“There was seen another sign in Heaven, and behold a great red dragon

-... and his tail draweth a third part of the stars in Heaven. And

-behold the third woe cometh quickly.” (Chap. XII., Verse 14.)</p>

-</div>

-

-<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_11">[Pg 11]</span>

-The “flaming sword” in the hands of the angel of the Lord, when Adam

-and Eve were driven from the Garden of Eden, many sacred writers hold,

-can only be interpreted as a Comet.</p>

-

-<div class="poetry-container">

-<div class="poetry">

-  <div class="stanza">

-    <div class="verse indent1">“For the Almighty set before the door</div>

-    <div class="verse indent0">Of th’ holy park a seraphim that bore</div>

-    <div class="verse indent2">A warning sword, whose body shined bright</div>

-    <div class="verse indent0">A flaming Comet in the midst of night.”</div>

-    <div class="verse indent30">&mdash;<i>Todd.</i></div>

-  </div>

-</div>

-</div>

-

-<p>So, too, when Jerusalem was to be wasted by a plague, David beheld a

-Comet in the shape of a flaming sword:</p>

-

-<div class="blockquot">

-<p>“And David lifted up his eyes and saw the angel of the Lord stand

-between the earth and the Heaven, having a drawn sword in his hand

-stretched out over Jerusalem.”</p>

-

-<p class="author space-below2">&mdash;<i>I. Chron. XXI. 16.</i></p>

-</div>

-

-<p>The fall of Satan, some sacred writers hold, was marked by the

-appearance of a Comet. In Isaiah (XIV. 12) we find:</p>

-

-<p class="blockquot">“How art thou fallen from Heaven, O flaming one, son

-of the morning!”</p>

-

-<p>John Milton, in his “Paradise Lost,” has fixed this image in immortal

-verse:</p>

-

-<div class="poetry-container">

-<div class="poetry">

-  <div class="stanza">

-    <div class="verse indent3">“Satan stood</div>

-    <div class="verse indent4">Unterrified, and as a Comet burned</div>

-    <div class="verse indent4">That fired the length of Ophiuchus huge</div>

-    <div class="verse indent4">In th’ arctic sky, and from its horrid hair,</div>

-    <div class="verse indent4">Shakes pestilence and war.”</div>

-  </div>

-</div>

-</div>

-

-<p>The Great Deluge, described in Holy Writ, came after the appearance

-of a mighty Comet (Halley’s Comet), so Dr. William Whiston, Sir Isaac

-Newton’s successor in the Lucasian chair of Mathematics at Cambridge,

-set forth in a special treatise. The great French astronomer, Laplace,

-also reached the same conclusion.

-<span class="pagenum" id="Page_12">[Pg 12]</span></p>

-

-<p>This same Comet (Halley’s Comet) likewise foretold the final fall of

-the Holy City, Jerusalem, in the year 70 after Christ. This Comet was

-seen by St. Peter. Josephus in his History of the Jewish Wars recorded

-the nightly appearance of this Comet over the City of Jerusalem just

-before the war which ended with the destruction of the Holy City.</p>

-

-<p class="blockquot">“Amongst other warnings,” writes Josephus, who saw

-this Comet with his own eyes, “a Comet of the kind called sword-shaped,

-because their tails appear to represent the blade of a sword, was seen

-above the city for the space of a whole year.”</p>

-

-<p>Josephus at the time rebuked his Jewish countrymen for listening to

-false prophets while so clear a sign from Heaven was before their very

-eyes.</p>

-

-<p>This same Comet (Halley’s Comet) reappeared at a critical period of the

-rule of Constantine the Great, the first Christian Emperor of Rome. He

-first beheld his sign from Heaven in the midst of battle as it blazed

-overhead in the sign of a Cross. With the help of his mother, the

-sainted Helen, Constantine was moved thereby to turn Christian.</p>

-

-<p>Constantinople, the great capital of the Orient, which owes its name

-to this same Emperor Constantine, was lost to Christendom in the year

-1453, when the Turks overran the great city with fire and sword. This

-event, it is recorded, was heralded by another appearance of a Comet.

-Three years later, when the Turks were about to descend upon Belgrade,

-another Comet (Halley’s Comet) spread consternation throughout Europe.</p>

-

-<p>At that time Pope Calixtus III., on the appearance of this Comet,

-seeing that evils were impending for the human race, called for prayers

-that the Almighty would turn these evils upon the Turks, the enemies of

-the Christian faith.

-<span class="pagenum" id="Page_13">[Pg 13]</span></p>

-

-<div id="I013" class="figcenter">

-  <img  src="images/i_013.jpg" alt="" width="400" height="610" />

-  <p class="center">“A SWORD-SHAPED COMET BLAZED<br /> OVER THE DOOMED HOLY CITY.”<br />

-            &mdash;Josephus’ “<i>History of Judea</i>.”</p>

-</div>

-

-<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_14">[Pg 14]</span>

-At the same time the Holy Father gave orders for all Church bells to be

-tolled at noon to remind faithful Christians to pray for those battling

-against the Turk.</p>

-

-<p>Into the Ave Maria were put the words: “From the Devil, the Turk and

-the Comet, Good Lord, deliver us!”</p>

-

-<p>Since that time in most Catholic countries the Angelus is still

-regularly rung at noon. In Italy, even to-day, the cakes sold before

-the church doors at noon go by the name of <i>Comete</i>.</p>

-

-<p>All the great Fathers of the Church have taught that Comets are to be

-taken as signs from Heaven.</p>

-

-<p>Baeda, the Venerable, declared in the seventh century in England, that

-“Comets portend revolutions of kingdoms, pestilence, war, winds, or heat.”</p>

-

-<p>John of Damascus, preaching in the same century in the Orient, laid

-down the same belief.</p>

-

-<p>St. Thomas Aquinas, the great Light of the Church in the thirteenth

-century, accepted and handed down the same opinion.</p>

-

-<p>The sainted Albert the Great, the most noted thinker of the Church in

-the Middle Ages, received and taught the same doctrine.</p>

-

-<p>The teachings of these Church Fathers as to Comets have been commended

-in our own day by Pope Pius IX.</p>

-

-<p>The great teachers of other religions, likewise, have laid down

-identical beliefs as to the meaning of Comets.</p>

-

-<p>The sacred books of India are full of awed references to the baleful

-influence of Comets.</p>

-

-<p>The ancient year books of China, written centuries before white men

-kept any records, tell of the appearance of Comets and of the disasters

-they foretold.

-<span class="pagenum" id="Page_15">[Pg 15]</span></p>

-

-<p>The Mohametans and their wise Arab star gazers, when they saw a Comet

-in the Heavens, knew that it meant war.</p>

-

-<p>The woe of one Comet (Halley’s Comet of 1456), which had the shape of

-a Turkish scimitar, so the Arab soothsayers foretold, would be turned

-against their enemies. This was the same Comet which brought such fear

-to the hearts of Pope Calixtus III. and all his Christian followers.</p>

-

-<p>Thus it can be seen that Comets have been held to foretell disaster on

-one side, and victory on the other.</p>

-

-<p>The Comets which conquerors hailed as their guiding stars, have meant

-war and bloodshed and disaster to those whom they came to conquer.</p>

-

-<p>The same Comets which shone upon the birth of mighty rulers, have

-blazed in warning of their death.</p>

-

-<p>Julius Caesar, who was born under a Comet, saw his bloody end foretold

-by another Comet.</p>

-

-<p>Therefore, Shakespeare in his play “Julius Caesar,” makes Calpurnia

-say to Caesar:</p>

-

-<div class="poetry-container">

-<div class="poetry">

-  <div class="stanza">

-    <div class="verse indent3">“When beggars die, there are no Comets seen;</div>

-    <div class="verse indent4">The Heavens themselves blaze forth the death of princes.”</div>

-  </div>

-</div>

-</div>

-

-<p>On the night of Caesar’s assassination, when the Comet was seen blazing

-at its brightest, the Romans said that it had come to bear away the

-great soul of the murdered Caesar.</p>

-

-<p>At the death of Nero, the Roman Emperor, who persecuted the Christians,

-a Comet blazed forth again. The Roman historian Suetonius, who wrote

-the Life of Emperor Nero, thus described this Comet:</p>

-

-<p class="blockquot">“A blazing star, which was commonly held to

-portend destruction to Kings and Princes, reappeared above the horizon

-several nights in succession.”</p>

-

-<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_16">[Pg 16]</span>

-Another great Comet (Halley’s again) reappeared when Attila, the King

-of the Huns, the “Scourge of God,” was overthrown in the greatest

-battle of Christendom on the Catalaunian fields.</p>

-

-<p>Claudius, a Roman writer of that period, then stated that “a Comet was

-never seen in the Heavens without implying some dreadful event.”</p>

-

-<p>This has ever been the belief of all the great poets of olden time.</p>

-

-<p>Homer, the greatest poet of Ancient Greece, a thousand years before the

-birth of Christ, sang of:</p>

-

-<div class="poetry-container">

-<div class="poetry">

-  <div class="stanza">

-    <div class="verse indent3">“The red star, that from his flaming hair</div>

-    <div class="verse indent4">Shakes down diseases, pestilence and war.”</div>

-  </div>

-</div>

-</div>

-

-<p>Let it be explained here that the word Comet in Greek means

-“long-haired,” from <i>kome</i>,&mdash;hair.</p>

-

-<p>Virgil, the greatest Roman poet, sang of “the baleful glare of bloody

-Comets,” and again, of “dreadful Comets blazing in the sky.”</p>

-

-<p>Tasso, the greatest of Italian poets after Dante, sang thus of Comets

-in his “Jerusalem Delivered”:</p>

-

-<div class="poetry-container">

-<div class="poetry">

-  <div class="stanza">

-    <div class="verse indent3">“Qual con le chiome sanguinose horrende</div>

-    <div class="verse indent4">Splender Cometa suol per l’aria adusta,</div>

-    <div class="verse indent4">Che i regni muta, e i feri morbi adduce,</div>

-    <div class="verse indent4">Ai purpurei tiranni infausta luce.”</div>

-    <div class="verse indent12">&mdash;<i>Gerusalemme Liberata,</i></div>

-    <div class="verse indent14"><i>Canto VII., Stanza 52.</i></div>

-  </div>

-</div>

-</div>

-

-<p>Rendered thus by Wiffen into English:</p>

-

-<div class="poetry-container">

-<div class="poetry">

-  <div class="stanza">

-    <div class="verse indent3">“As with its bloody locks let loose in air</div>

-    <div class="verse indent4">Horribly bright, the Comet shows whose shine</div>

-    <div class="verse indent4">Plagues the parched World, whose looks the Nations scare,</div>

-    <div class="verse indent4">Before whose face States change, and Powers decline,</div>

-    <div class="verse indent4">To purple Tyrants all, an inauspicious sign.”</div>

-  </div>

-</div>

-</div>

-<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_17">[Pg 17]</span></p>

-<p>The great English poets, on their part, have lifted up their voices

-to sing of the dire effects of Comets.</p>

-

-<p>Shakespeare, the greatest of them all, abounds in allusions to these

-dread wandering stars.</p>

-

-<p>Thus he makes Horatio in the first scene of “Hamlet” speak with awe of:</p>

-

-<div class="poetry-container">

-<div class="poetry">

-  <div class="stanza">

-    <div class="verse indent3">“Stars with trains of fire and dews of blood;</div>

-  </div>

-</div>

-</div>

-

-<hr class="tb" />

-

-<div class="poetry-container">

-<div class="poetry">

-  <div class="stanza">

-    <div class="verse indent0">And even the like precurse of fierce events,</div>

-    <div class="verse indent0">As harbingers preceding still the fates</div>

-    <div class="verse indent0">And prologue to the omen coming on.”</div>

-  </div>

-</div>

-</div>

-

-<p>More briefly Shakespeare in his “Henry VI.” refers to:</p>

-

-<div class="poetry-container">

-<div class="poetry">

-  <div class="stanza">

-    <div class="verse indent3">“A Comet of revenge</div>

-    <div class="verse indent4">A prophet to the fall of all our foes”;</div>

-  </div>

-</div>

-</div>

-

-<p>and again, in “The Taming of the Shrew” to:</p>

-

-<div class="poetry-container">

-<div class="poetry">

-  <div class="stanza">

-    <div class="verse indent3">“Some Comet or unusual prodigy.”</div>

-  </div>

-</div>

-</div>

-

-<p>Spenser in his “Faerie Queene” sings of a woman’s hair loosely

-dispersed in the wind:</p>

-

-<div class="poetry-container">

-<div class="poetry">

-  <div class="stanza">

-    <div class="verse indent3">“All as a blazing starre doth farre outcast</div>

-    <div class="verse indent4">His heavy beames, and flaming lockes dispredd,</div>

-    <div class="verse indent4">At sight whereof the people stand aghast;</div>

-    <div class="verse indent4">But the sage Wizzard telles, as he has redd,</div>

-    <div class="verse indent4">That it importunes death and doleful drearyhedd.”</div>

-  </div>

-</div>

-</div>

-

-<p>John Milton, besides likening Satan to a Comet, as before quoted, also

-showed that he shared in the belief that the flaming swords mentioned

-in Holy Writ were Comets:</p>

-

-<div class="poetry-container">

-<div class="poetry">

-  <div class="stanza">

-    <div class="verse indent3">“High in front advanced</div>

-    <div class="verse indent4">The brandish’d sword of God before them blazed</div>

-    <div class="verse indent4">Fierce as a Comet.”</div>

-  </div>

-</div>

-</div>

-

-<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_18">[Pg 18]</span>

-The poet Young, in his “Night Thoughts,” aptly writes of the Comet:</p>

-

-<div class="poetry-container">

-<div class="poetry">

-  <div class="stanza">

-    <div class="verse indent3">“Hast thou ne’er seen the Comet’s flaming light?</div>

-    <div class="verse indent4">Th’ illustrious stranger passing, terror sheds</div>

-    <div class="verse indent4">On gazing Nations, from his fiery train.”</div>

-  </div>

-</div>

-</div>

-

-<p>The poets of other nations have written of Comets in like vein.

-There is an old German rhyme, sung by German school children even

-to-day, which has been put into English by Dr. Andrew D. White in his

-“History of the Doctrine of Comets”:</p>

-

-<div class="poetry-container">

-<div class="poetry">

-  <div class="stanza">

-    <div class="verse indent3">“Eight things there be a Comet brings,</div>

-    <div class="verse indent4">When it on high doth horrid range;</div>

-    <div class="verse indent4">Wind, Famine, Plague, and Death to Kings,</div>

-    <div class="verse indent4">War, Earthquake, Floods and Direful Change.”</div>

-  </div>

-</div>

-</div>

-

-<p>This little rhyme was originally put forth for German school children

-by two Protestant preachers of Basle, Switzerland, at the time of the

-great Comet of 1618, which heralded the outbreak of the great “Thirty

-Years’ War.”</p>

-

-<p>These Protestant ministers got their belief in Comets and their evil

-influence upon mankind not from the Church of Rome, but from the

-Bible teachings of such great Protestant reformers as Martin Luther,

-Melanchthon, Zwingli, Calvin, John Knox of Scotland, Bishop Jeremy

-Taylor and John Howe, the great Nonconformist divine.</p>

-

-<p>Martin Luther preached in one of his Advent sermons:</p>

-

-<p class="blockquot">“The heathen write that the Comet may arise from

-natural causes; but God creates not one that does not foretoken a sure

-calamity.”</p>

-

-<p>Luther’s friend, Melanchthon, in a letter, declared Comets to be

-“heralds of Heaven’s wrath.”

-<span class="pagenum" id="Page_19">[Pg 19]</span></p>

-

-<p>Zwingli, in 1531, declared that the great Comet of that year (Halley’s

-Comet) was sent by God to betoken calamity.</p>

-

-<p>John Knox, preaching in his Scottish kirk at Edinboro, declared that he

-saw in Comets tokens of the wrath of Heaven.</p>

-

-<p>The great divines of the Church of England,&mdash;from Cranmer, Bishop

-Latimer, Archbishops Spottiswoode and Bramhall, Bishop Jeremy Taylor,

-down to our own times, clearly preached the doctrine that Comets must

-be taken as tokens from Heaven.</p>

-

-<p>Thus the Comet of 1572 was pointed out from the pulpits of England

-and Scotland as a token of Heaven’s wrath and warning at the St.

-Bartholomew Massacre on the night of August 24, 1572, when thirty

-thousand Huguenots were murdered in the streets of Paris and elsewhere

-in France.</p>

-

-<p>Across the sea, in the new Commonwealth of Massachusetts, the great

-New England divine and President of Harvard College, Increase Mather,

-on the apparition of the great Comet now known as Halley’s, in 1682,

-preached on “Heaven’s Wrath Alarm to the World&mdash;wherein is shown that

-fearful sights and signs in the Heavens are the presages of great

-calamities at hand.”</p>

-

-<p>Increase Mather preached on the text taken from the Book of Revelation:

-“And the third Angel sounded, and there fell a great Star burning as a

-Torch, ... and behold the Third Woe cometh quickly.”</p>

-

-<p>In this sermon the great preacher told of the Roman Emperor Vespasian,

-who, when warned of the omen of a Comet, made fun of it, and then died

-miserably.</p>

-

-<p>So Mather preached: “For the Lord hath fired his beacon in the Heavens

-among the stars of God there. The fearful sign is not yet out of

-sight.... Do we not see the sword blazing over us?... Doth God threaten

-our very Heavens? O pray unto Him, that he would not take away stars

-and send Comets to succeed them!”

-<span class="pagenum" id="Page_20">[Pg 20]</span></p>

-

-<div id="I020" class="figcenter">

-  <img  src="images/i_020.jpg" alt="" width="400" height="627" />

-  <p class="center">THE TERROR OF THE COMET OF 1531.<br />

-                      FROM AN OLD NUREMBERG WOOD-CUT.</p>

-</div>

-

-<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_21">[Pg 21]</span>

-The profound Russian thinker Tolstoy, in his great book “War and

-Peace,” has written of the flaming Comet of 1811. This was the famous

-“Comet of Napoleon,” which blazed over Western Europe when Napoleon was

-gathering his grand army for its disastrous march into Russia and to

-Moscow.</p>

-

-<p>At Moscow, the ancient capital of Russia, this Comet was observed by

-anxious thousands. One night there was this talk between a novice nun

-and the Abbess of her Convent. On their way to vesper service one

-evening in Moscow the nun suddenly beheld the Comet for the first time

-and asked: “What is that star?”</p>

-

-<p>The Abbess answered: “It is not a star. It is a Comet.”</p>

-

-<p>“But what is a Comet?” asked the young nun. “I have never

-heard that word.”</p>

-

-<p>The Abbess then answered: “Comets are signs in Heaven, which God sends

-before misfortunes.”</p>

-

-<p>Shortly after this the bloody battle of Borodino was fought, and

-Napoleon, with his army, appeared before the gates of Moscow. The

-hundred-towered city was abandoned by the Russians and was given over

-to the flames.</p>

-

-<p>Years afterward this same nun thus told her story, as printed in the

-“Revue des Deux Mondes”:</p>

-

-<p class="blockquot">“Every night the Comet blazed in the Heavens, and

-we all asked ourselves: What misfortune does it bring? Then the enemy

-came, and our sacred city was put to the torch. Our convent, together

-with all other cloisters, monasteries and churches, was burned to the

-ground.”</p>

-

-<p>Many other writers of the time who saw the great Comets that blazoned

-<span class="pagenum" id="Page_22">[Pg 22]</span>

-Napoleon’s destructive wars have recorded how they were universally

-taken as omens of the great conqueror’s bloody trail.</p>

-

-<p>Napoleon himself gloried in this dread omen and hailed the Comet as his

-“guiding star.”</p>

-

-<p>All this has been fully set forth by the famous French astronomer

-Messier, a latter-day observer of Halley’s Comet, who wrote a special

-book on “The Wonderful Comet which appeared at the Birth of Napoleon

-the Great.”</p>

-

-<p>As for the many Comets that have blazed down upon other great

-conquerors and other bloody wars, before the comparatively recent

-Comets of the American Civil War and the Napoleonic Wars, they are all

-set down in a special History of Comets.</p>

-

-<p>In this great work, entitled “A History of All Comets,” the Latin

-scholar Lubienitius has pointed out all the calamities and dire events

-which attended the appearance of each and every Comet recorded in history.</p>

-

-<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" />

-

-<div class="chapter">

-<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_23">[Pg 23]</span></p>

-<h2 class="nobreak">THE EFFECTS OF COMETS ON MAN</h2>

-</div>

-

-<p class="drop-cap"><span class="smcap">Some</span> thinkers have

-pointed out that there has often been a direct connection between

-the feelings produced in the human soul by the appearance of a Comet

-and the human deeds of violence or the human epidemics and excessive

-mortality following the widespread terror produced by Comets.</p>

-

-<p>Only this year (1910) the appearance of Inness’ Comet over Mexico

-caused a panic-stricken holy pilgrimage to the Shrine of Talpa. In

-China, too, it caused terror, resulting in Christian massacres.</p>

-

-<p>Hence, also, several Jewish massacres inspired by Comets in the past

-and hence also so many terrifying plagues connected with Comets.</p>

-

-<p>Thus Ambroise Paré, the “Father of French Surgery,” who flourished

-in the sixteenth century, has recorded the effect produced upon his

-contemporaries by the Comet of 1528.</p>

-

-<p>“This Comet was so horrible,” wrote Dr. Paré, “so frightful, and it

-produced such great terror among the common people, that many died of

-fear and many others fell sick.”</p>

-

-<p>Dr. Paré himself appears to have come under the influence of this fear,

-judging from his awestruck description of the appearance of this Comet:</p>

-

-<div class="blockquot">

-<p>“It appeared to be of excessive length; and was of the colour of

-blood. At the summit of it was seen the figure of a bent arm, holding

-in its hand a great sword as if about to strike.</p>

-

-<p>“At the end of the point there were three stars. On both sides of

-the rays of this Comet were seen a great number of axes, knives, and

-blood-coloured swords, among which were a great number of hideous human

-faces with beards and bristling hair.”</p>

-</div>

-

-<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_24">[Pg 24]</span>

-Hannibal committed suicide on account of a Comet. So did Mithridates.

-So did one Toma, in Hungary, only this year.</p>

-

-<p>King Louis “the Debonair” of France, died from fear of a Comet

-(Halley’s Comet) in 837 A. D.</p>

-

-<p>Emperor Charles V., of Germany and Spain, the monarch who boasted that

-“the sun never set on his dominions,” was so moved by the appearance of

-a Comet in 1556, that he gave up his crown and became a monk.</p>

-

-<p>Certain metaphysicians have held that there is a substance in a Comet,

-or in its tail, which has a weird effect on man’s brain, as moonshine

-is believed to have on some men, making them lunatics. As a matter

-of fact, as Arago pointed out, Comets have caused tremendous spring

-tides just like the moon. The same irresistible pull of gravity or

-electricity or light-pressure must perforce affect other substances

-besides water, such as human brains.</p>

-

-<p>According to this metaphysical theory, the close approach of a Comet

-to the earth affects and disturbs men’s brains, so that men are inwardly

-stirred with warlike impulses. Hence the great wars almost invariably

-following the appearance of Comets.</p>

-

-<p>Hence, too, the appeal to Comets made by so many conquerors, from

-William the Conqueror down to Napoleon. In the homely phrase of one

-writer, “the inner eye of man, under the weird effect of a Comet, sees

-red and makes him thirst for blood.”</p>

-

-<p class="space-below2">Those rare beings who have lying latent within

-them the gift of Second Sight or divination, according to this same

-metaphysical theory, upon the near approach of Comets find themselves

-stirred to prophesy. Hence, so many marvellous prophesies inspired by

-Comets since the ancient days of Merlin, the seer.

-<span class="pagenum" id="Page_25">[Pg 25]</span></p>

-

-<div id="I025" class="figcenter">

-  <img  src="images/i_025.jpg" alt="" width="400" height="598" />

-  <p class="center">“THE COMET OF 1910 SO ALARMED THE PEOPLE OF MEXICO<br />

-        THAT MANY THOUSANDS WENT ON A HOLY PILGRIMAGE TO<br />

-        THE SHRINE OF TALPA IN XALISCO.”&mdash;<i>Mexican Herald.</i></p>

-</div>

-

-<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" />

-

-<div class="chapter">

-<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_26">[Pg 26]</span></p>

-<h2 class="nobreak">THIS YEAR’S PROPHECIES</h2>

-</div>

-

-<p class="drop-cap"><span class="smcap">The</span> return of Halley’s Comet

-in this Year of Our Lord 1910 has already called forth several memorable

-prophesies.</p>

-

-<p>On January 20th the French astrologer and prophetess Madame de Thebes,

-who predicted the disastrous French floods of this year, as well as the

-coming of Inness’ unexpected Comet, uttered the following prophesies:</p>

-

-<div class="blockquot">

-<p>“This year, 1910, will be one to look back to with trembling.</p>

-

-<p>“The earth is under a terrific strain from Comets and planetary

-revolutions. Human destiny is red. That means blood. Political events

-are black. Terrible changes are imminent.</p>

-

-<p>“This winter, France will be swept by terrible floods. Paris will

-be under water. The influence of form changes in other planets and the

-coming of a Comet will affect us for the worse.</p>

-

-<p>“The strain of the stars will be most severely felt in America.

-The people of America will have to pay dearly for all their riches

-and sudden prosperity. With the coming of another Comet disaster will

-descend upon America.</p>

-

-<p>“A financial crash is impending, to be followed by a long string of

-suicides. Black ruling us, men will commit all manner of crimes and

-knaveries for money.</p>

-

-<p>“The times are swaying toward degeneration. We are swinging within

-the evil influence of a strange orbit. Our souls are jarred from their

-proper bearings. I dare not say all that is revealed to me. It would be

-too terrible.”</p>

-</div>

-

-<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_27">[Pg 27]</span>

-Soon after this prophesy was uttered came the first of such suicides.

-Adam Toma, a wealthy landowner of Szozona, Hungary, cut his throat

-because of the Comet. He left a note saying that the Comet was the

-cause of his death.</p>

-

-<p>Cardinal Gibbons later expressed his profound belief that the Paris

-floods of this year were sent by God as a punishment to the Parisians

-for their frivolities and sins, of which the Comet was a fiery warning.</p>

-

-<p>Commenting on Madame de Thebes’ predictions and her connection of the

-Comet of 1910 with this year’s spring-floods in France, Italy and

-Germany, the French astronomer Henri Deslandres, late Director of the

-Astronomical Observatory of Meudon and member of the French Academy of

-Sciences, said:</p>

-

-<p class="blockquot">“However distant Comets may be, it is not at

-all impossible that their enormous tails, measuring 75,000,000 to

-125,000,000 miles in length, may come in contact with our atmosphere.

-The theory that a Comet may disturb the atmosphere of the earth,

-causing rains of great duration, and consequently inundations and the

-sudden overflow of rivers, is not at all absurd. It can be sustained by

-scientific reasoning.”</p>

-

-<p>It should be remembered here that Laplace, one of the greatest of all

-astronomers, credited the deluge to a Comet.</p>

-

-<p>Before Madame de Thebes’ ominous prophesy concerning Halley’s Comet and

-its effects upon America were cabled over to this country, another,

-no less dire prediction of financial disaster in the United States,

-coincident with the appearance of Halley’s Comet, was made by W. E.

-Corey, the President of the American Steel Trust.

-<span class="pagenum" id="Page_28">[Pg 28]</span></p>

-

-<div id="I028" class="figcenter">

-  <img  src="images/i_028.jpg" alt="" width="400" height="618" />

-  <p class="center">THE COMET OF 1910,<br /> FROM A TELESCOPIC PHOTOGRAPH TAKEN AT GREENWICH.</p>

-</div>

-

-<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_29">[Pg 29]</span>

-Mr. Corey then warned his friends to “call in their money and get from

-under” because a calamitous financial crash and general business ruin

-would surely come during the Spring of 1910.</p>

-

-<p>The most ominous of all prophesies connected with the coming of

-Halley’s Comet this year was made by the venerable General Ballington

-Booth, the head of the Salvation Army. Speaking in London, immediately

-after Halley’s Comet had been located, early this year, General Booth

-said:</p>

-

-<div class="blockquot">

-<p>“We are, this year, rapidly approaching the end of all things, with

-similar results, but far surpassing in horrors any disaster that has

-gone before.</p>

-

-<p>“All things will be wound up. Besides a deluge of water sweeping

-parts of the world and its inhabitants there will be fierce destruction

-by fire.”</p>

-</div>

-

-<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" />

-

-<div class="chapter">

-<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_30">[Pg 30]</span></p>

-<h2 class="nobreak">FAMOUS COMETS OF OLDEN TIMES</h2>

-</div>

-

-<p class="drop-cap"><span class="smcap">Bacon</span>, the great English thinker,

-has said: “Comets have some action and effect on the universality of things.”</p>

-

-<p>All Comets recorded in history, so Lubienitius has shown in his

-“Universal History of All Comets,” appeared in connection with some

-great event or catastrophe in the History of Man.</p>

-

-<p>George F. Chambers, one of the most up-to-date writers on Astronomy

-and Comets, on the second page of his “Story of the Comets” (1909),

-declares:</p>

-

-<p class="blockquot">“It is the general testimony of History during

-many hundreds of years, one might even say during fully 2,000 years,

-that Comets were always considered to be peculiarly ‘ominous of

-the wrath of Heaven and as harbingers of wars and famines, of the

-dethronement of Monarchs and the dissolution of Empires.’”</p>

-

-<p>Reaching back into remotest history, the sacred books of India show

-that the births of Krishna and of Buddha were foretold by moving lights

-in the Heavens.</p>

-

-<p>The ancient records of China tell of the appearance of a moving beacon

-in Heaven at the birth of Yu, the first ruler of the Celestial Empire,

-and again at the birth of the great Chinese prophet, Lao-Tse.</p>

-

-<p>The ancient Greeks have recorded similar appearances of Comets.

-Aesculapius, the divine healer and first physician, was born under a Comet.</p>

-

-<p>The oldest traditions of the Jews tell us that when Abraham was born a

-moving star was seen in the East.

-<span class="pagenum" id="Page_31">[Pg 31]</span></p>

-

-<p>Another moving star with long radiant gleams of light streaming behind

-it shone forth at the birth of Moses. This Comet was seen by the Magi

-of Egypt, who pointed it out to the King as an omen meant for him.

-Hence Pharaoh’s order, as recorded in the Old Testament, for the

-slaughter of all male Jewish infants then born in Egypt.</p>

-<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" />

-

-<div class="chapter">

-<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_32">[Pg 32]</span></p>

-

-<h2 class="nobreak">GREAT EVENTS CONNECTED WITH<br /> HISTORIC COMETS IN ANTIQUITY</h2>

-</div>

-

-<p class="drop-cap"><span class="smcap">The</span> earliest Comet of

-which there is any historic record was a Comet mentioned in the oldest

-cuneiform inscriptions of Babylonia several thousand years before our

-Christian era, recently found on the north bank of Nahr-al-Kalb, near

-Beyrut in Syria. This Comet is recorded to have been visible to the

-naked eye for 29 nights.</p>

-

-<p>At the time Lubienitius wrote his big “History of all the Comets” the

-exact date of this Comet had not been fixed. Lubienitius, though, had

-a record of this same Comet, the date of which he fixes at the year

-2312 before Christ, the date computed by him and other writers for the

-beginning of the deluge.</p>

-

-<p>In modern times the great French astronomer Laplace credited a Comet

-with causing huge floods at the time of the great Deluge.</p>

-

-<p>Two hundred and eighty-eight years after the great Deluge, according to

-the records of the Chaldean star gazers, there appeared another Comet.

-This is the date, computed by Lubienitius, for the building of the

-Tower of Babel and the confusion of tongues.</p>

-

-<p>Two thousand and sixty-four years before Christ, another Comet

-appeared, as recorded by the Chaldeans. This is the date given for the

-birth of Abraham.</p>

-

-<p>When Abraham was seventy years old, in the year 1949 B. C., a Comet was

-seen shining over the Valley of Siddim for twenty-two nights. This is

-the date given by Bible historians for the destruction of Sodom and

-<span class="pagenum" id="Page_33">[Pg 33]</span>

-Gomorrah, the two cities of iniquity which lay in the Vale of Siddim.</p>

-

-<p>Jewish annalists record a Comet in Egypt in the year corresponding to

-B. C. 1841. This Comet shone at the time of the bitter persecution of

-the Jews by the Egyptians.</p>

-

-<p>Arabian star gazers have recorded a Comet shining over Arabia 1732 B.

-C. In that year there was a terrible famine, of which mention is made

-in the Old Testament.</p>

-

-<p>The ancient Chinese year books record the appearance of a Comet over

-northern China and Manchuria in the year corresponding to 1537 B.

-C. The appearance of the Comet, so the Chinese chronicles tell, was

-followed by a great flood and disastrous famine.</p>

-

-<p>The next Comet of which we have any record, appeared 1515 B. C. This

-was at the time of the expulsion of the Jews from Egypt.</p>

-

-<p>In the year B. C. 1194, we are told by Hyginus that “On the fall of

-Troy, one of the Pleiades group of stars rushed along the Heavens

-toward the Arctic pole, where the star remained visible with

-dishevelled hair, to which the name of Comet is applied.”</p>

-

-<p>We are informed by Pliny, the Roman historian, that in B. C. 975, the

-“Egyptians and Ethiopians suffered from a terrible famine, the dire

-effects of a Comet. It appeared all on fire, and was twisted in the

-form of a wreath, and had a hideous aspect. It seemed not to be a star,

-but rather a knot of fire.”</p>

-

-<p>Babylonian cuneiform inscriptions tell us that about 575 B. C., when

-Nebuchadnezzar overran Elam, “a star arose whose head was bright as day,

-while from its luminous body a tail extended like the sting of a scorpion.”

-<span class="pagenum" id="Page_34">[Pg 34]</span></p>

-

-<p>According to Pliny, again, a Comet in the form of a horn was seen in

-the year B. C. 480, just before the great invasion of Greece by Xerxes

-ending in the bloody sea fight of Salamis.</p>

-

-<p>The next Comet mentioned by Lubienitius appeared in B. C. 466, when it

-was seen for 75 nights all over Greece. In that year Greece was ravaged

-by war between the Spartans and Athenians, and the city of Sparta was

-all but destroyed by an earthquake.</p>

-

-<p>The next Comet appeared one generation later in 431 B. C., and was seen

-through 60 nights all over the ancient world. This Comet was followed

-by a terrible pestilence which swept over Aethiopia, Egypt, Athens, and

-Rome. War broke out all over Greece. It was the beginning of the great

-Peloponnesian War, which devastated Greece for a generation to follow.</p>

-

-<p>In the year 394 B. C., there was another Comet seen in Greece, followed

-by the great Corinthian War with the bloody battles of Knidus and Koronea.</p>

-

-<p>Aristotle records a Comet seen by him in his fifteenth year, 371 B. C.

-The sight of it inspired the youth to a special study of astronomy.

-The Comet was visible until the end of the first week of July. On July

-eighth was fought the great battle between the Thebans and Spartans,

-when Epaminondas, one of the greatest generals of antiquity, overthrew

-the Spartans.</p>

-

-<p>The next Comet, that of 338 B. C., which was likewise observed by

-Aristotle, who had then become the teacher of Alexander the Great,

-marked Alexander’s first public entry into the history of the world.

-The Comet blazed its brightest on the eve of the bloody battle of

-Chaeronea, Alexander’s first victory and achievement in war.</p>

-

-<p>In the year 344 B. C., there was another Comet, followed by another war

-in Greece and Sicily. Diodorus of Sicily wrote of this Comet: “On the

-<span class="pagenum" id="Page_35">[Pg 35]</span>

-departure of the expedition of Timoleon from Corinth for Sicily with

-all his war ships, the Gods foretold success by an extraordinary

-prodigy: A burning torch appeared in the Heavens for an entire night

-and went before the fleet into Sicily.”</p>

-

-<h3><i>The Comets of Carthage.</i></h3>

-

-<p>Nearly a hundred years passed before the appearance of another Comet

-in 240 B. C. This is the first recorded appearance of Halley’s Comet.

-By the light of this Comet, Hamilcar, the great Carthaginian general, made

-his young son Hannibal swear eternal enmity to the Romans. Hamilcar was

-then in the midst of preparations for the war against Rome, which broke

-out soon afterward.</p>

-

-<p>Comets appear to have been stars of special omen to Hannibal and to his

-native city, Carthage. Twenty years later, appeared another Comet which

-shone over Carthage for 22 nights. Its appearance was followed by the

-outbreak of the great war between Hannibal and the Romans, and by a

-terrible earthquake in Greece.</p>

-

-<p>The next Comet shone in 204 B. C., when Hannibal suffered his first

-bloody defeat by Sempronius, while Scipio, Hannibal’s arch enemy, was

-crossing over to Africa, for the first attack upon Carthage.</p>

-

-<p>The appearance of the next Comet, twenty years later, 184 B. C., which

-shone through 88 nights over Asia Minor “with a horrible lustre” was

-followed by the death of Hannibal. Soothsayers at the court of King

-Prusias of Bithynia, in Asia Minor, whither Hannibal had fled from the

-Romans, told the King that the Comet betokened Hannibal’s early death.

-This so wrought on Hannibal’s spirit that he ended his life with poison.

-<span class="pagenum" id="Page_36">[Pg 36]</span></p>

-

-<p>In the year 150 B. C., appeared another Comet “of horrible size.” It

-was seen for many nights running all over the Mediterranean Sea. Its

-appearance was followed by the outbreak of the third great Punic War

-between Rome and Carthage.</p>

-

-<p>Within four years another Comet, blazing over northern Africa in 146 B.

-C., was followed by the fall of Carthage, which was stormed and utterly

-destroyed by the Romans.</p>

-

-<h3><i>Mithridates’ Star.</i></h3>

-

-<p>Mithridates, King of Pontus, and conqueror of Asia Minor, another arch

-foe of the Romans, having been born under a Comet, seems to have fallen

-under the bane of Comets.</p>

-

-<p>During the Winter of 134-135 B. C., preceding Mithridates’ birth, a

-Comet of unusual lustre flared over Asia Minor through 72 days. This

-Comet was so bright that its long, flaming tail was plainly visible

-even in day time. The ancient historian Justinus thus described it:</p>

-

-<p>“Its splendour eclipsed that of the midday sun and occupied the fourth

-part of Heaven.”</p>

-

-<p>The next Comet, burning through 72 nights again, preceded Mithridates’

-accession to the throne of Pontus, 119 B. C.</p>

-

-<p>Mithridates’ fourth Comet, now identified as Halley’s Comet, was seen

-over Asia Minor through the Winter months of 87-88 B. C., just before

-the horrible massacre of 150,000 Italians ordered by Mithridates.</p>

-

-<p>Twenty-five years later, 63 B. C., Mithridates saw his Comet for the

-last time when his own son rose up in arms against him. The omen of the

-Comet so wrought on Mithridates that he first poisoned himself and then

-had one of his own soldiers despatch him with his sword.

-<span class="pagenum" id="Page_37">[Pg 37]</span></p>

-

-<p>No other Comet is recorded in ancient history during this century,

-except the one which was seen shining over Italy preceding the birth

-(July 11, 100 B. C.) of Julius Caesar, destined to become “The foremost

-man of all this world,” as Shakespeare calls him.</p>

-

-<p>“Caesar’s Comet” as it came to be known (now identified as Halley’s

-Comet) appeared again over Italy during the great Civil War between

-Marius and Sylla, when Caesar was first entering into public affairs

-and earned his spurs as a warrior.</p>

-

-<p>“Caesar’s Comet” shone again over Rome in the year 60 B. C., when

-Julius Caesar, together with Pompey and Crassus, took charge of the

-government of Rome and presently seized supreme power as Consul of Rome.</p>

-

-<p>Ten years later “Caesar’s Comet” was seen once more in Italy in the

-Winter months of 49-50 B. C., when Caesar, returning from his conquest

-of Gaul, crossed the Rubicon and began the great Civil War against his

-rival for power, Pompey.</p>

-

-<p>The last appearance of “Caesar’s Comet,” was in 44 B. C., on the

-death of Caesar. Its coming was foreseen in a dream by Caesar’s wife

-Calpurnia, who warned him of the omen, as immortalized in Shakespeare’s

-lines, put into the mouth of Caesar’s wife:</p>

-

-<div class="poetry-container">

-<div class="poetry">

-  <div class="stanza">

-    <div class="verse indent3">“When beggars die, there are no Comets seen,</div>

-    <div class="verse indent4">The Heavens themselves blaze forth the death of Princes”;</div>

-  </div>

-</div>

-</div>

-

-<p>followed by Caesar’s famous answer, as culled from Plutarch by Shakespeare:</p>

-

-<div class="poetry-container">

-<div class="poetry">

-  <div class="stanza">

-    <div class="verse indent3">“What can be avoided,</div>

-    <div class="verse indent4">Whose end is purposed by the mighty gods?</div>

-    <div class="verse indent4">Yet Caesar shall go forth; for these predictions</div>

-    <div class="verse indent4">Are to the world in general as to Caesar.”</div>

-  </div>

-</div>

-</div>

-

-<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_38">[Pg 38]</span>

-On the following morning Caesar was murdered at the foot of Pompey’s

-statue in the Curia.</p>

-

-<p>Immediately after Caesar’s death, records the Roman historian Suetonius

-in his “Life of Caesar”: “A Comet blazed for seven nights together,

-rising always about eleven o’clock, visible to all in Rome. It was

-taken by all to be the soul of Caesar, now received into Heaven; for

-which reason, accordingly, Caesar is represented in his statue with a

-star on his brow.”</p>

-

-<p>Only one more Comet is recorded in ancient history before the birth of

-Christ. This was the Comet, now identified as Halley’s Comet, which

-shone over the dense forests of Germany, eleven years before the birth

-of Christ, when Drusus, the brother of Tiberius, was warring against

-the ancient Germans and robbing them of their last vestige of liberty.

-At the same time fell the death of Agrippa, who ruled over the Roman

-Empire in the absence of Augustus.</p>

-<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" />

-

-<div class="chapter">

-<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_39">[Pg 39]</span></p>

-<h3><i>THE STAR OF BETHLEHEM</i></h3>

-</div>

-

-<p class="drop-cap"><span class="smcap">The</span> coming of the Messia,

-according to the sacred legends of the Jews, was to be foretold

-by a flaming star.</p>

-

-<p>Many sacred writers have held, and many still hold, as did the

-distinguished American astronomer R. A. Proctor, that the “Star of

-Bethlehem,” whose shining trail guided the Wise Men from The East, was

-a Comet. Lubienitius in his “History of Comets” expressly mentions the

-Star of Bethlehem as the most important Comet of history.</p>

-

-<p>As a matter of fact our modern astronomical computations prove that a

-Comet appeared in that year so as to be visible to the naked eye over

-Arabia, Syria, and the Holy Land.</p>

-

-<p>When this Comet appeared Herod was King of Judea. On the appearance of

-the Comet, Herod consulted the oracle of the Sibyl in Rome. She told him

-that the Comet shone in token of a boy destined to be far greater than he.</p>

-

-<p>Herod grew so afraid at this that he caused to be murdered his own

-two infant sons, Aristobolus and Alexander, and after that his eldest

-son, the boy Antipater. Herod further ordered the massacre of all

-male infants born in Judea under this Comet, as told in the Gospel of

-Matthew (Chap. II., Verse 1). As the Comet kept on blazing in the sky,

-Herod, becoming desperate, tried to kill himself. Five days after this

-he died of a loathsome disease.

-<span class="pagenum" id="Page_40">[Pg 40]</span></p>

-

-<p>Christian painters and writers from olden times until now, accordingly

-have pictured the Star of Bethlehem as a Comet.</p>

-

-<p>Take for instance this description of “The Light in the Sky” as given

-by Lew Wallace in his “Ben Hur: A Tale of the Christ”:</p>

-

-<div class="blockquot">

-<p>“About midnight some one on the roof cried out: ‘What light is that

-in the sky? Awake, brethren, awake and see!’</p>

-

-<p>The people, half asleep, sat up and looked; then they became wide

-awake, though wonder struck.... Soon the entire tenantry of the house

-and court and enclosure were out gazing at the sky.</p>

-

-<p>And this is what they saw: A ray of light, beginning at a height

-immeasurably beyond the nearest stars, and dropping obliquely to the

-earth; at its top, a diminishing point; at its base, many furlongs in

-width; its sides blending softly with the darkness of night; its core

-a roseate electrical splendour. The apparition seemed to rest on the

-nearest mountain southeast of the town, making a pale corona along the

-line of the summit. The khan was touched luminously so that those upon

-the roof saw each others’ faces all filled with wonder.</p>

-

-<p class="no-indent">Steadily the ray lingered....</p>

-

-<p>‘Saw you ever the like?’ asked one.</p>

-

-<p>‘Can it be that a star has burst and fallen?’ asked another, his

-tongue faltering.</p>

-

-<p>‘When a star falls its light goes out.’</p>

-</div>

-

-<hr class="tb" />

-

-<div class="blockquot">

-<p class="no-indent">After that there was silence on the housetop,

-broken but once again while the mystery continued.</p>

-

-<p>‘Brethren!’ exclaimed a Jew of venerable mien, ‘what we see is the

-ladder our father Jacob saw in his dream. Blessed be the Lord God of

-Our Fathers!’”</p>

-</div>

-

-<p class="space-above2"><span class="pagenum" id="Page_41">[Pg 41]</span>

-Meanwhile the Wise Men from the East, as described in the same story,

-were travelling over the desert, on the alert for the apparition of the

-star, whose coming had been revealed to them.</p>

-

-<p class="blockquot">“Suddenly, in the air before them, not farther up

-than a low hill-top,” writes Lew Wallace, “flared a lambent flame; as

-they looked at it, the apparition contracted into a focus of dazzling

-lustre. Their hearts beat fast; their souls thrilled; and they shouted

-as with one voice: ‘The Star! the Star! God is with us!’”</p>

-

-<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" />

-

-<div class="chapter">

-<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_42">[Pg 42]</span></p>

-<h2 class="nobreak">GREAT EVENTS LINKED WITH<br /> COMETS SINCE CHRIST</h2>

-</div>

-

-<p class="drop-cap"><span class="smcap">Since</span> the time of

-Christ, thanks to the spread of Christianity and learning, with the

-growing zeal for keeping records and studying the stars, a far greater

-number of Comets and events connected therewith have been recorded.</p>

-

-<p>A number of learned writers have made a special study of the history of

-Comets and their effect upon man. Long before Lubienitius’ ponderous

-work on the subject there were other histories written in Latin and

-Arabic, with references to which his book abounds.</p>

-

-<p>Since then others have followed in the same direction, notably Pingré,

-Hind, Lalande, Messier, Chambers and latterly Messrs. Crommelin and

-Cowell, of the Greenwich Observatory.</p>

-

-<p>The number of known Comets has grown immeasurably since Galileo’s

-invention of the telescope, 300 years ago, and our later perfections

-of this instrument, together with latter-day devices for photographing

-Comets invisible to the naked eye.</p>

-

-<p>It would carry us too far to trace the possible connection between

-modern events and Comets that were seen only by astronomers. Since

-our record of Comets is already too full, we shall limit our story of

-the Comets and their influence upon man to a bare recital of the most

-important events connected with the more memorable and conspicuous

-Comets from the time of Christ until now.</p>

-<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" />

-

-<div class="chapter">

-<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_43">[Pg 43]</span></p>

-

-<p class="f120"><b>DATES OF COMETS FOLLOWED<br /> BY IMPORTANT EVENTS</b></p>

-</div>

-

-<table border="0" cellspacing="0" summary="Comet Dates" cellpadding="0" >

-  <tbody><tr>

-      <td class="tdl" colspan="2"><b>A. D.</b></td>

-   </tr><tr>

-      <td class="tdr_top">14&mdash;</td>

-      <td class="tdl"><p class="no-indent">A Comet preceded the death of Augustus,

-                        the first Emperor of Rome. Earthquake in Italy.</p></td>

-   </tr><tr>

-      <td class="tdr_top">55&mdash;</td>

-      <td class="tdl"><p class="no-indent">Suicide of Pontius Pilate,

-                          the judge who condemned Christ.</p></td>

-   </tr><tr>

-      <td class="tdr_top">68&mdash;</td>

-      <td class="tdl"><p class="no-indent">Halley’s Comet. Suicide of Nero,

-             persecutor of Christians. Siege of Jerusalem.</p></td>

-   </tr><tr>

-      <td class="tdr_top">73&mdash;</td>

-      <td class="tdl"><p class="no-indent">A Comet shone 180 days over Cyprus.

-               Earthquake in Cypress in which 10,000 persons perished.</p></td>

-   </tr><tr>

-      <td class="tdr_top"></td>

-      <td class="tdl"><p class="no-indent"></p></td>

-   </tr><tr>

-      <td class="tdr_top"></td>

-      <td class="tdl"><p class="no-indent"></p></td>

-   </tr><tr>

-      <td class="tdr_top">79&mdash;</td>

-      <td class="tdl"><p class="no-indent">Death of Emperor Vespasian, who began the siege of

-                 Jerusalem. The Roman historians Dion Cassius and

-                 Suetonius relate that Vespasian, when taken sick,

-                 heard his astrologers discussing in a low tone

-                 of voice the Comet which was then visible, which

-                 they said predicted his death. The Emperor roused

-                 angrily and said: “This hairy star is not meant for

-                 me. It must be meant for my enemy, the King of the

-                 Parthians, for he is hairy, while I am bald.”</p></td>

-   </tr><tr>

-      <td class="tdr_top">&nbsp;</td>

-      <td class="tdl"><p class="no-indent">On the following night Vespasian died in great pain,

-         and the Comet was seen no more.</p></td>

-   </tr><tr>

-      <td class="tdr_top"><span class="pagenum" id="Page_44">[Pg 44]</span></td>

-      <td class="tdl"><p class="no-indent">Shortly after Vespasian’s death followed the fierce

-                eruption of Mt. Vesuvius, Nov. 1, which destroyed the

-                two flourishing cities of Herculaneum and Pompeii.</p></td>

-   </tr><tr>

-      <td class="tdr_top">130&mdash;</td>

-      <td class="tdl"><p class="no-indent">A Comet shone over Holy Land for 39 nights,

-                followed by destructive earthquake in Holy Land.</p></td>

-   </tr><tr>

-      <td class="tdr_top">145&mdash;</td>

-      <td class="tdl"><p class="no-indent">One week’s Comet over Island of Rhodus.

-                 Earthquake in Rhodus, followed by famine and pestilence.</p></td>

-   </tr><tr>

-      <td class="tdr_top">217&mdash;</td>

-      <td class="tdl"><p class="no-indent">From a Comet which shone for eighteen nights

-                   soothsayers predicted the death of the Roman

-                   Emperor, Caracalla. The Emperor was murdered

-                   immediately afterwards by his rival Macrinus.</p></td>

-   </tr><tr>

-      <td class="tdr_top">312&mdash;</td>

-      <td class="tdl"><p class="no-indent">A Comet in the sign of a cross seen by Constantine

-              the Great during battle of Saxa Rubra under the

-              walls of Rome. Constantine was victorious and

-              afterward turned to Christian faith.</p></td>

-   </tr><tr>

-      <td class="tdr_top">337&mdash;</td>

-      <td class="tdl"><p class="no-indent">A Comet seen just before death of Constantine the Great.</p></td>

-   </tr><tr>

-      <td class="tdr_top">373&mdash;</td>

-      <td class="tdl"><p class="no-indent">Halley’s Comet. Beginning of tremendous migration

-                  of peoples which overran all Central Asia and Europe.</p></td>

-   </tr><tr>

-      <td class="tdr_top">399&mdash;</td>

-      <td class="tdl"><p class="no-indent">This Comet was described by Nicephorus as “of

-                prodigious magnitude and horrible aspect, with a

-                point like a sword and fiery hair reaching nearly

-                to the ground, from which a great peril to the

-                people was predicted.” Its appearance was followed

-                by the conquest and capture of Rome by Gainas.</p></td>

-   </tr><tr>

-      <td class="tdr_top">410&mdash;</td>

-      <td class="tdl"><p class="no-indent">A sword-shaped Comet shone over Italy for four

-               months until the third week in August. On Aug. 24

-               Rome was taken and plundered by Alaric, King of

-               the Visigoths. This marks the end of the old Roman Empire.</p></td>

-   </tr><tr>

-      <td class="tdr_top">442&mdash;</td>

-      <td class="tdl"><p class="no-indent">First appearance in Europe of Attila,

-              “The Scourge of God,” and his Hunnic hordes.</p></td>

-   </tr><tr>

-      <td class="tdr_top">449-50&mdash;<span class="pagenum" id="Page_45">[Pg 45]</span></td>

-      <td class="tdl"><p class="no-indent">Two Comets (now believed to be coming and going

-                 of Halley’s Comet) were observed over England and

-                 France. First invasion of England by the

-                 Anglo-Saxons under Hengist and Horsa. Attila

-                 overthrown in the great battle on the Catalaunian

-                 Fields, at which a hundred and eighty thousand

-                 warriors fell, among them Theoderic, the King of

-                 the Goths. The Roman historian Callimachus recorded

-                 that this battle was preceded by a brilliant Comet

-                 and an earthquake.</p></td>

-   </tr><tr>

-      <td class="tdr_top">453&mdash;</td>

-      <td class="tdl"><p class="no-indent">Death of Attila and end of his Hunnic empire.</p></td>

-   </tr><tr>

-      <td class="tdr_top">530&mdash;</td>

-      <td class="tdl"><p class="no-indent">Halley’s Comet. Merlin, the British seer,

-                  prophesied from this Comet. His prophesies came true.</p></td>

-   </tr><tr>

-      <td class="tdr_top">531&mdash;</td>

-      <td class="tdl"><p class="no-indent">Comet observed in Constantinople by the astronomers

-             of Emperor Justinian. Earthquake in Constantinople

-             followed by famine and uprising of the people in

-             which two thousand were killed. Pestilence.</p></td>

-   </tr><tr>

-      <td class="tdr_top">538&mdash;</td>

-      <td class="tdl"><p class="no-indent">Terrible famine throughout civilized world,

-              so that many people became cannibals.</p></td>

-   </tr><tr>

-      <td class="tdr_top">547&mdash;</td>

-      <td class="tdl"><p class="no-indent">A lance-shaped Comet over Italy. Ostro-Goths under

-              Totila overrun Italy. Totila storms Rome.</p></td>

-   </tr><tr>

-      <td class="tdc" colspan="2"><big><i>Mohamet’s Star.</i></big></td>

-   </tr><tr>

-      <td class="tdr_top">570&mdash;</td>

-      <td class="tdl"><p class="no-indent">Scimitar-shaped Comet over Arabia.

-              Birth of Mohamet.</p></td>

-   </tr><tr>

-      <td class="tdr_top">610&mdash;</td>

-      <td class="tdl"><p class="no-indent">Another scimitar-shaped Comet over Arabia.

-              Mohamet begins preaching the Koran.</p></td>

-   </tr><tr>

-      <td class="tdr_top">622&mdash;</td>

-      <td class="tdl"><p class="no-indent">Flight of Mohamet to Medina.</p></td>

-   </tr><tr>

-      <td class="tdr_top">624&mdash;</td>

-      <td class="tdl"><p class="no-indent">Fourth scimitar-shaped Comet over Arabia and Holy

-              Land. Mohamet’s first battle for the new faith. His

-              massacre of 700 Jews.</p></td>

-   </tr><tr>

-      <td class="tdr_top">632&mdash;<span class="pagenum" id="Page_46">[Pg 46]</span></td>

-      <td class="tdl"><p class="no-indent">Last appearance of Mohamet’s Comet during first

-              week of June. Death of Mohamet on June 8 at Medina.</p></td>

-   </tr><tr>

-      <td class="tdr_top">800&mdash;</td>

-      <td class="tdl"><p class="no-indent">A Comet seen during Coronation of Charlemagne as

-              Emperor of Rome.</p></td>

-   </tr><tr>

-      <td class="tdr_top">814&mdash;</td>

-      <td class="tdl"><p class="no-indent">Torch-shaped Comet seen in Germany during the first

-             three weeks of January. Death of Charlemagne on

-             Jan. 28, at Aix la Chappelle. The monk Eginard

-             relates in his chronicles that on the appearance

-             of the Comet all those at Charlemagne’s court

-             feared for the Emperor’s life. Eginard preached to

-             them from the text of Isaiah not to believe in the

-             signs of the heathens. But Charlemagne reproved

-             him, saying that he felt that he had reason to

-             thank God for having sent him a timely warning of

-             his impending death. Thereupon the Emperor made

-             his testament and divided his empire among his

-             successors. On the day following the disappearance

-             of the Comet, he died.</p></td>

-   </tr><tr>

-      <td class="tdr_top">837&mdash;</td>

-      <td class="tdl"><p class="no-indent">Halley’s Comet observed in France

-             by King Louis the Debonair, who died from fear of it.</p></td>

-   </tr><tr>

-      <td class="tdr_top">876&mdash;</td>

-      <td class="tdl"><p class="no-indent">Disastrous flood in Italy, followed by plague.</p></td>

-   </tr><tr>

-      <td class="tdr_top">900&mdash;</td>

-      <td class="tdl"><p class="no-indent">Another Comet over Italy. Saracens invade Italy.</p></td>

-   </tr><tr>

-      <td class="tdr_top">944&mdash;</td>

-      <td class="tdl"><p class="no-indent">Comet with an immense tail over Italy, followed by

-              disastrous earthquake.</p></td>

-   </tr><tr>

-      <td class="tdr_top">1000&mdash;<span class="pagenum" id="Page_47">[Pg 47]</span></td>

-      <td class="tdl"><p class="no-indent">In January of this year a Comet was observed all

-             over Europe. Gigibertus describes it “shaped like

-             a horrible serpent and so bright that its light

-             was seen even indoors.” It was generally taken to

-             foretell the end of the world,&mdash;the millennium

-             prophesied in the Apocalypse. When it was followed

-             soon by earthquakes, floods and famine there was

-             universal panic which was not allayed until the end

-             of the “fateful year.”</p></td>

-   </tr><tr>

-      <td class="tdr_top">1002&mdash;</td>

-      <td class="tdl"><p class="no-indent">A Comet over England and Scandinavia.

-             Massacre of all Danes in England by King Ethelred.</p></td>

-   </tr><tr>

-      <td class="tdr_top">1066&mdash;</td>

-      <td class="tdl"><p class="no-indent">Halley’s Comet. It appeared in May at Easter time

-             and shone for forty nights, waxing and waning with

-             the moon. William the Conqueror haled it as an omen

-             of destruction to Harold of England just before the

-             battle of Hastings.</p></td>

-   </tr><tr>

-      <td class="tdr_top">1077&mdash;</td>

-      <td class="tdl"><p class="no-indent">Comet over Italy and Germany. Emperor Henry IV. of

-            Germany was excommunicated by the Pope, followed by

-            war in Italy and Germany.</p></td>

-   </tr><tr>

-      <td class="tdc" colspan="2"><big><i>Crusaders’ Comets.</i></big></td>

-   </tr><tr>

-      <td class="tdr_top">1099&mdash;</td>

-      <td class="tdl"><p class="no-indent">Arabic astronomers record a Comet in the shape of

-           a scimitar over Arabia and the Holy Land for six

-           weeks in Spring and early Summer. First crusade

-           and storming of Jerusalem by the crusaders on July

-           15 after a siege of five weeks. Bloody massacre of Mohammedans.</p></td>

-   </tr><tr>

-      <td class="tdr_top">1109&mdash;</td>

-      <td class="tdl"><p class="no-indent">Emperor Henry V. of Germany enters Rome and makes

-           Pope prisoner.</p></td>

-   </tr><tr>

-      <td class="tdr_top">1148-9&mdash;</td>

-      <td class="tdl"><p class="no-indent">Second crusade. Utter destruction of whole army

-           of French and German crusaders.</p></td>

-   </tr><tr>

-      <td class="tdr_top">1200&mdash;</td>

-      <td class="tdl"><p class="no-indent">Comet recorded by Hal Ben Rodoan, an Arab

-            astronomer, over North Africa. Bloody revolt of

-            Arab warriors in Morocco.</p></td>

-   </tr><tr>

-      <td class="tdr_top">1212&mdash;</td>

-      <td class="tdl"><p class="no-indent">Lance-shaped Comet shining over western Europe for

-            eighteen nights. The Children’s Crusade. Thousands

-            of German and French boy crusaders perished or were

-            sold into slavery. Bloody invasion of Tartar hordes

-            into Russia and Poland.</p></td>

-   </tr><tr>

-      <td class="tdr_top">1223&mdash;<span class="pagenum" id="Page_48">[Pg 48]</span></td>

-      <td class="tdl"><p class="no-indent">Preaching of fifth crusade. Outbreak of “Guelph and

-           Ghibelline” war between Emperor Frederick II. of

-           Germany and Pope Gregory the IX.</p></td>

-   </tr><tr>

-      <td class="tdr_top">1264&mdash;</td>

-      <td class="tdl"><p class="no-indent">Very bright Comet observed shining all over Europe

-           for three months. Pope Urban IV. died on the night

-           of the Comet’s disappearance. A Latin verse gained

-           great currency in which it was said that the

-           Comet portended “disasters, sickness, hunger, and

-           war.” The chronicles of that age ascribe to this

-           Comet besides the death of the Pope a famine and

-           pestilence in Italy, the ravages of the Russians

-           into Poland and of the Slavs into Prussia.</p></td>

-   </tr><tr>

-      <td class="tdc" colspan="2"><big><i>Comets of Bloodshed.</i></big></td>

-   </tr><tr>

-      <td class="tdr_top">1282&mdash;</td>

-      <td class="tdl"><p class="no-indent">An immense Comet over Italy. Disastrous earthquake

-           in southern Italy. On March 30, a fortnight after

-           the first appearance of the Comet followed the

-           massacre of all Frenchmen in Sicily on the evening

-           of Easter Monday, known in history as the “Sicilian Vespers.”</p></td>

-   </tr><tr>

-      <td class="tdr_top">1298&mdash;</td>

-      <td class="tdl"><p class="no-indent">Because of the appearance of a Comet over middle

-           Germany, there were riots in Nuremberg and other

-           neighbouring cities followed by a general massacre

-           of the Jews in those cities.</p></td>

-   </tr><tr>

-      <td class="tdr_top">1300&mdash;</td>

-      <td class="tdl"><p class="no-indent">A brilliant Comet preceded the Jubilee of Pope

-           Boniface the VIII. The Pope interpreted the Comet

-           as a happy omen, but because of the popular dread

-           of the Comet there were riots and blood shed in

-           Rome and elsewhere in Italy. The chroniclers of the

-           times pointed out the significant fact that shortly

-           after his jubilee Pope Boniface was made a prisoner

-           by King Philip of France, causing him to die of rage.</p></td>

-   </tr><tr>

-      <td class="tdc" colspan="2"><big><i>Plague Comets.</i></big></td>

-   </tr><tr>

-      <td class="tdr_top">1305&mdash;<span class="pagenum" id="Page_49">[Pg 49]</span></td>

-      <td class="tdl"><p class="no-indent">A Comet “of horrible aspect” burning all through

-              Passion Week preceded the outbreak of the terrible

-              black plague which swept from the Orient all over

-              Europe and Asia.</p></td>

-   </tr><tr>

-      <td class="tdr_top">1333&mdash;</td>

-      <td class="tdl"><p class="no-indent">Chinese and Arab astronomers record a bright

-            Comet over China, Turkestan and Persia. Birth

-            of Tamerlane, the “Scourge of the Nations” at

-            Samarkand, in Turkestan.</p></td>

-   </tr><tr>

-      <td class="tdr_top">1347&mdash;</td>

-      <td class="tdl"><p class="no-indent">A Comet precedes the “Black Death,” a terrible

-            pestilence followed by famine all over the world.

-            One-fourth of all the people of Europe died.

-            Fifteen million deaths in China,&mdash;twenty-five

-            million in Europe.</p></td>

-   </tr><tr>

-      <td class="tdr_top">1363&mdash;</td>

-      <td class="tdl"><p class="no-indent">A Comet of immense size shone for three months over

-            northern Europe. Pestilence and famine in England,

-            Poland and Russia.</p></td>

-   </tr><tr>

-      <td class="tdr_top">1378&mdash;</td>

-      <td class="tdl"><p class="no-indent">Halley’s Comet. Pestilence in Germany.

-             Holy Church is rent by the great schism, with rival popes at

-             Rome and Avignon.</p></td>

-   </tr><tr>

-      <td class="tdc" colspan="2"><big><i>Tamerlane’s Star.</i></big></td>

-   </tr><tr>

-      <td class="tdr_top">1382&mdash;</td>

-      <td class="tdl"><p class="no-indent">Arab astronomers and Chinese report a very bright

-            Comet which shone a fortnight. Tamerlane and his

-            hordes overrun Central Asia. Pestilence breaks out

-            there and spreads all over the world.</p></td>

-   </tr><tr>

-      <td class="tdr_top">1402&mdash;</td>

-      <td class="tdl"><p class="no-indent">Arab astronomers report another Comet seen all over

-            the East. Tamerlane carries war into Europe and

-            takes Constantinople by storm. Sultan Bayezid is

-            taken prisoner by Tamerlane and is carried to Asia

-            in a cage.</p></td>

-   </tr><tr>

-      <td class="tdr_top">1405&mdash;</td>

-      <td class="tdl"><p class="no-indent">Chinese astronomers record a spear-shaped Comet

-            over China. Tamerlane dies while invading China.</p></td>

-   </tr><tr>

-      <td class="tdr_top">1456&mdash;<span class="pagenum" id="Page_50">[Pg 50]</span></td>

-      <td class="tdl"><p class="no-indent">Halley’s Comet. Bloody war between the Christians

-            and the Turks. Battle of Belgrade.</p></td>

-   </tr><tr>

-      <td class="tdr_top">1492&mdash;</td>

-      <td class="tdl"><p class="no-indent">Arab astronomers record a Comet over northern

-            Africa and Spain. Final conquest of Granada from

-            the Moors by Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain.

-            Discovery of the New World.</p></td>

-   </tr><tr>

-      <td class="tdr_top">1500&mdash;</td>

-      <td class="tdl"><p class="no-indent">Sword-shaped Comet over northern Europe, followed

-            by Tartar invasion into Russia and Poland.</p></td>

-   </tr><tr>

-      <td class="tdr_top">1528&mdash;</td>

-      <td class="tdl"><p class="no-indent">A Comet noted by Ambroise Paré, who recorded that

-            many people fell sick and died of fright. War

-            between Emperor Charles V. of Germany and Francis I.

-            of France, with fighting in France, Germany and Italy.</p></td>

-   </tr><tr>

-      <td class="tdr_top">1531&mdash;</td>

-      <td class="tdl"><p class="no-indent">Halley’s Comet. Plague in Italy. Great schism in

-            the Church. Defection of German Protestants from

-            Rome. Henry VIII. of England declares English

-            Church independent of Rome. Sultan Soleyman ravaged

-            Hungary. Disastrous floods in Holland, where

-            400,000 people were drowned.</p></td>

-   </tr><tr>

-      <td class="tdr_top">1556&mdash;</td>

-      <td class="tdl"><p class="no-indent">Emperor Charles V. of Germany and Spain, on account

-            of his fear of the Comet that appeared in that

-            year, abdicated his throne and became a monk.

-            Wide-spread wars all over Europe. The Turks ravaged

-            Hungary. Persecutions of English Protestants under

-            “Bloody Mary.” Many Protestants burned at the

-            stake, beheaded or broken on the rack.</p></td>

-   </tr><tr>

-      <td class="tdr_top">1572&mdash;</td>

-      <td class="tdl"><p class="no-indent">St. Bartholomew’s Comet. Massacre of St.

-            Bartholomew, when 30,000 Huguenots were slaughtered in France.</p></td>

-   </tr><tr>

-      <td class="tdr_top">1577&mdash;</td>

-      <td class="tdl"><p class="no-indent">General persecution of Huguenots in France,

-            followed by Civil War in France.</p></td>

-   </tr><tr>

-      <td class="tdr_top">1607&mdash;<span class="pagenum" id="Page_51">[Pg 51]</span></td>

-      <td class="tdl"><p class="no-indent">A Comet seen over Constantinople for several weeks.

-            Wide-spread war on the part of the Turks against

-            the Persians on one side, the Poles on another, and

-            against Venice on the third.</p></td>

-   </tr><tr>

-      <td class="tdr_top">1618&mdash;</td>

-      <td class="tdl"><p class="no-indent">A blood-coloured Comet observed just before the

-            execution of Sir Walter Raleigh in England. A

-            bloody rising of the Protestants in Bohemia,

-            followed by the outbreak of the terrible Thirty

-            Years’ War in Germany and the Netherlands. This

-            was the Comet which gave rise to the German school rhyme:</p></td>

-   </tr><tr>

-      <td class="tdr_top">&nbsp;</td>

-      <td class="tdl"><div class="poetry-container">

-<div class="poetry">

-  <div class="stanza">

-    <div class="verse indent0">“Eight things a Comet always brings,</div>

-    <div class="verse indent1">Wind, Famine, Plague and Death to Kings,</div>

-    <div class="verse indent1">War, Earthquake, Floods and Dire Things.”</div>

-  </div>

-</div>

-</div></td>

-   </tr><tr>

-      <td class="tdc" colspan="2"><big><i>Louis XIV.’s Star.</i></big></td>

-   </tr><tr>

-      <td class="tdr_top">1661&mdash;</td>

-      <td class="tdl"><p class="no-indent">Inspired by the appearance of a Comet, a horde

-            of fanatics under Venner, a cooper, preached the

-            coming of the “Fifth Monarchy” in England, and

-            proclaimed Jesus Christ as their only King. The

-            fanatics were routed and put to death. Death of

-            Mazarin, the “Master of France.” Rise of Louis XIV.,

-            the most powerful ruler of France. French war

-            against the Pope.</p></td>

-   </tr><tr>

-      <td class="tdr_top">1680&mdash;</td>

-      <td class="tdl"><p class="no-indent">This Comet was studied by Halley, in Paris, and

-            by Newton, in England. It was called “Heaven’s

-            Chariot.” Plague in Europe. The French overrun

-            Alsace and carried war into Germany. War between

-            Venice and the Turks.</p></td>

-   </tr><tr>

-      <td class="tdr_top">1682&mdash;</td>

-      <td class="tdl"><p class="no-indent">Halley’s Comet. War in Italy. War in Hungary

-            against the Turks.</p></td>

-   </tr><tr>

-      <td class="tdr_top">1689&mdash;<span class="pagenum" id="Page_52">[Pg 52]</span></td>

-      <td class="tdl"><p class="no-indent">A remarkable Comet observed all over Europe,

-            followed by war all over Europe. Wars between

-            France, Germany, England, Spain and Italy. The

-            Rhine lands were harried by the French with fire

-            and sword, rendering 4,000,000 people homeless.

-            Burning of the castle of Heidelberg by the French.

-            Religious war in Ireland and Scotland. Siege of

-            Londonderry and Dundee. Battle of Newton Butler

-            in Ireland.</p></td>

-   </tr><tr>

-      <td class="tdr_top">1729&mdash;</td>

-      <td class="tdl"><p class="no-indent">War between France, England and Spain.</p></td>

-   </tr><tr>

-      <td class="tdc" colspan="2"><big><i>Frederick the Great’s Star.</i></big></td>

-   </tr><tr>

-      <td class="tdr_top">1744&mdash;</td>

-      <td class="tdl"><p class="no-indent">A six-tailed Comet observed in Germany just before

-            the death of Emperor Charles VII. His death

-            followed by war between Frederick the Great and

-            Maria Teresa of Austria. War spreads to England,

-            Holland, France, Spain and Italy. A British fleet

-            beaten by French and Spaniards off Toulon.</p></td>

-   </tr><tr>

-      <td class="tdr_top">1755&mdash;</td>

-      <td class="tdl"><p class="no-indent">A Comet precedes earthquake of Lisbon, by which

-            40,000 people lost their lives.</p></td>

-   </tr><tr>

-      <td class="tdr_top">1759&mdash;</td>

-      <td class="tdl"><p class="no-indent">Halley’s Comet. Seven Years’ War in Germany.

-            Frederick the Great overthrown in four bloody

-            battles. French lose Canada by their disastrous

-            defeat of the plains of Abraham, and lose India by

-            the loss of their fleet through three successive

-            defeats on the sea.</p></td>

-   </tr><tr>

-      <td class="tdc" colspan="2"><big><i>Napoleon’s Star.</i></big></td>

-   </tr><tr>

-      <td class="tdr_top">1769&mdash;</td>

-      <td class="tdl"><p class="no-indent">“Napoleon’s Comet.” A Comet of unusual red lustre

-            was observed over Italy and France. French overrun

-            Corsica. Bloody massacre of Corsicans. Birth of

-            Napoleon on August 15 in Corsica, just after the

-            Comet was seen no more.</p></td>

-   </tr><tr>

-      <td class="tdr_top">1811-12&mdash;</td>

-      <td class="tdl"><p class="no-indent">This huge Comet was one of the most famous

-            Comets of modern times. It was first seen in France

-            on March 26, 1811, and was last observed over

-            southern Russia on August 17, 1812&mdash;an appearance

-            of seventeen months, the longest on record. For

-            a while it had two tails, then only one. The

-            length of this tail was estimated as 100,000,000

-            miles. It was called “Napoleon’s Comet.” Under its

-            lustre Napoleon gathered his “grand armée,” the

-            greatest army assembled in Europe since Xerxes, and

-            invaded Russia. Wars were fought at the same time

-            in Portugal and Spain, where the British stormed

-            Ciudad Rodrigo and Badajos; and in America, where

-            Harrison’s victory over the Indians under Tecumseh

-            at Tippecanoe, and the seafight between the

-            “President” and “Little Belt” ushered in the War of

-            1812. In Egypt the Comet was taken as an omen of the

-            bloody massacre of the Mamelukes perpetrated at Cairo.</p></td>

-   </tr>

- </tbody>

-</table>

-<p class="space-above2"><span class="pagenum" id="Page_53">[Pg 53]</span></p>

-

-<div id="I053" class="figcenter">

-  <img  src="images/i_053.jpg" alt="" width="400" height="644" />

-  <p class="center">THE GREAT COMET OF 1811.</p>

-</div>

-<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_54">[Pg 54]</span></p>

-

-<table border="0" cellspacing="0" summary="Comet Dates" cellpadding="0" >

-  <tbody><tr>

-      <td class="tdr_top">1821&mdash;</td>

-      <td class="tdl"><p class="no-indent">“Napoleon’s Comet.” Seen one night only over France

-            and over St. Helena the night before the death of

-            Napoleon at St. Helena.</p></td>

-   </tr><tr>

-      <td class="tdr_top">1823&mdash;</td>

-      <td class="tdl"><p class="no-indent">A Comet much mentioned by Spanish writers.

-            While it shone over Spain, South America and

-            the Mediterranean, the French overran Spain and

-            reinstated the Spanish king. Revival of the

-            Spanish Inquisition and bloody persecutions of the

-            revolutionists. War of Independence in Central and

-            South America. Bloody war of Greek Independence.</p></td>

-   </tr><tr>

-      <td class="tdr_top">1835-6&mdash;</td>

-      <td class="tdl"><p class="no-indent">Halley’s Comet. New York City all but destroyed

-            by fire. Zulu massacre of Boers at Weenen. Mexican

-            massacre of Americans at the Alamo. Wars throughout

-            South America.</p></td>

-   </tr><tr>

-      <td class="tdr_top">1843&mdash;</td>

-      <td class="tdl"><p class="no-indent">Another famous Comet seen all over the world during

-            the Spring of that year. Especially brilliant in

-            the Southern Hemisphere and in India. War in India

-            on the part of the British against Afghanistan,

-            Beluchistan, Scinde and against the Sikhs.</p></td>

-   </tr><tr>

-      <td class="tdr_top">1848&mdash;<span class="pagenum" id="Page_55">[Pg 55]</span></td>

-      <td class="tdl"><p class="no-indent">Encke’s famous periodic Comet. Bloody revolutionary

-            risings and civil wars in France, Hungary, Bohemia,

-            Austria, Germany, Italy and Poland.</p></td>

-   </tr><tr>

-      <td class="tdr_top">1858-9&mdash;</td>

-      <td class="tdl"><p class="no-indent">Donati’s Comet. This Comet, which appeared to be

-            charging straight down from the zenith, and had a

-            curved tail, was observed from June 1858 to April

-            1859. It was seen at its brightest in the South, in

-            Italy, Mexico and in the Far East. While it shone

-            over the Far East there were bloody wars between

-            the British and the risen people of India; between

-            the British and the Chinese, who objected to

-            having opium thrust upon them; while Japan was in

-            the throes of revolution and civil war. In Mexico

-            the standard of revolt against the clericals was

-            raised by Juarez, thus plunging Mexico into civil

-            war and war with France. Immediately after the

-            disappearance of the Comet war broke out in Italy

-            between the French and Italians on one side and the

-            Austrians on the other, ending in the bloody Battle

-            of Solferino.</p></td>

-   </tr><tr>

-      <td class="tdc" colspan="2"><big><i>Civil War Comets.</i></big></td>

-   </tr><tr>

-      <td class="tdr_top">1861&mdash;</td>

-      <td class="tdl"><p class="no-indent">“First Civil War Comet.” The brightest Comet of

-            the nineteenth century. Sir John Herschel, the

-            great English astronomer, said of this Comet: “It

-            far exceeded in brightness any Comet I have before

-            observed, those of 1811 and the recent splendid one

-            of 1858 not excepted.” The Comet was first seen

-            by a layman, and appeared at its brightest during

-            the Summer months in North America. Its coming was

-            heralded as a token of the great Civil War which

-            broke out then in America.</p></td>

-   </tr><tr>

-      <td class="tdr_top">1862&mdash;</td>

-      <td class="tdl"><p class="no-indent">“Second Civil War Comet.” Another Comet of very

-            peculiar appearance, with jets of flame flaring

-            from its head, showed itself during the Summer

-            months in North America. The Civil War was then at

-            its height. The coming of the Comet was taken to

-            herald the bloody battles of Shiloh, Williamsburg,

-            Seven Days, Seven Pines, Cedar Mountain and

-            Antietam, all fought that year after the Comet’s

-            appearance.</p></td>

-   </tr>

- </tbody>

-</table>

-<p class="space-above2"><span class="pagenum" id="Page_56">[Pg 56]</span></p>

-

-<div id="I056" class="figcenter">

-  <img  src="images/i_056.jpg" alt="" width="600" height="381" />

-  <p class="center">THE GREAT COMET OF 1843<br />

-         AS SEEN ON MARCH 17 FROM BLACKHEATH, KENT.</p>

-</div>

-

-<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_57">[Pg 57]</span></p>

-<table border="0" cellspacing="0" summary="Comet Dates" cellpadding="0" >

-  <tbody><tr>

-      <td class="tdr_top">1874&mdash;</td>

-      <td class="tdl"><p class="no-indent">Coggia’s Comet. This Comet was seen at its

-            brightest over Southern France and Spain during the

-            Summer months of that year. Spain was then in the

-            throes of the bloody Carlist War.</p></td>

-   </tr><tr>

-      <td class="tdc" colspan="2"><big><i>Garfield’s Comet.</i></big></td>

-   </tr><tr>

-      <td class="tdr_top">1881&mdash;</td>

-      <td class="tdl"><p class="no-indent">Garfield’s Comet. This Comet showed itself for a

-            few nights only in March during the week following

-            President Garfield’s inauguration. It was observed

-            also in Russia. On March 13, Emperor Alexander II.

-            of Russia, was assassinated with a bomb. Three

-            months later President Garfield was assassinated in

-            Washington.</p></td>

-   </tr><tr>

-      <td class="tdc" colspan="2"><big><i>War Comets.</i></big></td>

-   </tr><tr>

-      <td class="tdr_top">1882&mdash;</td>

-      <td class="tdl"><p class="no-indent">Comet of Tel-el-Kebir. A Comet with two tails was

-            seen at its brightest over Egypt during the first

-            two weeks of September. Egypt was then in the midst

-            of Arabi Pasha’s uprising against the British. On

-            September 18, when the Comet was last seen, Arabi

-            Pasha was overthrown by General Wolseley in the

-            bloody battle of Tel-el-Kebir.</p></td>

-   </tr><tr>

-      <td class="tdr_top">1904-5&mdash;</td>

-      <td class="tdl"><p class="no-indent">Manchurian War Comet. From the early part of

-            February, 1904, until Midsummer, 1905, Chinese

-            observers recorded the appearance of a Comet over

-            Northern China. Throughout that period Manchuria

-            was ravaged by the bloody war between the Japanese

-            and Russians.</p></td>

-   </tr><tr>

-      <td class="tdc" colspan="2"><big><i>Earthquake Comets.</i></big></td>

-   </tr><tr>

-      <td class="tdr_top">1906&mdash;<span class="pagenum" id="Page_58">[Pg 58]</span></td>

-      <td class="tdl"><p class="no-indent">San Francisco Comet. A Comet discovered by Ross on

-            March 17, remaining visible for one month. Observed

-            from the Lick Observatory in California. On April 17

-            came the California earthquake and burning of

-            San Francisco.</p></td>

-   </tr><tr>

-      <td class="tdr_top">1908&mdash;</td>

-      <td class="tdl"><p class="no-indent">Morehouse’s Comet. Visible for more than a month,

-            during the autumn. In Italy it was interpreted

-            afterward as an omen foreboding the Messina

-            earthquake late in the year.</p></td>

-   </tr><tr>

-      <td class="tdc" colspan="2"><big><i>This Year’s Comets.</i></big></td>

-   </tr><tr>

-      <td class="tdr_top">1910&mdash;</td>

-      <td class="tdl"><p class="no-indent">Inness’ Comet, otherwise known as “1910 A”. An

-            unexpected Comet of short duration during January.

-            On the appearance of this Comet Madame de Thebes,

-            a French astrologer, predicted floods and general

-            disaster for France. The disappearance of the Comet

-            in France was followed by unprecedented rains and

-            floods which covered one-fourth of France with

-            water and inundated Paris, completely submerging

-            all the bridges over the Seine. Floods also in

-            Italy and Germany. This Comet was likewise observed

-            in China late in January, where it caused universal consternation.</p></td>

-   </tr><tr>

-      <td class="tdr_top">1910&mdash;</td>

-      <td class="tdl"><p class="no-indent">Pidoux’s Comet. Another unexpected Comet was first

-            observed by Pidoux, in Geneva, during a few nights

-            late in February. It is recorded astronomically as

-            “1910 B”. Its fleeting observations by astronomers

-            were followed by Socialist franchise riots in

-            Germany and by the labour riots of Philadelphia,

-            with widespread bloodshed between the rioters and

-            the constabulary.</p></td>

-   </tr><tr>

-      <td class="tdr_top">1910&mdash;</td>

-      <td class="tdl"><p class="no-indent">Halley’s Comet of this year was first “picked

-            up” by Dr. Wolf, in Germany. Already various

-            astrologers have foretold disaster from its coming.

-            It remains to be seen whether their predictions

-            will come true.</p></td>

-   </tr>

- </tbody>

-</table>

-

-<p class="space-below2"><span class="pagenum" id="Page_59">[Pg 59]</span></p>

-<div id="I059" class="figcenter">

-  <img  src="images/i_059.jpg" alt="" width="400" height="632" />

-  <p class="center">THE GREAT COMET OF 1882,<br /> ON OCTOBER 9, AT 4 A. M.</p>

-</div>

-

-<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" />

-

-<div class="chapter">

-<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_60">[Pg 60]</span></p>

-<h2 class="nobreak">HALLEY’S BALEFUL COMET</h2>

-</div>

-

-<p class="drop-cap"><span class="smcap">Among</span> all the stars

-known in astronomy, the periodically returning Comet now known as

-Halley’s Comet has the most baleful record.</p>

-

-<p>In this Comet’s wake, after every one of its recorded appearances,

-there have always followed terrible disasters.</p>

-

-<p>Not only war and battles, or other deeds of bloodshed, such as

-massacres and murders, but each of the dread disasters that are held to

-go with Comets have followed along one after the other in this Comet’s train.</p>

-

-<p>Of the eight baneful after-effects of Comets mentioned in the old

-German ditty that has been sung in the Fatherland ever since the great

-Comet which ushered in the dreadful Thirty Years’ War,</p>

-

-<div class="poetry-container">

-<div class="poetry">

-  <div class="stanza">

-    <div class="verse indent3">“Wind, Famine, Plague and Death to Kings</div>

-    <div class="verse indent4">War, Earthquakes, Floods and Dire Things.”</div>

-  </div>

-</div>

-</div>

-

-<p>Halley’s Comet is known to have preceded each and every form of these

-evils in turn.</p>

-

-<p>Directly after each return of Halley’s Comet there has always followed

-somewhere within the influence of its rays one or other of those “dire

-things,”&mdash;a flood, an earthquake, a hurricane, famine, plague, war,

-bloodshed, or the sudden death of a ruler.</p>

-

-<p>Thanks to the careful work of such painstaking astronomers and

-historians as Lubienitius, Pingré, Dionys de Séjour, J. Russell Hind,

-Laugier, and Messrs. Cowell and Crommelin, the records of great events

-connected with Halley’s Comet have been traced back nearly 2,000 years,

-to the days before Christ.

-<span class="pagenum" id="Page_61">[Pg 61]</span></p>

-

-<p>Among the signal events following in the train of this Comet there have

-been so many bloody massacres and appalling disasters that Halley’s

-Comet now has the ominous distinction of being the bloodiest of all

-stars of ill omen.</p>

-

-<p>Herewith follows the story of this Comet’s periodic appearances in

-history and of the events connected therewith, as traced back from its

-last return in 1835 to its first recorded entrance into the history of

-mankind.</p>

-

-<p class="f120"><b>1835-1836</b></p>

-

-<p class="drop-cap"><span class="smcap">Halley’s</span> Comet last

-appeared in the Summer of 1835, and was seen until Spring of the

-following year.</p>

-

-<p>It was first discerned by Father Dumouchel with a powerful telescope

-from the observatory of the Collegio Romano in Rome on the night of

-August 6, 1835. Father Dumouchel, who had been watching for it many

-months, picked it up close to the spot in the heavens that Rosenberger,

-a German astronomer, had predicted for its appearance on that date.</p>

-

-<p>The last astronomer to see the Comet was Sir John Herschel, who

-observed it from the Cape of Good Hope until the middle of May, 1836.</p>

-

-<p>Other noted astronomers who made observations of it were Arago, Struve,

-Bessel, Kaiser, Sir Thomas Maclear, Admiral Smyth, Baron Damoiseau and

-Count Pontécoulant.</p>

-

-<p>This last astronomer, many years before, had computed the exact time

-of its coming and came within four days of it. For this brilliant feat

-Count Pontécoulant received a gold medal from the French Academy of Sciences.

-<span class="pagenum" id="Page_62">[Pg 62]</span></p>

-

-<div id="I062" class="figcenter">

-  <img  src="images/i_062.jpg" alt="" width="400" height="656" />

-  <p class="center">HALLEY’S COMET OF 1835.<br /> FROM A DRAWING BY ROSENBERGER.</p>

-</div>

-

-<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_63">[Pg 63]</span>

-The German astronomer, Rosenberger, who had likewise computed the

-Comet’s return, coming within five days of its passage nearest to the

-Sun, received a similar gold medal from the Royal Astronomical Society

-of Great Britain.</p>

-

-<p>Professor Struve, who studied the Comet through the great telescope

-at Dorpat in Russia, described it as “glowing like a red-hot coal of

-oblong form.”</p>

-

-<p>Bessel, who observed it from the Koenigsberg observatory in Northern

-Germany, described the Comet’s appearance as that of “a blazing rocket,

-the flame from which was driven aside as by a strong gale, or as the

-stream of fire from the discharge of a cannon when the sparks and smoke

-are carried backwards by the wind.”</p>

-

-<p>Struve at Koenigsberg and Kaiser at Leyden were the first to see the

-Comet with their naked eyes in the third week of September.</p>

-

-<p>Immediately after the Comet became generally visible in the Old World

-the bubonic plague, known of old as the “Black Death,” broke out in

-Egypt. In the City of Alexandria alone 9,000 people died on one day.

-By the Moslems this calamity was generally attributed to the evil

-influence of the Comet.</p>

-

-<p>In America the Comet became visible to the naked eye only late in the

-year. Then, on its approach to the Sun, it was lost to view and passed

-over to the Southern Hemisphere where it was next observed by Sir John

-Herschel in South Africa.</p>

-

-<p>Shortly after its brief blaze over North America the great “New York

-Fire” laid waste the entire business section of the biggest city in the

-New World. All the commercial centre of the city, including the richest

-firms and largest commercial warehouses, were laid in ashes. The fire

-<span class="pagenum" id="Page_64">[Pg 64]</span>

-raged through days and nights. In all, 530 houses burned down and

-$18,000,000 of property was consumed. Owing to the intense cold, the

-sufferings of the homeless were pitiable.</p>

-

-<p>Down in Florida, at the same time, Osceola, the chieftain of the

-Seminole Indians, called upon the Comet as a signal for war against the

-whites. The Indians called the Comet “Big Knife in the Sky.”</p>

-

-<p>The war began with a bloody massacre of American soldiers under General

-Wiley Thompson at Fort King. All were slaughtered. Osceola scalped

-General Thompson with his own hands.</p>

-

-<p>On the same day, Major Dade of the American Army, who was leading a

-relief expedition into Florida from Tampa Bay, was ambushed by the

-Indians near Wahoo Swamp and was massacred with his men. Of the whole

-expedition only four men escaped death.</p>

-

-<p>Within forty-eight hours of this horrible massacre came another bloody

-Indian fight on the banks of the Big Withlacoochee.</p>

-

-<p>With the passing of the Comet to the Southern Hemisphere, bloody wars

-broke out one after another in Mexico, Cuba, Central America, Ecuador,

-Bolivia, Peru and Argentina. All those countries were in a welter of

-blood.</p>

-

-<p>At the same time the American settlers of Texas declared themselves

-independent and made open war on Mexico. The war began with the bloody

-battle of Gonzales, in which 500 American frontiersmen fought and

-defeated over a thousand Mexican soldiers. This was followed by other

-fierce fights at Goliad and Bexar.</p>

-

-<p>Next came the bloody massacre of the Alamo, when all of Jim Bowie’s and

-Davy Crockett’s American followers were killed in an all night fight.

-Out of 200 Americans every man fell at his post. This was the deed of

-<span class="pagenum" id="Page_65">[Pg 65]</span>

-blood on which Joaquin Miller wrote his stirring Ballad of the Alamo.</p>

-

-<div class="poetry-container">

-<div class="poetry">

-  <div class="stanza">

-    <div class="verse indent3">“Santa Ana came storming as a storm might come,&mdash;</div>

-    <div class="verse indent4">There was rumble of cannon; there was rattle of blade;</div>

-    <div class="verse indent4">There was cavalry, infantry, bugle and drum,&mdash;</div>

-    <div class="verse indent4">Full seven thousand, in pomp and parade,</div>

-    <div class="verse indent4">The chivalry, flower of Mexico,</div>

-    <div class="verse indent4">And a gaunt two hundred in the Alamo.”</div>

-  </div>

-</div>

-</div>

-

-<p>One month before the final disappearance of the Comet, the Texas War

-came to an end with the bloody battle of San Jacinto, when Sam Houston,

-with 800 American frontiersmen, defeated 1,500 Mexicans, and made a

-prisoner of President Santa Ana of Mexico.</p>

-

-<p>When the Comet had passed to the Southern Hemisphere, it was seen at

-its brightest in South Africa.</p>

-

-<p>The pious Boers of Cape Colony understood it to be a sign from heaven

-and forthwith set out on their great trek across the Orange and Vaal

-rivers, where they founded the Orange Free State and Transvaal Republic.</p>

-

-<p>Thus the Comet was the signal for the first blood drawn in the long

-fight between the British and Boers.</p>

-

-<p>A little later, though, the Boers found another, more woeful

-significance for the blazing of the Comet.</p>

-

-<p>Under the leadership of Piet Relief, a thousand Boer families had

-trekked across the Drakensberg Mountains into Natal. A solemn treaty

-of peace with the Zulu warriors was entered into with Dingaan, the

-chief of the Zulus at Dingaan’s Kraal. Suddenly the Zulus pounced upon

-the unsuspecting Piet Relief and his sixty-five Boer followers and

-massacred them to a man.</p>

-

-<p>Then the Zulus, numbering some 10,000 warriors, swept out into the

-<span class="pagenum" id="Page_66">[Pg 66]</span>

-veldt and made for the Boer wagon trains. Near Colenso, at a spot

-called Weenen (weeping), in remembrance of the dreadful tragedy there

-perpetrated, the Zulus overwhelmed the Boer laager and slaughtered all

-its inmates&mdash;41 men, 56 women, 185 children and 250 Kaffir slaves.</p>

-

-<p>After this bloody massacre, equalling in horror the Massacre of the

-Alamo on the other side of the world, the Comet of 1835-36 was seen no

-more.</p>

-

-<p class="f120"><b>1758-1759</b></p>

-

-<p class="drop-cap"><span class="smcap">This</span> was the first

-return of the Comet predicted by Halley. Hence it must be reckoned as

-the first appearance of “Halley’s Comet” under his name.</p>

-

-<p>It was first seen on Christmas night, 1758, by John Palitsch, a Saxon

-farmer, near Dresden, who was looking for it with a self-constructed

-telescope of eight-foot focus. The Comet did not become visible to the

-naked eye until well into 1759. It passed around the sun on March 12,

-1759. After that it was seen throughout Europe during April and May,

-appearing at its brightest during the first week in May. Later it was

-seen to advantage in the Southern Hemisphere.</p>

-

-<p>In Germany, where it was seen at its fiercest, the Comet was taken as

-a token of the bloody Seven Years’ War, which was then being fought

-between Frederick the Great and his enemies on all sides.</p>

-

-<p>The ominous Comet had scarcely vanished from view when all Germany was

-overrun by marching armies from France, from Austria, from Russia.</p>

-

-<p>The French, under the Duke of Broglie, overthrew the Germans, under the

-Duke of Brunswick, at Bergen, and seized the city of Frankfurt. Then

-came the bloody battle of Minden, in which two large French armies were

-<span class="pagenum" id="Page_67">[Pg 67]</span>

-beaten. Meanwhile the Russians were marching into Prussia, and another

-bloody battle was fought at Kay in midsummer.</p>

-

-<p>Within a fortnight King Frederick the Great and his whole army were

-overthrown by the Austrians and Russians in the disastrous battle of

-Kunersdorf.</p>

-

-<p>Another Prussian army was overcome at Maxen, where 13,000 Prussians

-were taken.</p>

-

-<p>Altogether, during this year’s campaigns, several hundred thousand

-soldiers lost their lives.</p>

-

-<p>It was the worst year of the Seven Years’ War for Frederick the Great

-and his soldiers, who attributed their bloody defeats to the ill omen

-of the Comet.</p>

-

-<p>In other parts of the world, likewise, the coming of the Comet was

-followed by widespread war and bloody fighting.</p>

-

-<p>For the French, the Comet signalled disaster after disaster. After

-their armies had been beaten in Germany, their navy was defeated on

-August 17 in a great sea fight in the Bay of Lagos, on the coast of

-Portugal. Six weeks later there was another bloody sea fight between

-the British and French, when Admiral Pocock inflicted a telling defeat

-on the French fleet.</p>

-

-<p>Then came the final French naval disaster off Quiberon, in the Bay of

-Biscay, when Admiral Hawke destroyed French naval power by sinking

-or blowing up over a score of the French fighting ships. This bloody

-defeat was a disaster of untold consequences to the French, since it

-meant the loss of India.</p>

-

-<p>But this was not all that this Comet of ill omen had brought to the

-French.</p>

-

-<p>On September 13th of that year the French lost their strongest hold on

-America in the disastrous defeat inflicted upon them by General Wolfe

-<span class="pagenum" id="Page_68">[Pg 68]</span>

-in the bloody battle on the Plains of Abraham, where Wolfe himself fell

-fighting. On the French side, General Montcalm, the Commander-in-Chief,

-was mortally wounded. This meant the loss of Quebec and of all Canada

-to the French, an event of far-reaching importance that has changed the

-destiny of all America and of the modern world.</p>

-

-<p class="f120"><b>1682</b></p>

-

-<p class="drop-cap"><span class="smcap">The</span> Comet which put

-Halley on the right track in his theories of Comets, first came

-into view on the night of August 15, 1682. It was first detected by

-Flamsteed’s assistant at the Greenwich Observatory, while searching the

-northern heavens with a telescope.</p>

-

-<p>Flamsteed, the first Astronomer Royal, and Halley, his successor, kept

-a close watch upon the Comet every night, and followed its course over

-the sky. Others who watched it were Sir Isaac Newton, Cassini, Picard

-and La Hire in Paris, Baert at Toulon, Kirch and Zimmermann in Germany,

-Montanari at Padua, and Hevelius in Dantsic. They observed that the

-tail lengthened considerably as the Comet came nearer the sun. Later

-a jet of luminous matter was seen shooting out toward the sun, which

-afterward fell back into the tail. Hevelius has left us a drawing of

-this phenomenon.</p>

-

-<p>On November 11th, Halley found that the Comet had come within a

-semi-diameter of the path of our earth. This startling discovery

-caused Halley to reflect what might happen if the earth and the Comet

-had arrived at the same time at the spot in space where their two

-orbits intersect. Assuming as he did that the mass of the Comet was

-considerably larger than our earth, he declared: “If so large a body

-with so rapid a motion were to strike the earth&mdash;a thing by no means

-impossible&mdash;the shock might reduce this beautiful world to its original chaos.”

-<span class="pagenum" id="Page_69">[Pg 69]</span></p>

-

-<div class="figcenter">

-  <img id="I069"  src="images/i_069a.jpg" alt="" width="600" height="144" />

-  <p class="center space-below2">HALLEY’S COMET, JANUARY 9,<br />

-       1683, AS DRAWN BY HEVELIUS.</p>

-  <img  src="images/i_069b.jpg" alt="" width="600" height="480" />

-  <p class="center space-below2">THE COMET OF 1682, AS REPRESENTED<br />

-       IN THE NUREMBURG CHRONICLE.</p>

-  <img  src="images/i_069c.jpg" alt="" width="600" height="210" />

-  <p class="center space-below2">MEDAL STRUCK IN GERMANY TO ALLAY THE<br />

-       TERROR CAUSED BY THE COMET OF 1680-81.</p>

-  <p class="center">TRANSLATION OF INSCRIPTION:</p>

-<div class="poetry-container">

-<div class="poetry">

-  <div class="stanza">

-    <div class="verse indent3">“THE STAR THREATENS EVIL THINGS&mdash;ONLY TRUST!</div>

-    <div class="verse indent4">GOD WILL MAKE IT TURN OUT WELL.”</div>

-  </div>

-</div>

-</div>

-</div>

-

-<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_70">[Pg 70]</span>

-Others beside Halley took alarm at the Comet. They called it

-“The Chariot of Fire.”</p>

-

-<p>Dr. Whiston&mdash;he who succeeded Newton in the Lucasian chair of

-mathematics at Cambridge&mdash;in a moment of prophetic vision fervently

-declared that this Comet was God’s agent that would bring about the

-General Conflagration by involving the world in flames.</p>

-

-<p>In America, the Rev. Increase Mather, President of Harvard College,

-on the appearance of the Comet in New England, preached his great sermon

-on “Heaven’s Alarm to the World ... wherein is shown that fearful sights

-and signs in the Heavens are the presages of great calamities at hand.”</p>

-

-<p>Increase Mather’s warning was handed down as an inspired prophesy,

-in view of the fact that the English settlers in North America soon

-afterwards got into bloody warfare with the Indians. The war raged at

-its fiercest in the Carolinas, where the English settlers made war upon

-the redskins simply for the purpose of taking them captive and selling

-them into slavery in the West Indies.</p>

-

-<p>To the Indians the Comet appeared as a sign of ill omen, as shown by

-their frequent references to it during the parleys with the white men.</p>

-

-<p>The Comet was shining at its fiercest when the six greatest chiefs of

-the Susquehanna nation were enticed into a pretended council of peace

-with the white men, only to be foully murdered with all their followers.</p>

-

-<p>While this was going on in America, the Comet gave the signal in India

-for the first hostilities there upon the white settlers from Portugal,

-<span class="pagenum" id="Page_71">[Pg 71]</span>

-as well as for the outbreak of the bloody Mahratta War, which ravaged

-India for a generation to come.</p>

-

-<p>Nearer East, the Turks, under the leadership of Mohammed Bey, ravaged

-Egypt, while, on the other side, a Turkish army under Kara Mustapha

-carried war into Hungary, to the very gates of Vienna, until Emperor

-Leopold felt constrained to call for help from Sobieski, the warrior

-king of the Poles.</p>

-

-<p>In Europe the French overran Alsace, and suddenly seized the German

-city of Strasburg.</p>

-

-<p>At the same time the bubonic plague broke out in North Germany. In the

-little university town of Halle alone, within a few days, 4,397 people

-died out of a total population of ten thousand.</p>

-

-<p>It was then that medals were struck off in Germany with a design of

-the comet on their face, and an inscription imploring God to avert the

-evils threatened by the Comet:</p>

-

-<div class="poetry-container">

-<div class="poetry">

-  <div class="stanza">

-    <div class="verse indent0">“The star threatens evil things;</div>

-    <div class="verse indent2">Only trust! God will make it right.”</div>

-  </div>

-</div>

-</div>

-

-<p class="f120"><b>1607</b></p>

-

-<p class="drop-cap"><span class="smcap">The</span> Comet this year

-was seen all over Europe. The best observations of it were made by

-Kepler and Longomontanus (Langberger). It was seen at its brightest

-in England.</p>

-

-<p>Shortly after its appearance over England, there came freshets and

-floods which completely submerged the richest counties of England. In

-Somersetshire and Gloucestershire the water rose above the tops of the

-houses. This was followed by a visitation of the plague.</p>

-

-<p>In Ireland the Comet was taken as an omen of the fate of Londonderry,

-<span class="pagenum" id="Page_72">[Pg 72]</span>

-where the Irish rebels, suddenly seizing the city, massacred Sir George

-Powlett and all his English garrison.</p>

-

-<p>In Germany the Comet was taken as a token of the war then brewing

-between the Emperor and the German Protestant Princes&mdash;the so-called

-Protestant League&mdash;which ushered in the dreadful Thirty Years’ War

-in Germany.</p>

-

-<p>Off Gibraltar, a Dutch fleet completely destroyed a fleet of Spanish

-war galleons, thereby crippling Spanish sea power for a generation to come.</p>

-

-<p>Meanwhile, in America, the early settlers in Virginia, led by John

-Smith, found themselves beset by the redskins, who were incited to

-war by the appearance of the Comet. They called it “Red Knife in the

-Sky.” During the war, John Smith was taken prisoner, and escaped with

-his life only through the intercession of Pocahontas, the daughter of

-Powhattan.</p>

-

-<p class="f120"><b>1531</b></p>

-

-<p class="drop-cap"><span class="smcap">The</span> Comet was first

-sighted by the German astronomer Bienewitz (“Apianus”) in midsummer of

-this year. Zwingli preached about it as an omen of disaster.</p>

-

-<p>German astrologers regarded it as a herald of the wars between Spain

-and France, which broke out in that year, and of the bloody war carried

-into Hungary by the Turks under Soleyman, who ravaged the Danube

-country to the very walls of Vienna. These wars were followed by a

-visitation of the black plague.</p>

-

-<p>In the Netherlands the breaking of the ocean dykes caused terrific

-floods, in which over 400,000 people were drowned.</p>

-

-<p>Toward the close of the year the Comet passed over to the Southern Hemisphere.

-<span class="pagenum" id="Page_73">[Pg 73]</span></p>

-

-<p>To the aborigines of South America it proved a star of dreadful omen.

-During this year the most cruel of Spanish conquerors did their

-bloodiest work in the New World&mdash;Cortez in Mexico, Alvarado at the

-Equator, and Pizarro in Peru. Before the Comet disappeared from view,

-several hundred thousand wretched Incas and Aztecs had been slaughtered

-by the Spaniards, while many more hundred thousands were worked to

-death as slaves.</p>

-

-<p class="f120"><b>1456</b></p>

-

-<p class="drop-cap"><span class="smcap">The</span> Comet this year was

-observed throughout Europe and also in China. It came into view over

-Europe on the 29th of May, and was seen gliding over the sky towards

-the moon.</p>

-

-<p>Writers of that period say that it shone with exceeding brightness and

-spread out a fan-shaped train of fire. The Arab astronomers describe

-its shape as that of a Turkish scimitar, which, blazing against the

-dark sky, was regarded as a sign from heaven of the war then raging

-against the Christian infidels.</p>

-

-<p>A clear story of the Comet’s appearance has been left by the Bavarian

-Jesuit, Brueckner (Pontanus). He based his story on the record of

-Georgos Phranza, Grandmaster of the Wardrobes to the Emperor of

-Constantinople. There the Comet is described as “rising in the West;

-moving towards the East, and approaching the Moon.”</p>

-

-<p>By the Chinese this Comet was described as having a tail sixty degrees

-long, and a head “which at one time was round, and the size of a bull’s

-eye, the tail being like a peacock’s.”

-<span class="pagenum" id="Page_74">[Pg 74]</span></p>

-

-<p class="blockquot">Halley wrote of this Comet in 1686: “In the

-summer of the year 1456 a Comet was seen, which passed in a retrograde

-direction between the earth and the sun. From its period and path, I

-infer that it was the same Comet as that of the years 1531, 1607 and

-1682. I may therefore with confidence predict its return in the year 1758.”</p>

-

-<p>The appearance of the Comet in 1456 was so well remembered even 225

-years later, because this was the scimitar-shaped Comet hailed by the

-conquering Turks as their guiding star, against the evil influence of

-which Pope Calixtus III. exhorted all Christians to pray to God.</p>

-

-<p>This story has been denied by certain latter-day sceptics, but the

-medieval historian Platina, who was living in Rome at the time, and who

-knew whereof he spoke, wrote in his “Lives of the Popes” in 1470:</p>

-

-<p class="blockquot">“A hairy and fiery star having then made its

-appearance for several days, the mathematicians declared that there

-would follow grievous pestilence, dearth and some great calamity.

-Calixtus, to avert the wrath of God, ordered supplications that if

-evils were impending for the human race He would turn all upon the

-Turks, the enemies of the Christian name. He likewise ordered, to move

-God by continual entreaty, that notice should be given by the bells to

-call the faithful at midday to aid by their prayers those engaged in

-battle with the Turk.”</p>

-

-<p>In truth, all Christendom appeared indeed to have fallen under the

-“wrath of God,” for the Turks; having wrested Constantinople away from

-the Christians, now came ravaging up the Danube countries and laid

-siege to the Christian city of Belgrade. Bloody battles were fought

-<span class="pagenum" id="Page_75">[Pg 75]</span>

-between the Magyars and Turks on the Danube, until Hunyadi, the great

-Magyar leader, at last overthrew the Turks under Mahomet II., under

-the walls of Belgrade, in a great battle, in which no less than 24,000

-Turks were slain. This was on July 21st, on the eve of which day the

-Comet had been seen to blaze at its fiercest.</p>

-

-<p class="f120"><b>1378</b></p>

-

-<p class="drop-cap"><span class="smcap">The</span> Comet appeared late

-in the year, and was seen at its brightest over Northern Europe, in

-Scotland, Scandinavia, Russia and Poland.</p>

-

-<p>All these countries, during the same period and immediately afterwards,

-were cursed by the terrible pestilence called the “Black Death,” now

-known to have been the worst visitation of the bubonic plague known in

-history. Wherever the dread sickness appeared, the people “died like

-rats.” So many succumbed to the disease, and so many others fled aghast

-from the pestilence, that whole cities and towns were left empty, and

-no labourers could be found to till the fields.</p>

-

-<p class="f120"><b>1301</b></p>

-

-<p class="drop-cap"><span class="smcap">The</span> Comet this year was

-first observed by German and Flemish astrologers during the late Summer

-and Autumn. It was interpreted as an ill omen of the wars which then

-ravaged Europe. Immediately after the appearance of the Comet, Emperor

-Albrecht of Germany ravaged the Rhine lands with fire and sword.

-Afterwards the German astrologers explained the Comet as a warning omen

-of the death of the Emperor’s son Rudolf, who died within a twelvemonth

-of his coronation as King of Bohemia.</p>

-

-<p>In Flanders the Comet was taken as a heavenly token of the fierce war

-<span class="pagenum" id="Page_76">[Pg 76]</span>

-which followed the bloodstained massacre of 3,000 French soldiers by the

-enraged people of Flanders.</p>

-

-<p>Soon after this came Robert of Artois’ bloody defeat at Coutrai, the

-famous “Battle of the Spurs,” so called from the thousands of gilt

-spurs that were taken afterwards from the feet of the slain French

-cavaliers.</p>

-

-<p class="f120"><b>1222</b></p>

-

-<p class="drop-cap"><span class="smcap">The</span> Comet during this

-year is recorded by the Chinese astronomers in the months of September

-and October. During these months, and immediately afterwards, Jenghis

-Khan, the bloody Mongol conqueror, with his fierce Mongol hordes, was

-ravaging all China, Persia, India and the Caucasus country as far as

-the River Don.</p>

-

-<p>The Comet was taken as a special omen of the terrible fate of the City

-of Herat and its surrounding country, where the bloodthirsty conqueror

-caused to be slaughtered over a million of people. Jenghis Khan, who

-believed in stars and omens, having been born with bloodstained hands,

-hailed the Comet as his special Star. Under its rays he extended his

-immense Empire to its outermost boundaries from the China seas to the

-banks of the Dniepr in Russia. After the Comet’s disappearance, Jenghis

-Khan regarded the planets that had crossed its orbit as stars of ill

-omen, betokening his death, so he set his face backward from his march

-of conquest, and soon afterwards died in Mongolia.</p>

-

-<p class="f120"><b>1145</b></p>

-

-<p class="drop-cap"><span class="smcap">The</span> Comet appeared over

-Europe early in Spring. It was seen at Rome in March and April.</p>

-

-<p>Inspired by the appearance of the Comet, Pope Eugenius III. called for

-<span class="pagenum" id="Page_77">[Pg 77]</span>

-a crusade against the Moslems. St. Bernard in France took up the cry,

-and preached a holy war all over France. On Easter Sunday, King Louis

-VII. of France, his Queen and all his nobles, received the Cross from

-St. Bernard at Vizelay.</p>

-

-<p>In Rome, however, the Comet was taken as a token of the Pope’s

-downfall. Arnold of Brescia preached against the Pope and aroused the

-Roman populace against him. The Holy Father had to flee.</p>

-

-<p>On the disappearance of the Comet, the Pope returned and excommunicated

-the Patricians of Rome. Arnold of Brescia was taken and strangled in

-his cell. Later historians, like Lubienitius, accordingly interpreted

-the Comet as a sign of warning rather than as an ill omen.</p>

-

-<p class="f120"><b>1066</b></p>

-

-<p class="drop-cap"><span class="smcap">This</span> is the most famous

-appearance of the Comet now known as Halley’s Comet. Under its seven

-rays, that year, William the Conqueror felt inspired to fall upon

-England, while Harold, the Saxon, on the other hand, saw in the Comet a

-star of dread foreboding and of doom.</p>

-

-<p>The medieval chronicles of this year all make special mention of the

-Comet. A picture of the Comet, as it appeared to the doomed Harold, was

-embroidered by Matilde of France, on the famous coloured tapestry of

-the Norman Conquest, which is still preserved at Bayeux in Normandy.</p>

-

-<p>Zonares, the Greek historian, in his account of the death of Emperor

-Constantinus Ducas (who died in May, 1067), writes of the Comet as

-“large as the full moon, and at first without a tail, on the appearance

-of which the star dwindled in size.”</p>

-

-<p>The Chinese astronomers have recorded that this Comet had seven tails,

-and was seen for sixty-seven days, after which “the star, the blaze,

-and the star’s tails all drew away.”

-<span class="pagenum" id="Page_78">[Pg 78]</span></p>

-

-<div id="I078" class="figcenter">

-  <img  src="images/i_078.jpg" alt="" width="600" height="363" />

-  <p class="center">HALLEY’S COMET, 1066.<br /> (<i>From the Bayeux Tapestry.</i>)</p>

-</div>

-

-<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_79">[Pg 79]</span>

-The Christian chroniclers record that this Comet, “in size and

-brightness equalled the full moon, while its tail, slowly lengthening

-as it came near the Sun, spread out into seven rays and arched over the

-heavens in the shape of a dragon’s tail.”</p>

-

-<p>Sigebert of Brabant, the Belgian chronicler of that time, wrote of it:

-“Over the island of Britain was seen a star of a wonderful bigness, to

-the train of which hung a fiery sword not unlike a dragon’s tail; and

-out of the dragon’s mouth issued two vast rays, whereof one reached as

-far as France, and the other, divided into seven lesser rays, stretched

-away towards Ireland.”</p>

-

-<p>William of Malmesbury wrote how the apparition affected the mind of

-a fellow monk of his monastery in England. His words were: “Soon

-after the death of Henry, King of France, by poison, a wonderful star

-appeared trailing its long tail over the sky. Wherefore, a certain monk

-of our monastery, by name Elmir, bowed down with terror at the sight of

-the strange star, wisely exclaimed, ‘Thou art come back at last, thou

-that will cause so many mothers to weep; many years have I seen thee

-shine, but thou seemest to me more terrible now that thou foretellest

-the ruin of my country.’”</p>

-

-<p>Another old Norman chronicler, by way of defending the divine right

-of William of Normandy to invade England, wrote: “How a Starre with

-seven long Tayles appeared in the Skye. How the Learned sayd that newe

-Starres only shewed themselves when a Kingdom wanted a King, and how

-the sayd Starre was yclept a Comette.”</p>

-

-<p>William himself appealed to the Comet as his guiding star. It shone at

-<span class="pagenum" id="Page_80">[Pg 80]</span>

-its brightest during the Summer months while William was preparing his

-expedition at St. Valery. When the spirits of his followers failed

-them, William pointed to the blazing Comet and bid monks and priests

-who accompanied his expedition to preach stirring sermons on the

-“wonderful Sign from Heaven.”</p>

-

-<p>The trip across the English Channel, late in September, was lighted up

-by the Comet, and under its lustre the Norman invaders first pitched

-their camp at Pevensey.</p>

-

-<p>Once more, when William’s Norman followers quailed at the fierce work

-before them, William pointed to the Comet as a token of coming victory.</p>

-

-<p>A fortnight later, directly after the disappearance of the Comet, the

-Battle of Hastings was fought, in which King Harold and his Saxon

-thanes lost their lives and their country.</p>

-

-<p>Afterwards, when Queen Matilda and her court ladies embroidered the

-pictorial story of her husband’s Conquest of England in the huge

-tapestry of Bayeux, they did not forget the Comet. They represented

-Harold cowering in alarm on his throne, whilst his people are huddled

-together, pointing with their fingers at the fearful omen in the sky,

-the birds even being upset at the sight. The Latin legend over the

-picture “Isti Mirant Stella” (they marvel at the star), makes it all

-plain.</p>

-

-<p>As I. C. Bruce, the editor of “The Bayeux Tapestry Elucidated,” has

-said: “This embroidery is remarkable for furnishing us with the

-earliest human representation we have of a Comet.”</p>

-

-<p>The Comet of 1066 will ever be famous for ushering in a new era for

-England. Even to-day Halley’s Comet is remembered as “The Comet of the

-Conquest.”

-<span class="pagenum" id="Page_81">[Pg 81]</span></p>

-

-<div id="I081" class="figcenter">

-  <img  src="images/i_081.jpg" alt="" width="400" height="505" />

-  <p class="center">WILLIAM THE CONQUEROR.<br /> (An English Dream.)</p>

-<p class="f90">Halley’s Comet appeared in 1066&mdash;<br />When William the Conqueror took

-England.<br /> Halley’s Comet is here to-day.&mdash;Kladderadatsch (Berlin).</p>

-</div>

-

-<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_82">[Pg 82]</span></p>

-

-<p class="f120"><b>989</b></p>

-

-<p class="drop-cap"><span class="smcap">The</span> appearance of the

-Comet this year was marked by bloody wars all over Europe. The Lombards

-under Otho were harrying the ancient Roman Empire, while the heathen

-Danes and Wends ravaged Germany.</p>

-

-<p class="f120"><b>912</b></p>

-

-<p class="drop-cap"><span class="smcap">The</span> Comet appeared early

-in the year and was seen over Germany, as noted in the chronicles

-of the monks of St. Gallus in Switzerland. Immediately after the

-appearance of the Comet, Germany was ravaged by war, both inside and

-outside, the Empire being invaded on all sides by the Danes in the

-North, the Slavs in the Northeast, and the Magyars from Hungary.</p>

-

-<p class="f120"><b>837</b></p>

-

-<p class="drop-cap"><span class="smcap">The</span> Chinese Astronomers

-record two Comets for this year, one in February, and the other in

-April. But the modern view is that this was the same Comet, as seen

-going to the Sun, and afterward, when it was coming away from the

-Sun.</p>

-

-<p>Immediately after the appearance of the Comet there followed a

-widespread rebellion in China with much bloodshed and fierce reprisals.</p>

-

-<p>The only Christian record of the Comet we have is that of Eginard, an

-astrologer employed at the Court of Louis the Debonair, in France. This

-is Eginard’s account of the Comet: “In the midst of the holy festival

-of Easter there shone forth in our sky a sign always ominous and of sad

-foreboding. As soon as the Emperor&mdash;who was in the habit of gazing up

-into the sky at night&mdash;first saw the Comet, he had me called before him,

-<span class="pagenum" id="Page_83">[Pg 83]</span>

-together with another learned star gazer. As soon as I came before him

-he asked me what I thought of the sign in heaven.”</p>

-

-<p>“‘Let me have but a little time,’ I asked of him, ‘that I may study

-this sign and see the exact constellation of the other stars around

-it, thus to gather from the stars the true meaning of this portent,’

-promising him that I would tell him on the morrow of the results of my

-studies.</p>

-

-<p>“But the Emperor, guessing that I was trying to gain time&mdash;as was

-indeed the truth, lest I be driven to tell him something unlucky and

-fatal to him&mdash;he said to me:</p>

-

-<p>“‘Go up on the terrace of the palace and look. Then come back at once

-and tell me what thou hast seen! For I did not see this star last

-night; nor didst thou point it out to me; but I know that sign in

-heaven is a Comet. Thou must tell me true what it forebodes to me!’</p>

-

-<p>“Then, before I could say anything, he said: ‘There is another thing

-thou art hiding from me. It is that changes in Kingdoms and the deaths

-of rulers are foretold by this sign.’</p>

-

-<p>“To soothe him I reminded the Emperor of the words of the Prophet

-Isaiah, who said: ‘Fear not signs in the Heaven, like unto the Heathen.’</p>

-

-<p>“But the Emperor smiled sadly and said: ‘We should believe only in God

-on High, who has created us and also all Stars in Heaven. Since He has

-sent this Star, and since this unlooked for Sign may be meant for us,

-let us look upon it as a warning from Heaven.’”</p>

-

-<p>Thereupon Louis the Debonair betook himself to fasting, prayers, and

-the building of churches and shrines, he and all his Court. Shortly

-thereafter he died.

-<span class="pagenum" id="Page_84">[Pg 84]</span></p>

-

-<p>The French chronicler, Raoul Glaber, afterward wrote in his chronicle:

-“Comets never show themselves to man without foreboding surely some

-coming event, marvellous or terrible.”</p>

-

-<p class="f120"><b>760</b></p>

-

-<p class="drop-cap"><span class="smcap">A</span> Comet appeared in the

-Spring of this year, which without any doubt whatever was Halley’s. It

-was recorded in detail both by European and Chinese annalists, and its

-orbit has been calculated and identified by Laugier.</p>

-

-<p>A Greek record of Constantinople tells how “a Comet like a great beam”

-and very brilliant was observed in the twentieth year of Emperor

-Constantine V., surnamed Copronymus, first in the East and then in the

-West, for about thirty days. Its appearance was followed next Winter

-by a biting frost throughout the Orient, which endured 150 days, from

-October until February, blighting all crops in Egypt and elsewhere in

-the Eastern Empire.</p>

-

-<p class="f120"><b>684</b></p>

-

-<p class="drop-cap"><span class="smcap">Chinese</span>

-annals record a Comet observed in the West in September and

-October. This accords with the computed time for the course of Halley’s

-Comet that year. Immediately after the Comet’s appearance, China and

-the Far East were ravaged by the black plague. Millions died of it.

-Baeda the Venerable, in his “Chronicle of the English People,” records

-that the plague also reached England.

-<span class="pagenum" id="Page_85">[Pg 85]</span></p>

-

-<p class="f120"><b>607</b></p>

-

-<p class="drop-cap"><span class="smcap">All</span>

-Europe and the former Roman Empire were in such dire confusion

-during this period that no records of this year, either astronomic

-or historical, have come down to us. Messrs. Cowell and Crommelin,

-however, have computed astronomically that the Comet must have appeared

-during this year. All we know is that Italy and the Latin World were

-overrun by ravaging Slavonian hordes from Hungary, who made all the

-country run with blood.</p>

-

-<p class="f120"><b>530</b></p>

-

-<p class="drop-cap"><span class="smcap">Of the</span> Comet this year,

-likewise, there is no astronomic record. All we know is that the

-appearance of a Comet is noted in European chronicles. It was followed

-by a virulent outbreak of the black plague.</p>

-

-<p>In the legendary history of Merlin, the ancient British seer, it is

-stated that on the appearance of a Comet this year he prophesied that

-Uter, brother of Ambrosius, on the death of the latter, should rule the

-kingdom; that a ray from the Comet which pointed toward Gaul presaged

-a son who should be born to him and who should be great in power; and

-that the ray “that goes toward Ireland represents a daughter, of whom

-thou shalt be the father, and her sons and grandsons shall reign over

-all the Britons.” These prophecies all came true.</p>

-

-<p class="f120"><b>451</b></p>

-

-<p class="drop-cap"><span class="smcap">The</span> Comet which appeared

-over Europe this year has been proven by Laugier to have been Halley’s Comet.

-<span class="pagenum" id="Page_86">[Pg 86]</span></p>

-

-<p>It was seen in France just before the monster battle on the Catalaunian

-Fields (Châlons-sur-Marne), when Aetius, the last of the Romans,

-together with King Theoderic and his Goths, stemmed the tide of Hunnish

-invasion led by Attila, the “Scourge of God.”</p>

-

-<p>Theoderic, together with 148,000 warriors on both sides, were slain in

-this tremendous fight, which alone saved Europe from Tartar savagery.</p>

-

-<p class="f120"><b>373</b></p>

-

-<p class="drop-cap"><span class="smcap">Chinese</span>

-annals of this year record a Comet seen in the northern

-constellation of Ophiuchus in October. This year marks the beginning

-of the tremendous migration of peoples, which started in Mongolia and

-Tartary, and crossing the Volga gradually overflowed all the known

-world, like a huge human deluge.</p>

-

-<p class="f120"><b>295</b></p>

-

-<p class="drop-cap"><span class="smcap">The</span> appearance of a

-Comet this year (identified by Hind with Halley’s) was followed by

-a bloody rebellion of the ancient Britons against the Romans, and

-by another rebellion against Rome by the Egyptians. These patriotic

-uprisings of the people were suppressed with fire and sword and both

-countries ran with blood.</p>

-

-<p class="f120"><b>218</b></p>

-

-<p class="drop-cap"><span class="smcap">The</span>

-Chinese catalogue of Ma-tuan-lin records a Comet with a path

-exactly analogous with the orbit of Halley’s Comet computed for that

-year by Hind. In the Chinese record the Comet is described as “pointed

-and bright.” Its coming was connected with the death of Emperor Ween-te

-directly afterward, and the Civil Wars between various claimants to the

-throne of the Celestial Empire, which then rent China asunder.

-<span class="pagenum" id="Page_87">[Pg 87]</span></p>

-

-<p>Dion Cassius, the Roman historian, describes the Comet of this year as

-“a very fearful star with a tail stretching from the West towards the East.”</p>

-

-<p>The Roman augurs explained the Comet as a portent of the bloody death

-of Emperor Macrinus of Rome, who was murdered by his own soldiers on

-the night after the disappearance of the Comet.</p>

-

-<p class="f120"><b>141</b></p>

-

-<p class="drop-cap"><span class="smcap">In this</span>

-year the Chinese astronomers recorded a Comet in March and

-April (the time computed for Halley’s Comet), which they described as

-“a star six or seven cubits long and of a bluish-white colour.” The

-coming of the Comet was followed by a virulent outbreak of the plague

-in China and the Far East, which spread all over the known world. So

-virulent was this pestilence that in the City of Naples alone 400,000

-people died of the disease.</p>

-

-<p class="f120"><b>65-66</b></p>

-

-<p class="drop-cap"><span class="smcap">Halley’s</span>

-Comet, according to astronomic calculations, must have made

-its reappearance during the winter months of 65-66 A. D. The Chinese

-have recorded “two Comets,” one in 65, which was seen for fifty-six

-days, and “the other” in February, 66, which remained visible fifty days.</p>

-

-<p>This was the Comet which St. Peter and Josephus saw over the City of

-Jerusalem, before the fall of the Holy City. Josephus wrote of it:

-“Amongst other warnings, a Comet, of the kind called Xiphias, because

-their tails appear to represent the blade of a sword, was seen above

-the doomed city for the space of nearly a whole year.”

-<span class="pagenum" id="Page_88">[Pg 88]</span></p>

-

-<p>Jerusalem was ravaged by pestilence and famine and soon afterward was

-stormed by the Roman soldiery led by Titus. The Temple was burned down

-and the streets of the Holy City ran with blood. It was the end of

-Jerusalem and of the Jews as a free city and people.</p>

-

-<p class="f120"><b>B. C. 11</b></p>

-

-<p class="drop-cap"><span class="smcap">This</span>

-is the farthest back that the appearances of Halley’s Comet

-have been traced in history. For earlier appearances there are no

-sufficiently trustworthy computations or records.</p>

-

-<p>Dion Cassius in his “History of Rome” has recorded “a Comet which hung

-suspended over the City of Rome just before the death of Agrippa,” who

-ruled over the Roman Empire during the absence of Augustus in Greece

-and Asia. Agrippa was so universally beloved, and his death was held to

-be such a loss to Rome that he was buried with imperial honours in the

-tomb intended for Augustus.</p>

-

-<p>The death of Agrippa occurred in the year 12, shortly after the

-disappearance of the Comet which Hind has identified with Halley’s.</p>

-

-<hr class="tb" />

-

-<p class="drop-cap"><span class="smcap">This</span> completes the

-record of all the known appearances of Halley’s Comet. The record fully

-justifies Chambers’ dictum, that the “Comet known as Halley’s is by far

-the most interesting of all the Comets recorded in history.”</p>

-

-<p>This historic record also appears to justify in no small measure the

-popular beliefs of the last two thousand years concerning Comets, as

-expressed by Leonard Digges in his book on Prognostics, published 350

-years ago:

-<span class="pagenum" id="Page_89">[Pg 89]</span></p>

-

-<p class="blockquot">“Cometes signifie corruption of the ayre. They

-are signs of earthquakes, of warres, of changying of Kyngdomes,

-great dearth of food, yea a common death of man and beast from

-pestilence.”</p>

-

-<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" />

-

-<div class="chapter">

-<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_90">[Pg 90]</span></p>

-<h2 class="nobreak">THE STORY OF EDMUND HALLEY</h2>

-</div>

-

-<p class="drop-cap"><span class="smcap">The</span> great French

-astronomer Lalande considered Halley the greatest astronomer of his

-time. This opinion is still held. Halley’s “time” means the age of

-Kepler, Sir Isaac Newton, Flamsteed, Hevelius, and Leibnitz, all of

-whom achieved first rank in Astronomy.</p>

-

-<p>Halley’s greatest achievement in Astronomy was the discovery that our

-solar system was but an atom in immeasurable space whence wandering

-stars could be caught within the influence of our Sun, our Earth and

-the other Planets swinging around our Sun.</p>

-

-<p>Halley was the first to discover and to prove that the Comets that come

-within the vision of man have fixed periods of return. He made this

-discovery during the appearance of the great Comet of 1682, which has

-since been known by his name.</p>

-

-<p>In his studies of the motions of Comets, of which Halley computed the

-orbits of twenty-four, he observed that a Comet of similar phenomena,

-recorded by Appian in 1531 and by Kepler in 1607, had swung through the

-same orbit as the Comet under his observation in 1682. Halley surmised

-from this that these Comets might be one and the same, whose intervals

-of return appeared to cover a period of seventy-five or seventy-six

-years. Halley’s surmise seemed to be confirmed by the recorded

-appearance of similar bright Comets in the years 1456, 1378, and 1301,

-the intervals again being seventy-five or seventy-six years.</p>

-

-<p>Halley was deeply imbued with Newton’s new discovery of gravitation,

-for the publication of which Halley paid the expenses, so he brought

-<span class="pagenum" id="Page_91">[Pg 91]</span>

-the principles of Newton’s theory of gravitation to bear on his own new

-theory of the motions of Comets. He rightly conjectured that Comets

-were drawn to our Sun across the disturbing orbits of our planetary

-system, and that the comparatively small differences of one or two

-years in the recorded intervals of this one Comet (Halley’s Comet) were

-due to the attraction of the larger planets.</p>

-

-<p>During the previous year, 1681, Halley computed that the Comet had

-passed near the planet Jupiter, the attraction of which must have had a

-considerable influence on the Comet’s motion. Making due allowance for

-this disturbing influence of Jupiter, he computed that the Comet would

-return to the vicinity of our Sun about the end of 1758 or beginning of 1759.</p>

-

-<p>Halley did not live to see his prediction fulfilled (he died in 1742),

-but he wrote shortly before he died: “If this Comet should return

-according to our predictions about the year 1758, impartial posterity

-will not refuse to acknowledge that this was first discovered by an

-Englishman.”</p>

-

-<p>All through the year 1758 the most noted astronomers of Europe were

-on the lookout for the return of the predicted Comet. One of these

-astronomers, Messier, looked for it through his telescope at the Paris

-Observatory every night from sunset to sunrise throughout that whole

-year. On Christmas night, 1758, the Comet was first seen by a German

-peasant near Dresden, who had heard about the Comet and was looking

-for it. He was a man of unusually good eyesight, yet his discovery was

-doubted until Messier, nearly a month afterward, at Paris, “picked up”

-the Comet with his telescope.</p>

-

-<p>From that time forth this Comet, which returned in 1835, and is

-reappearing in this year (1910), has been known as Halley’s Comet.

-<span class="pagenum" id="Page_92">[Pg 92]</span></p>

-

-<div id="I092" class="figcenter">

-  <img  src="images/i_092.jpg" alt="" width="450" height="623" />

-  <p class="center">EDMUND HALLEY.</p>

-</div>

-

-<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_93">[Pg 93]</span>

-Besides this achievement, Halley accomplished many other noteworthy

-feats in astronomy, such as his discovery of the proper motions of the

-fixed stars; his detection of the “long inequality” of Jupiter and

-Saturn, and of the acceleration of the moon’s mean motion; his theory

-of variation, including the hypothesis of various magnetic poles, with

-his suggestion of the magnetic origin of the aurora borealis; and his

-indication of a method still used for determining the solar parallax by

-means of the transits of Venus.</p>

-

-<p>On the strength of these achievements, Halley for many years was

-elected to serve as secretary to the Royal Society. Commissioned as a

-Captain in the Royal Navy, he also commanded a vessel on a long cruise

-of exploration, and late in life he was made Astronomer Royal.</p>

-

-<p>Although in his sixty-fourth year, he then undertook to observe the

-moon through an entire revolution of her nodes (eighteen years), and

-actually carried out his purpose. To appreciate the full significance

-of so painstaking an achievement it should be borne in mind that

-astronomical observations must be made in a temperature equal to that

-of the open air. Observatories cannot be heated because the heat would

-impair the accuracy of the instruments.</p>

-

-<p>Great astronomers, like poets, are born, not made. Edmund Halley was

-one of these. At the age of seventeen he had already observed the

-change in the variations of the compass. At nineteen he was recognized

-as an astronomer of reputation, having supplied a new and improved

-method of determining the elements of the planetary orbits. His

-detection of considerable errors in the tables then in use led him to

-the conclusion that a more accurate determination of the places of the

-<span class="pagenum" id="Page_94">[Pg 94]</span>

-fixed Stars was indispensable to the progress of astronomy. With this

-end in view he set out on a voyage to the other side of the globe, St.

-Helena, where he undertook the task of making complete new observations

-of the entire Southern Hemisphere. Though the Heavens proved clouded

-he succeeded within two years in registering three hundred and sixty

-stars, a colossal achievement which won for him the title of the

-“Southern Tycho.” This was when Halley was barely of age.</p>

-

-<p>(The famous astronomer Tycho Brahe, long before this had won his fame

-by mapping the stars of the Northern Heavens.)</p>

-

-<p>No one could well have begun with prospects more remote from so high a

-career, for Edmund Halley was born in 1656, the son of a soap boiler

-in a shabby London suburb. From the refuse of rancid fat and lye the

-boy was rescued by friends, who procured for him a scholarship at Saint

-Paul’s school. By his brilliant attainments in mathematics he won

-another scholarship to Oxford University.</p>

-

-<p>While at Oxford the youth published a treatise on the planetary orbits

-and argued the Sun’s axial rotation.</p>

-

-<p>On his graduation from Oxford, the young would-be astronomer conceived

-the project of turning his attention to the southern Stars, of which

-no good observations had been made. Shortly before this time a Dutch

-astronomer, named Houtman, had observed these Stars in the island of

-Sumatra; and Blaeu, the best globe maker of the age, had used these

-new observations in the correction of his celestial globes. Halley, on

-examining these corrections, came to the conclusion that he himself

-could do better. He also concluded that the Island of St. Helena might

-be a better point for southern observations. His father, unable to pay

-the expenses of so long a trip, broached the project to some friends.

-<span class="pagenum" id="Page_95">[Pg 95]</span>

-The young astronomer was recommended to King Charles II. by Williamson

-and Jones Moore, and the King in turn recommended the youth to the

-Indian Company, which then had control over the island of St. Helena.</p>

-

-<p>After this all was plain sailing. The India Company placed a ship

-at his disposition and promised him all the assistance he required.

-Young Halley provided himself with telescopes, and micrometers, and

-other instruments of the latest approved pattern. In November, 1666,

-at the age of twenty, he sailed for St. Helena. Among his luggage was

-a sextant of five and a half feet and a telescope twenty-four feet in

-length constructed under the supervision of Flamsteed, the Astronomer

-Royal.</p>

-

-<p>Halley was disappointed in the climate of St. Helena. Frequent rains

-and a constantly hazy sky scarcely permitted any observations in the

-months of August and September. Notwithstanding these difficulties, he

-succeeded in observing and cataloguing some 360 Stars.</p>

-

-<p>In addition to his work on the Stars, Halley made some investigations

-on the Moon’s parallax, combining his observations at St. Helena

-with those made in northern skies. He also evolved a new theory of

-the Moon’s motion, which proved of great aid in the determination of

-longitudes.</p>

-

-<p>On November 7, 1677, Halley observed a transit of Mercury which

-suggested to him the important idea of employing similar phenomena for

-the calculation of the Sun’s distance.</p>

-

-<p>Halley returned to England in November, 1678, and was hailed by his

-fellow astronomers as the “Southern Tycho.” He was elected a fellow of

-the Royal Society, and by the King’s command the degree of Master of

-Arts was conferred upon him by the University of Oxford.

-<span class="pagenum" id="Page_96">[Pg 96]</span></p>

-

-<p>Six months later Halley set out for Dantsic for a personal conference

-with Hevelius, the Polish astronomer. Halley wanted to satisfy himself

-as to the accuracy of observations claimed by Hevelius without the

-aid of a telescope. Halley convinced himself that the errors of the

-observations made by Hevelius were less than had been supposed, and did

-not exceed a minute of an arc. The two became life-long friends. Halley

-proceeded to other cities of Europe where there were observatories. In

-Paris he observed with Cassini the great Comet of 1680. This was the

-beginning of Halley’s special study of Comets.</p>

-

-<p>Returning to England, the young astronomer married the daughter of

-Mr. Tooke, auditor of the Exchequer, with whom he lived harmoniously

-until her death, fifty-five years later. The young couple settled at

-Islington, where Halley erected an observatory of his own and engaged

-in constant lunar observations with a view toward finding a method for

-computing longitudes at sea.</p>

-

-<p>Halley’s mind at the same time was busy with the momentous problem of

-gravity, upon which Isaac Newton was working then. Independently of

-Newton, Halley reached the conclusion that the central force of the

-Solar System must decrease inversely as the square of the distance.

-Having applied vainly to his fellow astronomers, Hooke and Wren, Halley

-in August, 1684, made a special journey to Cambridge to consult Isaac

-Newton, who confirmed his conjectures.</p>

-

-<p>Halley and Newton became life-long friends. Halley had Newton elected

-to the Royal Society, and when Newton became too poor to pay his

-quarterly dues, Halley, through his influence with the leading members

-<span class="pagenum" id="Page_97">[Pg 97]</span>

-of the Society, had them remitted. It was Halley who encouraged Newton

-to put his momentous discovery and elucidation of the forces of gravity

-into permanent form in his “Principia,” the first volume of which, “De

-Motu,” was presented to the Royal Society at Halley’s suggestion.</p>

-

-<p>In the proceedings of the Royal Society for December, 1684, there is an

-entry that “Mr. Halley had lately seen Mr. Newton at Cambridge, who had

-told him of a curious treatise ‘De Motu,’ which at Mr. Halley’s desire

-he promised to send to the Society to be entered upon their register.

-Mr. Halley was desired to put Mr. Newton in mind of his promise for the

-securing this invention to himself, till such time as he could be at

-leisure to publish it.”</p>

-

-<p>Early in the following year Newton sent his treatise to the Society, to

-whom it was read aloud by Halley. This treatise “De Motu” was the germ

-of the “Principia” and was intended to be a short account of what the

-greater work was to embrace.</p>

-

-<p>During the next two years Newton was hard at work on his “Principia,”

-while Halley was equally hard at work on his computations of the Comet

-of 1682, and on his theory of the orbits and the periodical returns of

-Comets which grew out of his observations.</p>

-

-<p>On April 21, 1686, Halley read to the Royal Society his own “Discourse

-Concerning Gravity and its Properties,” in which he stated that his

-“worthy countryman, Mr. Issac Newton, has an incomparable treatise on

-Motion almost ready for the press,” and that the law of the inverse

-square “is the principle on which Mr. Newton has made out all the

-phenomena of the celestial motions so easily and naturally that its

-truth is past dispute.”

-<span class="pagenum" id="Page_98">[Pg 98]</span></p>

-

-<p>Shortly afterward Newton sent in the manuscript of his great work.

-The Society voted “that a letter of thanks be written to Mr. Newton and

-that the printing of his book be referred to the consideration of the

-council and that in the meantime the book be put into the hands of Mr.

-Halley.”</p>

-

-<p>The truth was that the Royal Society, at that time, did not have money

-enough to print the book. The Society went through the empty form of

-“ordering” that the book be printed “forthwith,” but no printer was

-forthcoming until Halley himself undertook the publication of the great

-work at his own expense.</p>

-

-<p>The delicacy of Halley’s feeling is revealed by his correspondence with

-Newton, in which he informed Newton that the book had “been ordered

-to be printed at the Society’s charge.” The preliminary delay about

-printing he explained to Newton “arose from the President’s attendance

-on the King, and the absence of the vice-presidents, whom the good

-weather had drawn out of town.”</p>

-

-<p>Later Newton came to realize how much he owed to Halley in this matter.

-In his letters to Halley henceforth he always referred to his book

-as if it had been Halley’s book. When the great work was finished at

-last Newton wrote to Halley under the date of July 5, 1687: “I have at

-length brought your book to an end, and hope it will please you.”</p>

-

-<p>The finished work contained a note to this effect: “The inverse law

-of gravity holds in all the celestial motions, as was discovered also

-independently by my countrymen Wren, Hooke, and Halley.”</p>

-

-<p>The book was dedicated to the Royal Society, and to it was prefixed a

-set of Latin hexameters addressed by Halley to the author, ending with

-the well known line:

-<span class="pagenum" id="Page_99">[Pg 99]</span></p>

-

-<div class="poetry-container">

-<div class="poetry">

-  <div class="stanza">

-    <div class="verse indent0">“Nec fac est propius mortali attingere divos.”</div>

-  </div>  <div class="stanza">

-    <div class="verse indent0">(“It is not given to a mortal to get in closer</div>

-    <div class="verse indent2">touch with the gods.”)</div>

-  </div>

-</div>

-</div>

-

-<p>Halley was fifty years old when he made his famous prediction of

-the return of the Comet of 1682. This was in his “Synopsis of Comet

-Astronomy,” which ended with these words: “Hence I may venture to

-foretell that this Comet will return again in the year 1758.”</p>

-

-<p>Besides being an astronomer of the first class, Halley was also a good

-navigator. In 1698 he was commissioned a captain in the Royal Navy

-and was put in command of the King’s ship, “The Paramour Pink.” With

-this vessel he set out on a long cruise to the Pacific for the purpose

-of making observations on the laws which govern magnetic variations.

-This task he accomplished in a voyage which lasted two years and

-extended to the fifty-second degree of southern latitude, when the ice

-compelled him to turn back. On the return voyage his crew mutinied and

-his lieutenant sided with the mutineers. Halley quelled the mutiny by

-sheer force of personality, and returning to England got rid of his

-lieutenant. The results of his voyage were published in his “General

-Chart of the Variation of the Compass” in 1701. Immediately afterwards

-Halley set out on another King’s ship and executed by royal command

-a careful survey of the tides and coasts of the British Channel, an

-elaborate chart of which he published in 1702.</p>

-

-<p>Next Halley was sent by the King to Dalmatia, for the purpose of

-selecting and fortifying the port of Trieste.</p>

-

-<p>On Halley’s return to England, he was made Savilian professor of

-geometry at Oxford, and received an honorary doctor’s degree. He filled

-<span class="pagenum" id="Page_100">[Pg 100]</span>

-two terms of eight years each as secretary to the Royal Society, and

-early in 1720 he succeeded Flamsteed as Astronomer Royal.</p>

-

-<p>He died on January 14, 1742, at the age of eighty-five in the full

-possession of his faculties, the foremost astronomer of the day and a

-man universally beloved and respected. His gravestone stands at the

-Greenwich Observatory.</p>

-

-<p>Halley’s works fill several shelves in the library of the Royal

-Society. His fame is kept green by the periodical return of the

-wandering star known by his name.</p>

-<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" />

-

-<div class="chapter">

-<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_101">[Pg 101]</span></p>

-<h2 class="nobreak">WHAT ARE COMETS?</h2>

-</div>

-

-<p class="drop-cap"><span class="smcap">The</span> modern answer

-to the question “What are Comets made of?” is this:</p>

-

-<p>Probably the heads are a mixture of solid and gaseous matter. The tails

-are gaseous&mdash;the result of the volatilisation of the solid matter of

-the heads.</p>

-

-<p>The spectroscope shows that gases appear to be a constituent of all

-Comets. The spectra of Comets are very similar to those of a Bunsen

-flame. Recent spectroscopic photographs have revealed the presence of

-hydrocarbons, nitro-carbons, of cyanogen and of the vapours of sodium,

-iron and other metals.</p>

-

-<p>The connection between Comets and Meteors implies the presence in

-Comets of solid matter. A modern theory, voiced by Schiaparelli, is

-that meteor showers are broken up Comets.</p>

-

-<p>The tails of Comets appear to be composed of luminous gases ejected

-from the head of the Comet through a solar force held to be “Light

-Pressure,” which causes these tails to shoot off and disperse into

-space at the rate of 865,000 miles an hour.</p>

-

-<p>The length of some Comets’ tails has been estimated at 125,000,000

-miles, while the Comets’ heads themselves are generally much larger in

-size than our Earth. Halley’s Comet is more than ten-fold the size of

-our Earth.</p>

-

-<p>E. W. Maunder, of the Royal Observatory of Greenwich, a modern

-astronomer, has thus summarized the latest theories of the substance of

-Comets:</p>

-

-<p>“Though the bulk of comets is huge, they contain extraordinarily little

-<span class="pagenum" id="Page_102">[Pg 102]</span>

-substance. Their heads must contain some solid matter, but it is

-probably in the form of a loose aggregation of stones enveloped in

-vaporous material. There is some reason to suppose that Comets are apt

-to shed some of these stones as they travel along their paths, for the

-orbits of the meteors that cause some of our greatest ‘star showers’

-are coincident with the paths of Comets that have been observed. But it

-is not only by shedding its loose stones that a Comet diminishes its

-bulk; it loses also through its tail. As the Comet gets close to the

-Sun its head becomes heated, and throws off concentric envelopes, much

-of which consists of matter in an extremely fine station of division.”</p>

-

-<p>The orbits of Comets visible to human eyes are all governed by the Sun.

-In the words of C. L. Poor: “The attraction of the Sun is to the Comet

-like the flame to the moth. The Comet flutters for a moment about the

-Sun, and then swings back into outward space. But not unscathed; like

-the moth, the Comet has been singed. The fierce light of the Sun has

-beaten upon it, and spread out its particles and scattered them along

-its path.”</p>

-

-<p>As a comet swings toward and away from the Sun, it travels at a

-tremendous rate of speed&mdash;over a million miles an hour. The distance

-covered from one end of the orbit to the other is 3,370,000,000 miles.</p>

-

-<p>The great majority of Comets appear to travel in parabolas, open curves

-leading from infinite space to and around the Sun, and thence back into

-infinite space to some other fixed star invisible to us. As a matter

-of fact, though, the parabolic curves of Comets’ orbits through the

-gravitational attraction of the planets, whose orbits are crossed by

-it, may be changed into hyperbolic curves and ellipses by planetary

-perturbations. Hence the differences in time between the returns of

-certain Comets, like Halley’s, for instance.

-<span class="pagenum" id="Page_103">[Pg 103]</span></p>

-

-<div class="figcontainer">

-  <div class="figsub">

-   <img id="I103A" src="images/i_103a.jpg" alt="" width="250" height="697" />

-   <p class="center">RELATIVE SIZES OF THE EARTH,<br />

-            THE MOON’S ORBIT AND<br />HALLEY’S COMET.</p>

-  </div>

-  <div class="figsub">

-   <img  id="I103B" src="images/i_103b.jpg" alt="" width="225" height="689" />

-   <p class="center">ORBIT OF HALLEY’S COMET.<br />THE TAIL ALWAYS POINTS<br />

-            AWAY FROM THE SUN.</p>

-   </div>

-</div>

-

-<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_104">[Pg 104]</span>

-In a general way, it may be said that every Comet comprises a nucleus,

-an envelope (called the “coma”) surrounding the nucleus and measuring

-from 20,000 to 1,000,000 miles in diameter, and a long tail which streams

-behind the nucleus from sixty to a hundred million miles or more.</p>

-

-<p>Astronomers have decided that the nucleus is probably a heap of

-meteorites varying in size from a grain to masses weighing several

-tons each; a heap, moreover, so easily sundered that its elements are

-distributed gradually along the orbit. It follows that every Comet must

-eventually perish unless it restores its nucleus by collecting stray

-meteors. That disintegration does occur has been observed time and time again.</p>

-

-<p>For example, Biela’s Comet, which was discovered in 1826, burst into

-two fragments, which drifted apart a distance of one million miles.

-Thus it became a twin Comet. Eventually it disappeared as a Comet, and

-in its stead we see a shoal of meteors whenever we cross its track

-every six and a half years.</p>

-

-<p>It is possible that the Comets of 1668, 1843, 1880, 1882 and 1887, all

-travelling in approximately the same path, are fragments of a single

-large body which was broken up by the gravitational action of other

-bodies in the system, or through violent encounter with the Sun’s

-surroundings.</p>

-

-<p>The luminous tail which streams behind the nucleus, which Shakespeare

-described so beautifully as “crystal tresses,” is startling, to say the

-least. Despite a length which may exceed a hundred million miles, it

-is so diaphanously light and subtle that it is difficult to compare it

-with any earthly fabric. The air that we breathe is a dense blanket in

-comparison. Several hundred cubic miles of the matter composing that

-<span class="pagenum" id="Page_105">[Pg 105]</span>

-wonderful luminous plume would not outweigh a jarful of air. By reason

-of its fairy lightness, it is possible for a tail occupying a volume

-thousands of times greater than the sun to sweep through our solar

-system without causing any perturbations in planetary movements.</p>

-

-<p>No celestial phenomenon has caused more perplexity than the ghostly

-sheaf of light we call a Comet’s tail. In a day, in a few hours even,

-the form of that wonderful gossamer may change. Hence it is that

-periodic Comets are identified when they return, not by the length and

-arch of their tails, but by their orbits. These alone are permanent.</p>

-

-<p>When a Comet is first seen in the telescope, it appears as a diminutive

-filmy patch, often unadorned by any tail. As it travels on toward the

-Sun, at a speed compared with which a modern rifle bullet would seem to

-crawl, violent eruptions occur in the nucleus.</p>

-

-<p>The ejected matter is bent back to form the cloak called the “coma.”

-With a nearer approach to the sun, the tail begins to sprout,

-increasing in size and brightness as it proceeds. Evidently there is

-some connection between the Sun and the tail, something akin to cause

-and effect.</p>

-

-<p>When the Comet rushes on toward the Sun, invariably the tail drifts

-behind the nucleus like the smoke from a locomotive. But when the Comet

-swings around the Sun and travels away from it, a startling change

-takes place. The tail no longer trails behind, but projects in front as

-if some mighty solar wind were blowing it in advance of the head.</p>

-

-<p>This phenomenon has long been an astronomical riddle. Here was a kind

-of matter that refused to obey the laws of gravitation and yield to the

-enormous pull of the Sun.

-<span class="pagenum" id="Page_106">[Pg 106]</span></p>

-

-<div id="I106" class="figcenter">

-  <img  src="images/i_106.jpg" alt="" width="400" height="638" />

-  <p class="center">OCTOBER 5.&nbsp;&emsp;&nbsp;OCTOBER 9.<br /> DONATI’S COMET OF 1858.</p>

-</div>

-

-<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_107">[Pg 107]</span>

-It was thought for a time that the tail was flung away from the Sun by

-stupendous repelling electrical forces. That electricity plays its part

-in the formation of the fairy plume is conceivable, and even probable;

-but recently the physicist has discovered a new source of repellent

-energy which very plausibly explains the mystery of a Comet’s tail.</p>

-

-<p>This new source of energy is nothing less than the pressure or push of

-the Sun’s light. Solar gravitation is a force more powerful than we can

-realize. If it were possible for us to live on the Sun, we would find

-ourselves pulled down so violently that our body would weigh two tons.

-Our clothing alone would weigh more than one hundred pounds. Running

-would be a very difficult athletic feat. Light-pressure must indeed be

-powerful if it can conquer so relentless a force.</p>

-

-<p>Because we have never seen objects torn from our hands by the pressure

-of light, it may be inferred that this newly discovered force affects

-only bodies that are invisibly small. With the aid of instruments that

-feel what our hands can never feel and see what our eyes can never see,

-the modern physicist has critically analyzed the radiation that beats

-upon the earth from the distant Sun.</p>

-

-<p>Light really does sway infinitely small particles, as was first

-experimentally proved by the Russian Lebedev. Two American astronomers,

-Nichols and Hull, improved upon his method. They cast the solar

-effulgence into mighty mathematical scales and found that the earth

-sustains a light-load of no less than 75,000 tons.</p>

-

-<p>Most city-bred people are familiar with the so-called “Sun

-Motors”&mdash;little mills with black and white wings, enclosed in airtight

-vessels, which spin around in “perpetual motion” under the effect of

-“Sun Pressure.”

-<span class="pagenum" id="Page_108">[Pg 108]</span></p>

-

-<p>It remained for the broad mind of a Swedish physicist, Svante

-Arrhenius, to apply the principle of light-pressure cosmically. He

-explained, very simply, that because a Comet’s tail is composed of a

-very fine dust it can easily be driven away from the Sun by radiation

-pressure.</p>

-

-<p>To understand how it is possible for so immaterial a thing as a sunbeam

-to produce so huge an effect, we have only to take a very simple

-example.</p>

-

-<p>Assume that you have before you a block of wood weighing one pound. The

-block exposes a certain amount of surface to the Sun’s light. Saw the

-block in half, and you increase the amount of that surface. Divide each

-half again into half, and the exposed surface is further augmented. If

-this process of subdivision is carried on far enough, the block will be

-reduced to sawdust.</p>

-

-<p>The entire mass of sawdust still weighs one pound; but its surface has

-been vastly enlarged. Indeed, the particles of sawdust, individually

-considered, may be said to consist of much surface and very little

-weight. If it were possible to take each granule of visible sawdust

-and subdivide it into invisible particles, a point would be reached

-where the pressure of light would exactly counterbalance the pull of

-gravitation, so that the particles would remain suspended in space,

-perfectly balanced in the scale of opposing cosmic forces.</p>

-

-<p>Finally, if the subdivision be continued beyond this critical point,

-the particles will be wrenched away from the grip of gravitation and

-hurled out into space by the pressure of light.</p>

-

-<p>So much has been discovered about the particles that compose a Comet’s

-tail that the more progressive scientists of our day have accepted this

-ingenious theory. Thus it has been decided by them that the delicate

-tresses of a Comet are to a large extent composed of fine particles of

-dust and soot.

-<span class="pagenum" id="Page_109">[Pg 109]</span></p>

-

-<div id="I109" class="figcontainer">

-  <div class="figsub">

-   <img src="images/i_109a.jpg" alt="" width="250" height="240" />

-   <p class="f120">June 26.</p>

-  </div>

-  <div class="figsub">

-   <img src="images/i_109b.jpg" alt="" width="250" height="233" />

-   <p class="f120">June 28.</p>

-   </div>

-</div>

-

-<div class="figcontainer">

-  <div class="figsub">

-   <img src="images/i_109c.jpg" alt="" width="250" height="230" />

-   <p class="f120">June 30.</p>

-  </div>

-  <div class="figsub">

-   <img src="images/i_109d.jpg" alt="" width="250" height="225" />

-   <p class="f120">July 1.</p>

-   </div>

-</div>

-

-<div class="figcontainer">

-  <div class="figsub">

-   <img src="images/i_109e.jpg" alt="" width="250" height="228" />

-   <p class="f120">July 6.</p>

-  </div>

-  <div class="figsub">

-   <img src="images/i_109f.jpg" alt="" width="250" height="229" />

-   <p class="f120">July 8.</p>

-   </div>

-   <p class="f120 space-below2">CHANGES IN THE COMET OF 1863.</p>

-</div>

-

-<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_110">[Pg 110]</span>

-Before we can completely accept the view that light-pressure forms

-this train of soot we must ascertain whether the pressure of light is

-capable of accounting for the flash-like rapidity with which a Comet’s

-tail changes.</p>

-

-<p>A Comet may throw out a tail sixty million miles long in two days. Is

-it actually possible for light-pressure to accomplish that astonishing

-feat? Arrhenius has computed that 865,000 miles an hour is the speed

-of a light-flung particle of one-half the critical diameter. Because

-they are only one-eighteenth as large as this particle of critical

-diameter, the dust grains in a Comet’s tail would be propelled over the

-same 865,000 miles in less than four minutes. It follows that the solar

-radiation is amply strong enough to toss out a tail of sixty million

-miles in two days.</p>

-

-<p>Photography in the hands of Prof. E. E. Barnard, of the Yerkes

-Observatory, has revealed some extraordinary changes in Comets’ tails,

-changes which are not apparent to the eye and which cannot be explained

-by light-pressure or by solar electrical forces. He has collected a

-formidable mass of photographic evidence which seems to show that

-there are other influences at work besides the Sun’s radiation, and

-that these influences manifest themselves in distorting and breaking a

-Comet’s tail. In some Comets of recent years, streams of matter have

-been shot out in large angles to the main direction of the tail without

-being at all bent by the pressure of light. In Morehouse’s Comet of

-1908, tails were repeatedly formed and discarded to drift bodily out

-into space and melt away. Sometimes the photographic plate has shown

-the tail twisted like a corkscrew and sometimes it has revealed masses

-of matter at some distance from the head, where apparently no supply

-had reached it. At one time the entire tail of Morehouse’s Comet was

-<span class="pagenum" id="Page_111">[Pg 111]</span>

-thrown violently forward, a peculiarity so utterly opposed to the laws

-of gravitation that Professor Barnard suspects some unknown force at

-work in planetary space besides a force which undoubtedly resides

-in the Comet itself. If Halley’s Comet serves no other purpose than

-to throw light upon this mystery, its return will more than repay

-astronomers for all their observatory vigils.</p>

-

-<p>From the fact that the matter is ejected from the head to form the

-tail, it would follow that, unless it has the means of rejuvenating

-itself, a comet must eventually be disintegrated. Instances of this

-fragmentation and, eventual disappearance of a Comet are not wanting in

-astronomical annals. It has been stated previously that when Biela’s

-Comet appeared in 1846 it became distorted and elongated, that it

-eventually split up into two separate bodies, that in 1852 it again

-appeared in its double form, and that it has since disappeared.</p>

-

-<p>In a way, Comets may be said to bleed to death. At each return of

-Halley’s Comet, future astronomers will find it less brilliant than it

-was seventy-six or seventy-seven years before. Some time there will

-be no Halley’s Comet left, and the most famous Comet of its kind will

-be reduced to a shoal of meteors varying in weight from a few ounces

-to several tons and faithfully pursuing the orbit which their parent

-traced and retraced century after century.

-<span class="pagenum" id="Page_112">[Pg 112]</span></p>

-

-<div id="I112" class="figcenter">

-  <img  src="images/i_112.jpg" alt="" width="400" height="566" />

-  <p class="center">COGGIA’S COMET, 1874: ON JULY 13.</p>

-</div>

-

-<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" />

-

-<div class="chapter">

-<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_113">[Pg 113]</span></p>

-<h2 class="nobreak">THE PERIL OF THE COMET</h2>

-</div>

-

-<p class="drop-cap"><span class="smcap">It was</span> Edmund Halley who

-first revealed a source of danger from Comets, of which even medieval

-superstition had never dreamed.</p>

-

-<p>While he was patiently plotting out the orbit of the Comet of 1680,

-which had inspired no little dismay among his contemporaries, Halley

-found that the Earth’s orbit had been approached by the Comet within

-four thousand miles&mdash;half the diameter of the Earth.</p>

-

-<p>If the Earth had been struck by that fiery wanderer?</p>

-

-<p>None had ever thought of the possibility.</p>

-

-<p>Halley began to do some mathematical figuring, and decided that, if a

-Comet’s mass were comparable with that of the Earth, our year would

-have been changed in length because the Earth’s orbit would have been

-altered. He also speculated what would happen to the Earth, and reached

-this conclusion:</p>

-

-<p class="blockquot">“If so large a body with so rapid a motion were to

-strike the Earth&mdash;a thing by no means impossible&mdash;the shock

-might reduce this beautiful world to its original chaos.” </p>

-

-<p>Halley even thought it probable that the Earth had actually been struck

-by a Comet at some remote period, struck obliquely, moreover, so that

-the axis of rotation had been changed. Thus he was led to infer that

-possibly the North Pole had once been at a point near Hudson’s Bay, and

-that the rigour of North America’s climate might thus be accounted for.</p>

-

-<p>The seed which was thus sown by Halley has borne fruit. In Halley’s own

-<span class="pagenum" id="Page_114">[Pg 114]</span>

-time, learned men were brooding over the ultimate destruction of the

-Earth by collision with a Comet.</p>

-

-<p>Dr. Whiston, who succeeded Newton at Cambridge in the Lucasian chair of

-mathematics, was sure that a Comet caused the Deluge, and went so far

-as to prophesy that a Comet, as it passed us on its outward course from

-the Sun, would ultimately bring about a “General Conflagration,” and

-thus envelope the Earth in flames.</p>

-

-<p>One century after Halley, the French astronomer Laplace, whose

-mathematical attainments were surpassed only by those of Newton,

-applied his brilliant mind to the possibility of a collision with a

-Comet, and arrived at this conclusion:</p>

-

-<p class="blockquot">“The seas would abandon their ancient beds and

-rush towards the new equator, drowning in one universal deluge the

-greater part of the human race.... We see, then, in effect, why the

-ocean has receded from the high lands upon which we find incontestable

-marks of its sojourn; we see how the animals and plants of the south

-have been able to exist in the climate of the north, where their

-remains and imprints have been discovered.”</p>

-

-<p>The famous French mathematician Lalande showed that if a Comet as heavy

-as the Earth were to come within six times the distance of the Moon,

-it would exert such a powerful attraction upon the waters of the globe

-as to pull up a tidal wave 13,000 feet above the ordinary sea-level

-and inundate the continents Every European mountain would be submerged

-except Mt. Blanc, and only the inhabitants of the Rockies, the Andes

-and the Himalayas would escape death.</p>

-

-<p>Since Lalande’s day there has been more than one Comet “scare.” One

-of these startled Europe in 1832. On October 29th of that year, Biela’s

-Comet crossed the Earth’s orbit. The announcement was received with

-<span class="pagenum" id="Page_115">[Pg 115]</span>

-stupefaction. It was only when Arago soothingly pointed out that the

-Earth would not reach the exact point where the Comet had intersected

-the Earth’s orbit until November 30, at which time the Comet would be

-50,000,000 miles away, that the popular excitement subsided. A similar

-alarm seized the world in 1857. Some prophet declared that on June 13

-the world would collide with a certain periodic Comet having a period

-of revolution of three centuries. It is related that the churches

-and confessionals were crowded for days. Still another prediction,

-made in 1872 by Plantamour, the distinguished director of the Geneva

-Observatory, set Europe in a ferment. His calculations were based on

-errors, which were pointed out by other astronomers, and the public

-mind was quieted.</p>

-

-<p>Although more than two centuries have passed since Halley was in his

-prime, the possibility of a collision with some vagabond star still

-haunts the mind of the astronomer.</p>

-

-<p>That a collision is apt to occur is an admitted astronomic fact. The

-latest estimate, made in 1909 by Prof. William H. Pickering of Harvard

-University, would seem to prove that the core of one Comet in about

-100,000,000 Comets will hit the earth squarely. An encounter with some

-part of a Comet’s head will happen once in 4,000,000 years. Since

-Comets’ orbit are more thickly distributed near the ecliptic than else

-where in the celestial sphere, the collisions will occur according to

-Pickering, perhaps more frequently than this.</p>

-

-<p>Because Pickering’s figures differ from those other astronomers&mdash;Arago

-and Babinet, for instance&mdash;it must not be inferred that his

-predecessors are wrong and that he is right in his calculations. The

-<span class="pagenum" id="Page_116">[Pg 116]</span>

-problem is too complex for that. Pickering, Arago and Babinet differ

-partly because they have assumed different average sizes for their

-Comets, and partly because their definitions of visible Comets are not

-in accord.</p>

-

-<p>That the possibility is very real, we shall all have an opportunity of

-judging on May 18, 1910. On that date the Earth will be plunged in the

-tail of Halley’s Comet, and the head will be less than 15,000,000 miles

-away&mdash;a mere hand’s breadth in the vastness of the universe.</p>

-

-<p>What will happen?</p>

-

-<p>Nobody knows for certain.</p>

-

-<p>By means of the wonderful instrument called the spectroscope, an

-instrument which analyzes a distant star as readily as if it were a

-stone picked up in the road, it has been discovered that a Comet’s tail

-is composed of gases called “hydrocarbons” (combinations of hydrogen

-and carbon), and that it bears a close chemical resemblance to the blue

-flame of a kitchen gas-stove.</p>

-

-<p>Illuminating gas, as we all know, is poisonous. If a Comet’s tail were

-dense enough, it is conceivable, therefore, that every human being on

-this planet might be asphyxiated by breathing the Comet’s poisonous

-vapour as the Earth plowed through it. There is also this possibility,

-suggested by Flammarion, that the gases of a very dense tail might so

-combine with the nitrogen which constitutes nearly 80 per cent. of

-the air we breathe, that the atmosphere would be converted into the

-“laughing gas” employed by dentists. The world would die in a delirium

-of joy. At first a delightful serenity would settle upon mankind. Then

-would follow a contagious gaiety, febrile exaltation, a paroxysm of

-delight, and then madness. Flammarion even conceives the world merrily

-dancing a joyous, hysterical sarabande in which it perishes laughing.

-<span class="pagenum" id="Page_117">[Pg 117]</span></p>

-

-<p>The tail of a Comet is fraught with still other possible dangers. Our

-atmosphere contains a certain amount of hydrogen, a marvellously light

-gas to which balloons owe their buoyancy. Besides its lightness, this

-gas is characterized by an extreme inflammability. The law of the

-diffusion of gases teaches us that part of this hydrogen in the air

-is mechanically mixed with other gases, and that part of it probably

-floats in the upper air, far beyond the reach of any balloon. A Comet

-may be regarded as a huge lighted torch whirling through space, which

-may be brought dangerously near that upper layer of highly inflammable

-hydrogen. If the gas shall ever be touched off by this flying torch,

-our planet will be ignited. The whole atmosphere will become a seething

-ocean of flame, in which forests and cities will burn like straw, in

-which oceans will boil away in vast clouds of steam, and in which all

-animal life will be snuffed out of existence before it shall realize

-that the world is on fire. In a word, the globe will become a planetary

-funeral pyre. Since water results from burning hydrogen in oxygen,

-this same fierce and terrible flame must be speedily extinguished by

-a mighty deluge which will engulf the Earth.</p>

-

-<p>A spectroscope analysis of Halley’s Comet has furthermore revealed

-the presence of cyanogen gas in the tail. Cyanogen is a compound of

-nitrogen and carbon, one of the most poisonous compounds with which the

-chemist is familiar. Prussic acid, potassium cyanide and many other

-cyanides, all of them almost instantaneously fatal if taken into the

-human system, are compounds of cyanogen. If that gas is present in

-large enough quantities, one flick of a Comet’s tail will end all human

-and animal existence.</p>

-

-<p>So much is certain. A collision of the Earth with a Comet will

-<span class="pagenum" id="Page_118">[Pg 118]</span>

-undoubtedly prove disastrous&mdash;how disastrous will depend largely on

-the size of the Comet’s head and on its speed. That a violent heat will

-be developed, we have every reason to believe, from our knowledge of

-meteors. The mere movement of a meteor through the thin upper layers of

-our atmosphere produces a dazzling trail and reduces the meteor itself

-to a molten metallic mass. Arrest a body in swift motion, and you must

-dissipate its energy in some way. As a rule, the energy is converted

-into heat. A bullet discharged from a rifle is often melted when

-suddenly stopped by steel armour. A Comet travels at a pace compared

-with which a projectile, fired from the most powerful twelve-inch gun,

-seems only to crawl. What, then, must be the frightful effect when it

-strikes the Earth?</p>

-

-<p>A Comet rushes through space not at the bullet’s rate of thousands of

-feet an hour, but of a million miles an hour. The bigger it is, and the

-faster it moves, the greater will be the heat developed by its stoppage.</p>

-

-<p>“At the first contact with the upper regions of the atmosphere,” writes

-Prof. Simon Newcomb, “the whole heavens would be illuminated with a

-resplendence beyond that of a thousand Suns, the sky radiating a light

-which would blind every eye that beheld it, and a heat which would melt

-the hardest rocks.” The same conclusion was reached by Prof. Faye.</p>

-

-<p>When the time comes for a collision with a Comet of formidable size,

-the human race will be in the horrible predicament of knowing the exact

-hour and minute of its doom. The newspapers will print a dispatch from

-some great observatory, reading perhaps like this:</p>

-

-<p class="space-below2">“A telescopic Comet was discovered by Caxton in

-right ascension 7 hours 13 minutes 1 second, and declension 17 degrees

-28 minutes 31 seconds. Moderate motion in a northwest direction.”

-<span class="pagenum" id="Page_119">[Pg 119]</span></p>

-

-<div id="I119" class="figcenter">

-  <img  src="images/i_119.jpg" alt="" width="400" height="627" />

-  <p class="blockquot">“If so large a body with so rapid a motion were to

-strike the Earth&mdash;a thing by no means impossible&mdash;the

-shock would reduce this beautiful world to its original

-chaos.”</p>

-<p class="author space-below2">&mdash;<span class="smcap">Edmund Halley.</span></p>

-</div>

-

-<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_120">[Pg 120]</span>

-At first the discovery produces not even a ripple of excitement.

-Telescopic Comets are discovered too frequently. Three days later the

-discoverer has worked out an ephemeris, which gives the date when the

-body will pass around the Sun, and which indicates the Comet’s path. He

-finds that on a certain date and at a certain hour the Earth and the

-Comet must crash together. Again and again he repeats his calculations,

-hoping that he may have erred. The utmost permissible allowance for

-accelerations and retardations caused by the outer planets of the solar

-system fails to change the result.</p>

-

-<p>The Earth and the Comet must meet. With some hesitation the astronomer

-sends a telegram to a central observatory, which acts as a distributor

-of astronomical news. At first his prediction is discredited and even

-laughed at. Another computation is made at the observatory. Again

-mathematics infallibly indicates the exact time and place of the

-encounter, and the last lingering hope is dispelled. Telegrams are sent

-to astronomical societies, to the leading scientific periodicals and to

-the newspapers.</p>

-

-<p>At first the prediction of the Earth’s doom is received with popular

-incredulity, engendered by years of newspaper misrepresentation. The

-world’s end has been too frequently and too frightfully foretold

-on flamboyant double-page Sunday editions. When the truth is at

-last accepted, after days of insistent repetition of the original

-announcement, a wave of terror runs through the world.</p>

-

-<p>There is no escape. International committees of astronomers meet daily

-to mark the approach of the Comet. Bulletins are published announcing

-the steadily dwindling distance between the world and the huge

-projectile in the sky. The great tail, arching the Heavens as the Comet

-approaches, seems like a mighty, fiery sword held in an unseen Titanic

-<span class="pagenum" id="Page_121">[Pg 121]</span>

-hand and relentlessly sweeping down. The temples, churches and

-synagogues are thronged with supplicating multitudes on bended knees,

-in a catalepsy of terror. The stock exchanges, banks, shops and public

-institutions are deserted. Business is at a standstill. The roar of the

-street is hushed. No wagons rattle over the pavement; no hucksters call

-out their wares.</p>

-

-<p>As the Comet draws nearer and nearer, night changes into an awful,

-nocturnal day. Even at noon the Comet outshines the Sun. There is no

-twilight. The Sun sets; but the Comet glows in the sky, another more

-brilliant luminary, marvellously yet fearfully arrayed in a fiery plume

-that overspreads the sky. The Moon is completely lost, and the Stars

-are drowned out in this dazzling glare. Warned by the astronomers,

-mankind takes refuge in subterranean retreats to await its fate.</p>

-

-<p>Long before the actual collision&mdash;long before the Earth is reduced

-to a maelstrom of lava, gas, steam and planetary debris&mdash;mankind is

-annihilated with merciful swiftness by heat and suffocation. A candle

-flame blown out by a gust of wind is not more quickly extinguished.</p>

-

-<p>When the Comet encounters the upper layers of the atmosphere, there is

-a blinding flash, due to friction between the air and the Comet. A few

-seconds later the crash comes. From within, molten rock and flame, pent

-up for geologic ages, burst forth, geyser-like. The Earth is converted

-into a gigantic volcano, in the eruption of which oceans are spilled

-and continents are torn asunder, to vanish like wax in a furnace.</p>

-

-<p>When it is all over, the Earth swims through space, a blackened

-planetary cinder,&mdash;desolate and dead.</p>

-<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" />

-

-<div class="chapter">

-<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_122">[Pg 122]</span></p>

-<h2 class="nobreak">THE END OF THE WORLD</h2>

-</div>

-

-<p class="drop-cap"><span class="smcap">Camille Flammarion</span>, the

-French astronomer, in his story, “The End of the World,” gives this

-graphic description of the results of a collision between a Comet and

-our Earth:</p>

-

-<p>In Paris, London, Rome, Berlin, St. Petersburg, Constantinople, New

-York and Chicago&mdash;in all the great capitals of the world, in all the

-cities, in all the villages&mdash;the frightened people wandered out of

-doors, as one sees ants run about when their ant-hills are disturbed.

-All the affairs of every-day life were forgotten.</p>

-

-<p>All human projects were at a standstill. People seemed to have

-lost interest in all their affairs. They were in a state of

-demoralization&mdash;a dejection more abject even than that which is

-produced by sea-sickness.</p>

-

-<p>All places of worship had been crowded on that memorable day when it

-was seen that a collision with a Comet had become inevitable.</p>

-

-<p>In Paris the crowds in the churches were so great that people could

-no longer get near Notre Dame, the Madeleine and the other churches.

-Within the churches, vast congregations of worshippers were on their

-knees praying to God on High. The churches rang with the sounds of

-supplication, but no other sound was heard. The great church organs and

-the bells in the steeples were hushed.</p>

-

-<p>In the streets, on the avenues, in the public squares, there was the

-same dread silence. Nothing was bought or sold. No newspapers were

-hawked about.</p>

-

-<p>The only vehicles seen on the streets were funeral hearses carrying to

-the cemeteries the bodies of the first victims of the Comet. Of these

-<span class="pagenum" id="Page_123">[Pg 123]</span>

-there were already many. They were people who had died from fright and

-from heart disease.</p>

-

-<p>With what anxiety everyone waited for the night!</p>

-

-<p>Never, perhaps, was there a more beautiful sunset. Never a clearer sky.

-The sun seemed to dip into a sea of red and gold.</p>

-

-<p>The huge red ball of the sun sank majestically to the horizon. But the

-stars did not appear. Night did not come.</p>

-

-<p>To the solar day succeeded a new day, the daylight of the Comet. Its

-intense light resembled that of an Aurora Borealis, but more vivid,

-coming from a great incandescent spot, which had not been visible

-during the day because it was below the horizon, but which would

-certainly have rivalled the splendour of the Sun.</p>

-

-<p>This luminous spot rose in the East almost at the same time as the full

-Moon. The two luminous bodies rose together, side by side. As they

-rose, the light of the Moon seemed to pale, but the head of the Comet

-increased in splendour with the disappearance of the Sun below the

-western horizon.</p>

-

-<p>Now, after nightfall, the Comet dominated the world&mdash;a scarlet-red ball

-with jets of yellow and green flame which seemed to flutter like fiery wings.</p>

-

-<p>To the terrified people it seemed like a giant of fire taking

-possession of all Heaven and Earth.</p>

-

-<p>Already the outermost jets of flame had reached the Moon. From one

-instant to the next the flaming rays would descend upon the Earth.</p>

-

-<p>All eyes were distended with horror when it was seen that the horizon

-was lighting up with tiny violet flames as from a vast fire.</p>

-

-<p>An instant afterward, the Comet diminished in brilliancy. This was

-apparently because the Comet, upon touching the atmosphere of our

-<span class="pagenum" id="Page_124">[Pg 124]</span>

-Earth, had come within the penumbra of our planet and had lost part of

-its reflected light coming from the Sun. But in reality this apparent

-extinction was the effect of contrast. When the less dazzled eyes of

-the awestruck, human spectators had grown used to this new light, it

-appeared almost as intense as at first, but paler, more sinister and

-sepulchral.</p>

-

-<p>Never before had the Earth been lit up with so sickly a light.</p>

-

-<p>The drouth of the air became intolerable. Heat, as from a huge burning

-oven, came from above. A horrible stench of burning sulphur&mdash;due, no

-doubt, to electrified ozone&mdash;poisoned the atmosphere.</p>

-

-<p>All the people then saw that their time had come.

-Many-thousand-throated cries rent the air. “The World is burning.

-We are on fire!” they cried.</p>

-

-<p>All the horizon, in fact, was now lit up with flame, forming a crown

-of blue light. It was, indeed, as had been foreseen by scientists, the

-oxide of carbon igniting in the air and producing anhydrid of carbon.

-Clearly, too, hydrogen from the Comet combined with it.</p>

-

-<p>On a sudden, as the people were gazing terrified, motionless, mute,

-holding their breath, and scared out of their wits, the vault of Heaven

-seemed to be rent asunder from the zenith to the horizon. Through the

-gaping breach there seemed to appear the huge red mouth of a dragon,

-belching forth sheaves of sputtering green flames.</p>

-

-<p>The glare of the atmosphere was so fierce that those who had not

-already hidden themselves in the cellars of their houses, now all

-rushed helter-skelter to the nearest underground openings, be they

-subway steps, cellar doors or sewer manholes. Thousands were crushed or

-maimed during this mad stampede, while many others, frantic from fright

-and stricken with the heat, fell dead from apoplexy.

-<span class="pagenum" id="Page_125">[Pg 125]</span></p>

-

-<p>All reasoning powers seemed to have ceased. Among those cowering in

-dark cellars and subterranean passages below, there was nothing but

-silence, begot by dull resignation and stupor.</p>

-

-<p>Of all this panic-stricken multitude, only the astronomers had remained

-at their posts in the Observatories, making unceasing observations of

-this great astronomic phenomenon. They were the only eye-witnesses of

-the impending collision.</p>

-

-<p>Their calculations had been that the terrestrial globe would penetrate

-into the core of the Comet, as a cannon ball might into a cloud. From

-the first contact of the extreme atmospheric zones of the Earth and of

-the Comet, they had figured, the transit would last four hours and a half.</p>

-

-<p>It was easy to compute, since the Comet, being about fifty times as

-large as the Earth, was to be pierced, not in its centre, but at

-one-quarter of the distance from the centre, with a velocity of 173,000

-kilometers an hour.</p>

-

-<p>It was about forty minutes after the first atmospheric impact with the

-Comet, that the heat and horrible stench of burning sulphur became so

-suffocating that a few more moments of this torment would put an end

-to all life. Even the most intrepid of astronomers withdrew into the

-interior of their glass-domed observatories, which they could close

-hermetically as they descended into the deep subterranean vaults.</p>

-

-<p>The longest to stay above was a young assistant astronomer, a girl

-student from California, whose nerves had been steeled during the

-ordeal of the San Francisco earthquake. She remained long enough to

-witness the apparition of a huge, white-hot meteorite, precipitating

-itself southward with the velocity of lightning.</p>

-

-<p>But it was beyond human endurance to remain longer above. It was no

-<span class="pagenum" id="Page_126">[Pg 126]</span>

-longer possible to breathe. To the intense heat and atmospheric drouth,

-destroying all vital functions, was added the poisoning of our air by

-the oxide of carbon.</p>

-

-<p>The ears rang as from the tolling of funeral bells, and all hearts were

-in a flutter of feverish palpitation. And always, everywhere, there was

-that suffocating stench of sulphur.</p>

-

-<p>Now a shower of fire fell from the glowing sky. It was raining

-shooting-stars and white-hot meteorites, most of which burst like

-bombs. The fragments of these, like flying shrapnel, crashed through

-the roofs and set fire to the buildings.</p>

-

-<p>To the conflagration of the sky were added the flames of fire

-everywhere on earth.</p>

-

-<p>Claps of ear-splitting thunder followed each other incessantly,

-produced partly by the explosions of the meteors, and partly by a

-tremendous electric thunderstorm. Rifts of lightning zig-zagged hither

-and thither.</p>

-

-<p>A continuous rumbling, like that of distant drums, filled the ears of

-the cowering people below, awaiting their fate. This low rumble was

-interspersed with the deafening detonations of exploding meteors and

-the high shriek of hurtling aerial fragments.</p>

-

-<p>Then followed unearthly noises, like the seething of some immense

-boiling cauldron, the wild wailing of winds, and the quaking of the

-soil where the earth’s crust was giving way.</p>

-

-<p>This unearthly tempest became so frightful, so fraught with agony and

-mad terror, that the multitudes grovelling below were overcome with

-paralysis, and lay prone. Laid low like dumb brutes, they met their doom.</p>

-

-<p>The end of all had come.</p>

-

-<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" />

-

-<div class="chapter">

-<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_127">[Pg 127]</span></p>

-<h2 class="nobreak"><i>COLOPHON</i></h2>

-</div>

-

-<p class="center"><i>POST HOC, NON PROPTER HOC:<br />

-Sic veteres de multis rebus opinabantur,<br />

-Eodemque dicto eas jugiter absolvisse<br />

-Recte sibi visi sunt,<br />

-Vt puta quaecumque et qualiacumque<br />

-Cometarum saeculares reditus sequuntur.<br />

-CVR TV ITAQVE, forsitan quaeras,<br />

-Haec auditu minime jucunda nobis narrasti,<br />

-Terrae motus, fluminum inundationes, annonae defectus,<br />

-Pestes mortiferas, incendia, bella,<br />

-regumque magnorum excidia?<br />

-Si tibi cordi est,<br />

-LECTOR BENEVOLENTISSIME,<br />

-rationem nostram didicisse,<br />

-eia, veram accipe:<br />

-MVNDVS VVLT DECIPI.</i></p>

-

-<p class="f150 space-above2"><b><i>FINIS.</i></b></p>

-

-<div class="transnote bbox space-above2">

-<p class="f120 space-above1">Transcriber’s Notes:</p>

-<hr class="r5" />

-<p class="indent">Antiquated spellings or ancient words were not corrected.</p>

-<p class="indent">The illustrations have been moved so that they do not break up

-                  paragraphs and so that they are next to the text they illustrate.</p>

-<p class="indent">Typographical and punctuation errors have been silently corrected.</p>

-</div>

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+<div id="FRONTIS" class="figcenter">
+  <img  src="images/frontispiece.jpg" alt="" width="400" height="637" />
+  <p class="center">HALLEY’S COMET OF 1910, AS SEEN IN NEW YORK,<br />
+              LOOKING WESTWARD, DURING THE LATTER PART OF MAY.</p>
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+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" />
+<h1>COMET LORE<br /><span class="h_subtitle"><br />Halley’s Comet
+in History<br /> and Astronomy</span></h1>
+
+<p class="center space-above3">By</p>
+<p class="f150">EDWIN EMERSON</p>
+<p class="f90"><i>Author of “A History of the Nineteenth Century,” Etc.</i></p>
+
+<p class="center space-above3">PRINTED BY<br />
+THE SCHILLING PRESS<br />137-139 EAST 25th STREET<br />
+NEW YORK</p>
+
+<p class="center space-above2">Copyrighted, 1910, by <span class="smcap">Edwin Emerson</span><br />
+Entered at Stationers’ Hall, London<br />All rights reserved under Berne Convention</p>
+
+<p class="center space-above2">Printed in the United States of America by<br />
+the Schilling Press in New York<br />from the electrotyped plates</p>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" />
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<h2 class="nobreak">CONTENTS</h2>
+</div>
+
+<table border="0" cellspacing="0" summary="TOC" cellpadding="0" >
+  <tbody><tr>
+      <td class="tdr" colspan="2"><small>PAGE</small></td>
+   </tr><tr>
+      <td class="tdl">Halley’s Comet</td>
+      <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_7">&nbsp;7</a></td>
+   </tr><tr>
+      <td class="tdl">The Terror of the Comet</td>
+      <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_10">10</a></td>
+   </tr><tr>
+      <td class="tdl">Famous Comets of Olden Times</td>
+      <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_30">30</a></td>
+   </tr><tr>
+      <td class="tdl">The Star of Bethlehem</td>
+      <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_39">39</a></td>
+   </tr><tr>
+      <td class="tdl">Great Events and Disasters Linked with Comets<span class="ws2">&nbsp;</span></td>
+      <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_42">42</a></td>
+   </tr><tr>
+      <td class="tdl">Halley’s Comet the Bloodiest of All</td>
+      <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_60">60</a></td>
+   </tr><tr>
+      <td class="tdl">The Story of Edmund Halley</td>
+      <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_90">90</a></td>
+   </tr><tr>
+      <td class="tdl">What Are Comets?</td>
+      <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_101">101</a></td>
+   </tr><tr>
+      <td class="tdl">Our Peril from Collision with the Comet</td>
+      <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_113">113</a></td>
+   </tr><tr>
+      <td class="tdl">The End of the World</td>
+      <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_122">122</a></td>
+   </tr>
+ </tbody>
+</table>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" />
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<h2 class="nobreak">ILLUSTRATIONS</h2>
+</div>
+
+<table border="0" cellspacing="0" summary="LOI" cellpadding="0" >
+  <tbody><tr>
+      <td class="tdr" colspan="2"><small>PAGE</small></td>
+   </tr><tr>
+      <td class="tdl">Cover Designs by William Stevens</td>
+      <td class="tdr">&nbsp;</td>
+   </tr><tr>
+      <td class="tdl">Halley’s Comet of 1910</td>
+      <td class="tdr"><a href="#FRONTIS">Frontispiece</a></td>
+   </tr><tr>
+      <td class="tdl">The Terror of the Comet in Antiquity</td>
+      <td class="tdr"><a href="#I013">13</a></td>
+   </tr><tr>
+      <td class="tdl">The Terror of the Comet in Mediæval Times</td>
+      <td class="tdr"><a href="#I020">20</a></td>
+   </tr><tr>
+      <td class="tdl">The Terror of the Comet at the Present Day</td>
+      <td class="tdr"><a href="#I025">25</a></td>
+   </tr><tr>
+      <td class="tdl">The Latest Photograph of the Comet of 1910</td>
+      <td class="tdr"><a href="#I028">28</a></td>
+   </tr><tr>
+      <td class="tdl">Napoleon’s Comet of 1811</td>
+      <td class="tdr"><a href="#I053">53</a></td>
+   </tr><tr>
+      <td class="tdl">The Great Comet of 1843</td>
+      <td class="tdr"><a href="#I056">56</a></td>
+   </tr><tr>
+      <td class="tdl">Comet of Tel-el-Kebir, 1882</td>
+      <td class="tdr"><a href="#I059">59</a></td>
+   </tr><tr>
+      <td class="tdl">Halley’s Comet of 1835</td>
+      <td class="tdr"><a href="#I062">62</a></td>
+   </tr><tr>
+      <td class="tdl">Halley’s Comet of 1682</td>
+      <td class="tdr"><a href="#I069">69</a></td>
+   </tr><tr>
+      <td class="tdl">Halley’s Comet of 1066 in the Bayeux Tapestry</td>
+      <td class="tdr"><a href="#I078">78</a></td>
+   </tr><tr>
+      <td class="tdl">William the Conqueror, an English Dream</td>
+      <td class="tdr"><a href="#I081">81</a></td>
+   </tr><tr>
+      <td class="tdl">Portrait of Edmund Halley</td>
+      <td class="tdr"><a href="#I092">92</a></td>
+   </tr><tr>
+      <td class="tdl">The Orbit of Halley’s Comet</td>
+      <td class="tdr"><a href="#I103A">103</a></td>
+   </tr><tr>
+      <td class="tdl">Relative Sizes of the Earth, the Moon and Halley’s Comet</td>
+      <td class="tdr"><a href="#I103B">103</a></td>
+   </tr><tr>
+      <td class="tdl">Donati’s Comet of 1858</td>
+      <td class="tdr"><a href="#I106">106</a></td>
+   </tr><tr>
+      <td class="tdl">The Civil War Comet of 1863</td>
+      <td class="tdr"><a href="#I109">109</a></td>
+   </tr><tr>
+      <td class="tdl">Coggia’s Comet of 1874</td>
+      <td class="tdr"><a href="#I112">112</a></td>
+   </tr><tr>
+      <td class="tdl">Halley’s Conception of a Collision with the Comet</td>
+      <td class="tdr"><a href="#I119">119</a></td>
+   </tr>
+ </tbody>
+</table>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" />
+
+<p class="f150"><b>TO THE COMET</b></p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0">“Thereby Hangs a Tail.”&mdash;<i>Shakespeare.</i></div>
+  </div>
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0">Lone wanderer of the trackless sky!</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">Companionless! Say, dost thou fly</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">Along thy solitary path,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">A flaming messenger of wrath&mdash;</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">Warning with thy portentous train</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">Of earthquake, plague and battle-plain?</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">Some say that thou dost never fail</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">To bring some evil in thy tail.</div>
+    <div class="verse indent28"><span class="smcap">W. Lattey.</span></div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" />
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_7">[Pg 7]</span></p>
+<h2 class="nobreak">THE COMING OF THE COMET</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class="drop-cap"><span class="smcap">The</span> Sun will surely rise and set to-morrow.</p>
+
+<p>Just so surely must a Comet flare forth in our Heavens this Spring.</p>
+
+<p>Star gazers, astronomers and learned men have been waiting for this
+Comet all over the earth&mdash;in America, in Europe, in far China.</p>
+
+<p>They have known for certain that this Comet would come; and they knew
+just when and where in the Heavens the Comet would first show itself to
+the naked eye&mdash;down to the very night.</p>
+
+<p>All this has been known so surely because this same Comet has been seen
+by the people of this earth before.</p>
+
+<p>It came and went seventy-four years ago. Seventy-six years before that,
+it came and went. And seventy-six years before that, the Comet had come
+and gone.</p>
+
+<p>As long as human beings have lived on this earth&mdash;for thousands and
+thousands of years&mdash;human eyes have beheld this same Comet every
+seventy-six years or so.</p>
+
+<p>The longest time between the Comet’s coming has been seventy-nine
+years. The shortest interval of all&mdash;74½ years&mdash;was this time.</p>
+
+<p>For thousands of years in the past, wise men have written down records
+of this Comet.</p>
+
+<p>Long, long ago, when white men were still savages who dwelt in caves,
+patient star gazers in China and Chaldea studied the motions of this Comet.
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_8">[Pg 8]</span></p>
+
+<p>Farther back than that, in the hoary days before the art of writing
+was known, ancient bards sang of this Star and its hairy tail. Some of
+their words are still remembered.</p>
+
+<p>Artists have drawn pictures of this Comet. Their pictures are still
+shown.</p>
+
+<p>Women have stitched images of this Comet into their handiwork. Some of
+this handiwork can still be seen.</p>
+
+<p>Coiners have stamped designs of this comet on their coins and medals.
+Those coins are still shown in museums.</p>
+
+<p>Priests, Popes and great Divines have preached about this Comet. Their
+sermons are still preserved in the records of the Church.</p>
+
+<p>Learned men have written in their books what happened when the Comet
+came. Those books are read to-day.</p>
+
+<p>The coming of this Comet in olden times has been fixed in lasting
+records, which he who runs may read.</p>
+
+<p>Nothing in all History is more certain than the story of this Comet.</p>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" />
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_9">[Pg 9]</span></p>
+<h2 class="nobreak">WHY HALLEY’S COMET?</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class="drop-cap"><span class="smcap">Two</span> hundred and
+twenty-eight years ago, when this Comet was seen shining over the City
+of London, the great astronomer, Edmund Halley, made a special study of it.</p>
+
+<p>Halley was the first to say that this Comet had come before and would
+surely come again. He wrote down the time when the Comet would come
+again, long after he should be dead.</p>
+
+<p>“If it should return,” he wrote, “according to our predictions, about
+the year 1758, impartial posterity will not refuse to acknowledge that
+this was first discovered by an Englishman.”</p>
+
+<p>The Comet returned, as he had foretold, seventeen years after Halley’s
+death, when it was first seen in 1758, on Christmas night, by a man in
+Saxony, named Palitsch, who was looking for the Comet.</p>
+
+<p>From that day this Comet has been called after Halley.</p>
+
+<p>Since then many famous astronomers, such as Clairaut, Pontécoulant and
+Laplace in France, have calculated the dates for the Comet’s return.</p>
+
+<p>Last time, in 1835, Halley’s Comet returned within a few nights of
+their prediction.</p>
+
+<p>This time, so the astronomers figured seventy-five years ago, the Comet
+should be plainly seen after dark late this May.</p>
+
+<p>What they predicted has come true.</p>
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" />
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_10">[Pg 10]</span></p>
+<h2 class="nobreak">THE TERROR OF THE COMET</h2>
+</div>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent3">“Canst thou fearless gaze</div>
+    <div class="verse indent4">Even night by night on that prodigious Blaze,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent4">That hairy Comet, that long streaming Star,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent4">Which threatens Earth with Famine, Plague and War?”</div>
+    <div class="verse indent36">&mdash;<i>Sylvester.</i></div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p class="drop-cap"><span class="smcap">So long</span> as the memory
+of man goes back, the appearance of a Comet has always been taken as a
+just cause for dread.</p>
+
+<p>In the train of Comets, it has ever been held, come wars, bloodshed,
+fires, floods, plagues, famine and the fall of mighty rulers.</p>
+
+<p>Our Holy Bible confirms this time-honoured belief.</p>
+
+<p>The Saviour Himself said, according to the Gospel of St. Luke, Chap.
+XXI., Verse 10-11:</p>
+
+<p class="blockquot">“Nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom
+against kingdom; and great earthquakes shall be in divers places, and
+famines and pestilences; and fearful sights and great signs shall there
+be from Heaven.”</p>
+
+<p>In the Revelation of St. John the Divine (Chap. VIII., Verse 10) we read:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+<p>“There fell from Heaven a great star burning as a torch,” and again
+(Chap. XII., Verse 3):</p>
+
+<p>“There was seen another sign in Heaven, and behold a great red dragon
+... and his tail draweth a third part of the stars in Heaven. And
+behold the third woe cometh quickly.” (Chap. XII., Verse 14.)</p>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_11">[Pg 11]</span>
+The “flaming sword” in the hands of the angel of the Lord, when Adam
+and Eve were driven from the Garden of Eden, many sacred writers hold,
+can only be interpreted as a Comet.</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent1">“For the Almighty set before the door</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">Of th’ holy park a seraphim that bore</div>
+    <div class="verse indent2">A warning sword, whose body shined bright</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">A flaming Comet in the midst of night.”</div>
+    <div class="verse indent30">&mdash;<i>Todd.</i></div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>So, too, when Jerusalem was to be wasted by a plague, David beheld a
+Comet in the shape of a flaming sword:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+<p>“And David lifted up his eyes and saw the angel of the Lord stand
+between the earth and the Heaven, having a drawn sword in his hand
+stretched out over Jerusalem.”</p>
+
+<p class="author space-below2">&mdash;<i>I. Chron. XXI. 16.</i></p>
+</div>
+
+<p>The fall of Satan, some sacred writers hold, was marked by the
+appearance of a Comet. In Isaiah (XIV. 12) we find:</p>
+
+<p class="blockquot">“How art thou fallen from Heaven, O flaming one, son
+of the morning!”</p>
+
+<p>John Milton, in his “Paradise Lost,” has fixed this image in immortal
+verse:</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent3">“Satan stood</div>
+    <div class="verse indent4">Unterrified, and as a Comet burned</div>
+    <div class="verse indent4">That fired the length of Ophiuchus huge</div>
+    <div class="verse indent4">In th’ arctic sky, and from its horrid hair,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent4">Shakes pestilence and war.”</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>The Great Deluge, described in Holy Writ, came after the appearance
+of a mighty Comet (Halley’s Comet), so Dr. William Whiston, Sir Isaac
+Newton’s successor in the Lucasian chair of Mathematics at Cambridge,
+set forth in a special treatise. The great French astronomer, Laplace,
+also reached the same conclusion.
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_12">[Pg 12]</span></p>
+
+<p>This same Comet (Halley’s Comet) likewise foretold the final fall of
+the Holy City, Jerusalem, in the year 70 after Christ. This Comet was
+seen by St. Peter. Josephus in his History of the Jewish Wars recorded
+the nightly appearance of this Comet over the City of Jerusalem just
+before the war which ended with the destruction of the Holy City.</p>
+
+<p class="blockquot">“Amongst other warnings,” writes Josephus, who saw
+this Comet with his own eyes, “a Comet of the kind called sword-shaped,
+because their tails appear to represent the blade of a sword, was seen
+above the city for the space of a whole year.”</p>
+
+<p>Josephus at the time rebuked his Jewish countrymen for listening to
+false prophets while so clear a sign from Heaven was before their very
+eyes.</p>
+
+<p>This same Comet (Halley’s Comet) reappeared at a critical period of the
+rule of Constantine the Great, the first Christian Emperor of Rome. He
+first beheld his sign from Heaven in the midst of battle as it blazed
+overhead in the sign of a Cross. With the help of his mother, the
+sainted Helen, Constantine was moved thereby to turn Christian.</p>
+
+<p>Constantinople, the great capital of the Orient, which owes its name
+to this same Emperor Constantine, was lost to Christendom in the year
+1453, when the Turks overran the great city with fire and sword. This
+event, it is recorded, was heralded by another appearance of a Comet.
+Three years later, when the Turks were about to descend upon Belgrade,
+another Comet (Halley’s Comet) spread consternation throughout Europe.</p>
+
+<p>At that time Pope Calixtus III., on the appearance of this Comet,
+seeing that evils were impending for the human race, called for prayers
+that the Almighty would turn these evils upon the Turks, the enemies of
+the Christian faith.
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_13">[Pg 13]</span></p>
+
+<div id="I013" class="figcenter">
+  <img  src="images/i_013.jpg" alt="" width="400" height="610" />
+  <p class="center">“A SWORD-SHAPED COMET BLAZED<br /> OVER THE DOOMED HOLY CITY.”<br />
+            &mdash;Josephus’ “<i>History of Judea</i>.”</p>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_14">[Pg 14]</span>
+At the same time the Holy Father gave orders for all Church bells to be
+tolled at noon to remind faithful Christians to pray for those battling
+against the Turk.</p>
+
+<p>Into the Ave Maria were put the words: “From the Devil, the Turk and
+the Comet, Good Lord, deliver us!”</p>
+
+<p>Since that time in most Catholic countries the Angelus is still
+regularly rung at noon. In Italy, even to-day, the cakes sold before
+the church doors at noon go by the name of <i>Comete</i>.</p>
+
+<p>All the great Fathers of the Church have taught that Comets are to be
+taken as signs from Heaven.</p>
+
+<p>Baeda, the Venerable, declared in the seventh century in England, that
+“Comets portend revolutions of kingdoms, pestilence, war, winds, or heat.”</p>
+
+<p>John of Damascus, preaching in the same century in the Orient, laid
+down the same belief.</p>
+
+<p>St. Thomas Aquinas, the great Light of the Church in the thirteenth
+century, accepted and handed down the same opinion.</p>
+
+<p>The sainted Albert the Great, the most noted thinker of the Church in
+the Middle Ages, received and taught the same doctrine.</p>
+
+<p>The teachings of these Church Fathers as to Comets have been commended
+in our own day by Pope Pius IX.</p>
+
+<p>The great teachers of other religions, likewise, have laid down
+identical beliefs as to the meaning of Comets.</p>
+
+<p>The sacred books of India are full of awed references to the baleful
+influence of Comets.</p>
+
+<p>The ancient year books of China, written centuries before white men
+kept any records, tell of the appearance of Comets and of the disasters
+they foretold.
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_15">[Pg 15]</span></p>
+
+<p>The Mohametans and their wise Arab star gazers, when they saw a Comet
+in the Heavens, knew that it meant war.</p>
+
+<p>The woe of one Comet (Halley’s Comet of 1456), which had the shape of
+a Turkish scimitar, so the Arab soothsayers foretold, would be turned
+against their enemies. This was the same Comet which brought such fear
+to the hearts of Pope Calixtus III. and all his Christian followers.</p>
+
+<p>Thus it can be seen that Comets have been held to foretell disaster on
+one side, and victory on the other.</p>
+
+<p>The Comets which conquerors hailed as their guiding stars, have meant
+war and bloodshed and disaster to those whom they came to conquer.</p>
+
+<p>The same Comets which shone upon the birth of mighty rulers, have
+blazed in warning of their death.</p>
+
+<p>Julius Caesar, who was born under a Comet, saw his bloody end foretold
+by another Comet.</p>
+
+<p>Therefore, Shakespeare in his play “Julius Caesar,” makes Calpurnia
+say to Caesar:</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent3">“When beggars die, there are no Comets seen;</div>
+    <div class="verse indent4">The Heavens themselves blaze forth the death of princes.”</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>On the night of Caesar’s assassination, when the Comet was seen blazing
+at its brightest, the Romans said that it had come to bear away the
+great soul of the murdered Caesar.</p>
+
+<p>At the death of Nero, the Roman Emperor, who persecuted the Christians,
+a Comet blazed forth again. The Roman historian Suetonius, who wrote
+the Life of Emperor Nero, thus described this Comet:</p>
+
+<p class="blockquot">“A blazing star, which was commonly held to
+portend destruction to Kings and Princes, reappeared above the horizon
+several nights in succession.”</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_16">[Pg 16]</span>
+Another great Comet (Halley’s again) reappeared when Attila, the King
+of the Huns, the “Scourge of God,” was overthrown in the greatest
+battle of Christendom on the Catalaunian fields.</p>
+
+<p>Claudius, a Roman writer of that period, then stated that “a Comet was
+never seen in the Heavens without implying some dreadful event.”</p>
+
+<p>This has ever been the belief of all the great poets of olden time.</p>
+
+<p>Homer, the greatest poet of Ancient Greece, a thousand years before the
+birth of Christ, sang of:</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent3">“The red star, that from his flaming hair</div>
+    <div class="verse indent4">Shakes down diseases, pestilence and war.”</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>Let it be explained here that the word Comet in Greek means
+“long-haired,” from <i>kome</i>,&mdash;hair.</p>
+
+<p>Virgil, the greatest Roman poet, sang of “the baleful glare of bloody
+Comets,” and again, of “dreadful Comets blazing in the sky.”</p>
+
+<p>Tasso, the greatest of Italian poets after Dante, sang thus of Comets
+in his “Jerusalem Delivered”:</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent3">“Qual con le chiome sanguinose horrende</div>
+    <div class="verse indent4">Splender Cometa suol per l’aria adusta,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent4">Che i regni muta, e i feri morbi adduce,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent4">Ai purpurei tiranni infausta luce.”</div>
+    <div class="verse indent12">&mdash;<i>Gerusalemme Liberata,</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent14"><i>Canto VII., Stanza 52.</i></div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>Rendered thus by Wiffen into English:</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent3">“As with its bloody locks let loose in air</div>
+    <div class="verse indent4">Horribly bright, the Comet shows whose shine</div>
+    <div class="verse indent4">Plagues the parched World, whose looks the Nations scare,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent4">Before whose face States change, and Powers decline,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent4">To purple Tyrants all, an inauspicious sign.”</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_17">[Pg 17]</span></p>
+<p>The great English poets, on their part, have lifted up their voices
+to sing of the dire effects of Comets.</p>
+
+<p>Shakespeare, the greatest of them all, abounds in allusions to these
+dread wandering stars.</p>
+
+<p>Thus he makes Horatio in the first scene of “Hamlet” speak with awe of:</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent3">“Stars with trains of fire and dews of blood;</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<hr class="tb" />
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0">And even the like precurse of fierce events,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">As harbingers preceding still the fates</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">And prologue to the omen coming on.”</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>More briefly Shakespeare in his “Henry VI.” refers to:</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent3">“A Comet of revenge</div>
+    <div class="verse indent4">A prophet to the fall of all our foes”;</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>and again, in “The Taming of the Shrew” to:</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent3">“Some Comet or unusual prodigy.”</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>Spenser in his “Faerie Queene” sings of a woman’s hair loosely
+dispersed in the wind:</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent3">“All as a blazing starre doth farre outcast</div>
+    <div class="verse indent4">His heavy beames, and flaming lockes dispredd,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent4">At sight whereof the people stand aghast;</div>
+    <div class="verse indent4">But the sage Wizzard telles, as he has redd,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent4">That it importunes death and doleful drearyhedd.”</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>John Milton, besides likening Satan to a Comet, as before quoted, also
+showed that he shared in the belief that the flaming swords mentioned
+in Holy Writ were Comets:</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent3">“High in front advanced</div>
+    <div class="verse indent4">The brandish’d sword of God before them blazed</div>
+    <div class="verse indent4">Fierce as a Comet.”</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_18">[Pg 18]</span>
+The poet Young, in his “Night Thoughts,” aptly writes of the Comet:</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent3">“Hast thou ne’er seen the Comet’s flaming light?</div>
+    <div class="verse indent4">Th’ illustrious stranger passing, terror sheds</div>
+    <div class="verse indent4">On gazing Nations, from his fiery train.”</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>The poets of other nations have written of Comets in like vein.
+There is an old German rhyme, sung by German school children even
+to-day, which has been put into English by Dr. Andrew D. White in his
+“History of the Doctrine of Comets”:</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent3">“Eight things there be a Comet brings,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent4">When it on high doth horrid range;</div>
+    <div class="verse indent4">Wind, Famine, Plague, and Death to Kings,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent4">War, Earthquake, Floods and Direful Change.”</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>This little rhyme was originally put forth for German school children
+by two Protestant preachers of Basle, Switzerland, at the time of the
+great Comet of 1618, which heralded the outbreak of the great “Thirty
+Years’ War.”</p>
+
+<p>These Protestant ministers got their belief in Comets and their evil
+influence upon mankind not from the Church of Rome, but from the
+Bible teachings of such great Protestant reformers as Martin Luther,
+Melanchthon, Zwingli, Calvin, John Knox of Scotland, Bishop Jeremy
+Taylor and John Howe, the great Nonconformist divine.</p>
+
+<p>Martin Luther preached in one of his Advent sermons:</p>
+
+<p class="blockquot">“The heathen write that the Comet may arise from
+natural causes; but God creates not one that does not foretoken a sure
+calamity.”</p>
+
+<p>Luther’s friend, Melanchthon, in a letter, declared Comets to be
+“heralds of Heaven’s wrath.”
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_19">[Pg 19]</span></p>
+
+<p>Zwingli, in 1531, declared that the great Comet of that year (Halley’s
+Comet) was sent by God to betoken calamity.</p>
+
+<p>John Knox, preaching in his Scottish kirk at Edinboro, declared that he
+saw in Comets tokens of the wrath of Heaven.</p>
+
+<p>The great divines of the Church of England,&mdash;from Cranmer, Bishop
+Latimer, Archbishops Spottiswoode and Bramhall, Bishop Jeremy Taylor,
+down to our own times, clearly preached the doctrine that Comets must
+be taken as tokens from Heaven.</p>
+
+<p>Thus the Comet of 1572 was pointed out from the pulpits of England
+and Scotland as a token of Heaven’s wrath and warning at the St.
+Bartholomew Massacre on the night of August 24, 1572, when thirty
+thousand Huguenots were murdered in the streets of Paris and elsewhere
+in France.</p>
+
+<p>Across the sea, in the new Commonwealth of Massachusetts, the great
+New England divine and President of Harvard College, Increase Mather,
+on the apparition of the great Comet now known as Halley’s, in 1682,
+preached on “Heaven’s Wrath Alarm to the World&mdash;wherein is shown that
+fearful sights and signs in the Heavens are the presages of great
+calamities at hand.”</p>
+
+<p>Increase Mather preached on the text taken from the Book of Revelation:
+“And the third Angel sounded, and there fell a great Star burning as a
+Torch, ... and behold the Third Woe cometh quickly.”</p>
+
+<p>In this sermon the great preacher told of the Roman Emperor Vespasian,
+who, when warned of the omen of a Comet, made fun of it, and then died
+miserably.</p>
+
+<p>So Mather preached: “For the Lord hath fired his beacon in the Heavens
+among the stars of God there. The fearful sign is not yet out of
+sight.... Do we not see the sword blazing over us?... Doth God threaten
+our very Heavens? O pray unto Him, that he would not take away stars
+and send Comets to succeed them!”
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_20">[Pg 20]</span></p>
+
+<div id="I020" class="figcenter">
+  <img  src="images/i_020.jpg" alt="" width="400" height="627" />
+  <p class="center">THE TERROR OF THE COMET OF 1531.<br />
+                      FROM AN OLD NUREMBERG WOOD-CUT.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_21">[Pg 21]</span>
+The profound Russian thinker Tolstoy, in his great book “War and
+Peace,” has written of the flaming Comet of 1811. This was the famous
+“Comet of Napoleon,” which blazed over Western Europe when Napoleon was
+gathering his grand army for its disastrous march into Russia and to
+Moscow.</p>
+
+<p>At Moscow, the ancient capital of Russia, this Comet was observed by
+anxious thousands. One night there was this talk between a novice nun
+and the Abbess of her Convent. On their way to vesper service one
+evening in Moscow the nun suddenly beheld the Comet for the first time
+and asked: “What is that star?”</p>
+
+<p>The Abbess answered: “It is not a star. It is a Comet.”</p>
+
+<p>“But what is a Comet?” asked the young nun. “I have never
+heard that word.”</p>
+
+<p>The Abbess then answered: “Comets are signs in Heaven, which God sends
+before misfortunes.”</p>
+
+<p>Shortly after this the bloody battle of Borodino was fought, and
+Napoleon, with his army, appeared before the gates of Moscow. The
+hundred-towered city was abandoned by the Russians and was given over
+to the flames.</p>
+
+<p>Years afterward this same nun thus told her story, as printed in the
+“Revue des Deux Mondes”:</p>
+
+<p class="blockquot">“Every night the Comet blazed in the Heavens, and
+we all asked ourselves: What misfortune does it bring? Then the enemy
+came, and our sacred city was put to the torch. Our convent, together
+with all other cloisters, monasteries and churches, was burned to the
+ground.”</p>
+
+<p>Many other writers of the time who saw the great Comets that blazoned
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_22">[Pg 22]</span>
+Napoleon’s destructive wars have recorded how they were universally
+taken as omens of the great conqueror’s bloody trail.</p>
+
+<p>Napoleon himself gloried in this dread omen and hailed the Comet as his
+“guiding star.”</p>
+
+<p>All this has been fully set forth by the famous French astronomer
+Messier, a latter-day observer of Halley’s Comet, who wrote a special
+book on “The Wonderful Comet which appeared at the Birth of Napoleon
+the Great.”</p>
+
+<p>As for the many Comets that have blazed down upon other great
+conquerors and other bloody wars, before the comparatively recent
+Comets of the American Civil War and the Napoleonic Wars, they are all
+set down in a special History of Comets.</p>
+
+<p>In this great work, entitled “A History of All Comets,” the Latin
+scholar Lubienitius has pointed out all the calamities and dire events
+which attended the appearance of each and every Comet recorded in history.</p>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" />
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_23">[Pg 23]</span></p>
+<h2 class="nobreak">THE EFFECTS OF COMETS ON MAN</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class="drop-cap"><span class="smcap">Some</span> thinkers have
+pointed out that there has often been a direct connection between
+the feelings produced in the human soul by the appearance of a Comet
+and the human deeds of violence or the human epidemics and excessive
+mortality following the widespread terror produced by Comets.</p>
+
+<p>Only this year (1910) the appearance of Inness’ Comet over Mexico
+caused a panic-stricken holy pilgrimage to the Shrine of Talpa. In
+China, too, it caused terror, resulting in Christian massacres.</p>
+
+<p>Hence, also, several Jewish massacres inspired by Comets in the past
+and hence also so many terrifying plagues connected with Comets.</p>
+
+<p>Thus Ambroise Paré, the “Father of French Surgery,” who flourished
+in the sixteenth century, has recorded the effect produced upon his
+contemporaries by the Comet of 1528.</p>
+
+<p>“This Comet was so horrible,” wrote Dr. Paré, “so frightful, and it
+produced such great terror among the common people, that many died of
+fear and many others fell sick.”</p>
+
+<p>Dr. Paré himself appears to have come under the influence of this fear,
+judging from his awestruck description of the appearance of this Comet:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+<p>“It appeared to be of excessive length; and was of the colour of
+blood. At the summit of it was seen the figure of a bent arm, holding
+in its hand a great sword as if about to strike.</p>
+
+<p>“At the end of the point there were three stars. On both sides of
+the rays of this Comet were seen a great number of axes, knives, and
+blood-coloured swords, among which were a great number of hideous human
+faces with beards and bristling hair.”</p>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_24">[Pg 24]</span>
+Hannibal committed suicide on account of a Comet. So did Mithridates.
+So did one Toma, in Hungary, only this year.</p>
+
+<p>King Louis “the Debonair” of France, died from fear of a Comet
+(Halley’s Comet) in 837 A. D.</p>
+
+<p>Emperor Charles V., of Germany and Spain, the monarch who boasted that
+“the sun never set on his dominions,” was so moved by the appearance of
+a Comet in 1556, that he gave up his crown and became a monk.</p>
+
+<p>Certain metaphysicians have held that there is a substance in a Comet,
+or in its tail, which has a weird effect on man’s brain, as moonshine
+is believed to have on some men, making them lunatics. As a matter
+of fact, as Arago pointed out, Comets have caused tremendous spring
+tides just like the moon. The same irresistible pull of gravity or
+electricity or light-pressure must perforce affect other substances
+besides water, such as human brains.</p>
+
+<p>According to this metaphysical theory, the close approach of a Comet
+to the earth affects and disturbs men’s brains, so that men are inwardly
+stirred with warlike impulses. Hence the great wars almost invariably
+following the appearance of Comets.</p>
+
+<p>Hence, too, the appeal to Comets made by so many conquerors, from
+William the Conqueror down to Napoleon. In the homely phrase of one
+writer, “the inner eye of man, under the weird effect of a Comet, sees
+red and makes him thirst for blood.”</p>
+
+<p class="space-below2">Those rare beings who have lying latent within
+them the gift of Second Sight or divination, according to this same
+metaphysical theory, upon the near approach of Comets find themselves
+stirred to prophesy. Hence, so many marvellous prophesies inspired by
+Comets since the ancient days of Merlin, the seer.
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_25">[Pg 25]</span></p>
+
+<div id="I025" class="figcenter">
+  <img  src="images/i_025.jpg" alt="" width="400" height="598" />
+  <p class="center">“THE COMET OF 1910 SO ALARMED THE PEOPLE OF MEXICO<br />
+        THAT MANY THOUSANDS WENT ON A HOLY PILGRIMAGE TO<br />
+        THE SHRINE OF TALPA IN XALISCO.”&mdash;<i>Mexican Herald.</i></p>
+</div>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" />
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_26">[Pg 26]</span></p>
+<h2 class="nobreak">THIS YEAR’S PROPHECIES</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class="drop-cap"><span class="smcap">The</span> return of Halley’s Comet
+in this Year of Our Lord 1910 has already called forth several memorable
+prophesies.</p>
+
+<p>On January 20th the French astrologer and prophetess Madame de Thebes,
+who predicted the disastrous French floods of this year, as well as the
+coming of Inness’ unexpected Comet, uttered the following prophesies:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+<p>“This year, 1910, will be one to look back to with trembling.</p>
+
+<p>“The earth is under a terrific strain from Comets and planetary
+revolutions. Human destiny is red. That means blood. Political events
+are black. Terrible changes are imminent.</p>
+
+<p>“This winter, France will be swept by terrible floods. Paris will
+be under water. The influence of form changes in other planets and the
+coming of a Comet will affect us for the worse.</p>
+
+<p>“The strain of the stars will be most severely felt in America.
+The people of America will have to pay dearly for all their riches
+and sudden prosperity. With the coming of another Comet disaster will
+descend upon America.</p>
+
+<p>“A financial crash is impending, to be followed by a long string of
+suicides. Black ruling us, men will commit all manner of crimes and
+knaveries for money.</p>
+
+<p>“The times are swaying toward degeneration. We are swinging within
+the evil influence of a strange orbit. Our souls are jarred from their
+proper bearings. I dare not say all that is revealed to me. It would be
+too terrible.”</p>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_27">[Pg 27]</span>
+Soon after this prophesy was uttered came the first of such suicides.
+Adam Toma, a wealthy landowner of Szozona, Hungary, cut his throat
+because of the Comet. He left a note saying that the Comet was the
+cause of his death.</p>
+
+<p>Cardinal Gibbons later expressed his profound belief that the Paris
+floods of this year were sent by God as a punishment to the Parisians
+for their frivolities and sins, of which the Comet was a fiery warning.</p>
+
+<p>Commenting on Madame de Thebes’ predictions and her connection of the
+Comet of 1910 with this year’s spring-floods in France, Italy and
+Germany, the French astronomer Henri Deslandres, late Director of the
+Astronomical Observatory of Meudon and member of the French Academy of
+Sciences, said:</p>
+
+<p class="blockquot">“However distant Comets may be, it is not at
+all impossible that their enormous tails, measuring 75,000,000 to
+125,000,000 miles in length, may come in contact with our atmosphere.
+The theory that a Comet may disturb the atmosphere of the earth,
+causing rains of great duration, and consequently inundations and the
+sudden overflow of rivers, is not at all absurd. It can be sustained by
+scientific reasoning.”</p>
+
+<p>It should be remembered here that Laplace, one of the greatest of all
+astronomers, credited the deluge to a Comet.</p>
+
+<p>Before Madame de Thebes’ ominous prophesy concerning Halley’s Comet and
+its effects upon America were cabled over to this country, another,
+no less dire prediction of financial disaster in the United States,
+coincident with the appearance of Halley’s Comet, was made by W. E.
+Corey, the President of the American Steel Trust.
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_28">[Pg 28]</span></p>
+
+<div id="I028" class="figcenter">
+  <img  src="images/i_028.jpg" alt="" width="400" height="618" />
+  <p class="center">THE COMET OF 1910,<br /> FROM A TELESCOPIC PHOTOGRAPH TAKEN AT GREENWICH.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_29">[Pg 29]</span>
+Mr. Corey then warned his friends to “call in their money and get from
+under” because a calamitous financial crash and general business ruin
+would surely come during the Spring of 1910.</p>
+
+<p>The most ominous of all prophesies connected with the coming of
+Halley’s Comet this year was made by the venerable General Ballington
+Booth, the head of the Salvation Army. Speaking in London, immediately
+after Halley’s Comet had been located, early this year, General Booth
+said:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+<p>“We are, this year, rapidly approaching the end of all things, with
+similar results, but far surpassing in horrors any disaster that has
+gone before.</p>
+
+<p>“All things will be wound up. Besides a deluge of water sweeping
+parts of the world and its inhabitants there will be fierce destruction
+by fire.”</p>
+</div>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" />
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_30">[Pg 30]</span></p>
+<h2 class="nobreak">FAMOUS COMETS OF OLDEN TIMES</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class="drop-cap"><span class="smcap">Bacon</span>, the great English thinker,
+has said: “Comets have some action and effect on the universality of things.”</p>
+
+<p>All Comets recorded in history, so Lubienitius has shown in his
+“Universal History of All Comets,” appeared in connection with some
+great event or catastrophe in the History of Man.</p>
+
+<p>George F. Chambers, one of the most up-to-date writers on Astronomy
+and Comets, on the second page of his “Story of the Comets” (1909),
+declares:</p>
+
+<p class="blockquot">“It is the general testimony of History during
+many hundreds of years, one might even say during fully 2,000 years,
+that Comets were always considered to be peculiarly ‘ominous of
+the wrath of Heaven and as harbingers of wars and famines, of the
+dethronement of Monarchs and the dissolution of Empires.’”</p>
+
+<p>Reaching back into remotest history, the sacred books of India show
+that the births of Krishna and of Buddha were foretold by moving lights
+in the Heavens.</p>
+
+<p>The ancient records of China tell of the appearance of a moving beacon
+in Heaven at the birth of Yu, the first ruler of the Celestial Empire,
+and again at the birth of the great Chinese prophet, Lao-Tse.</p>
+
+<p>The ancient Greeks have recorded similar appearances of Comets.
+Aesculapius, the divine healer and first physician, was born under a Comet.</p>
+
+<p>The oldest traditions of the Jews tell us that when Abraham was born a
+moving star was seen in the East.
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_31">[Pg 31]</span></p>
+
+<p>Another moving star with long radiant gleams of light streaming behind
+it shone forth at the birth of Moses. This Comet was seen by the Magi
+of Egypt, who pointed it out to the King as an omen meant for him.
+Hence Pharaoh’s order, as recorded in the Old Testament, for the
+slaughter of all male Jewish infants then born in Egypt.</p>
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" />
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_32">[Pg 32]</span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak">GREAT EVENTS CONNECTED WITH<br /> HISTORIC COMETS IN ANTIQUITY</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class="drop-cap"><span class="smcap">The</span> earliest Comet of
+which there is any historic record was a Comet mentioned in the oldest
+cuneiform inscriptions of Babylonia several thousand years before our
+Christian era, recently found on the north bank of Nahr-al-Kalb, near
+Beyrut in Syria. This Comet is recorded to have been visible to the
+naked eye for 29 nights.</p>
+
+<p>At the time Lubienitius wrote his big “History of all the Comets” the
+exact date of this Comet had not been fixed. Lubienitius, though, had
+a record of this same Comet, the date of which he fixes at the year
+2312 before Christ, the date computed by him and other writers for the
+beginning of the deluge.</p>
+
+<p>In modern times the great French astronomer Laplace credited a Comet
+with causing huge floods at the time of the great Deluge.</p>
+
+<p>Two hundred and eighty-eight years after the great Deluge, according to
+the records of the Chaldean star gazers, there appeared another Comet.
+This is the date, computed by Lubienitius, for the building of the
+Tower of Babel and the confusion of tongues.</p>
+
+<p>Two thousand and sixty-four years before Christ, another Comet
+appeared, as recorded by the Chaldeans. This is the date given for the
+birth of Abraham.</p>
+
+<p>When Abraham was seventy years old, in the year 1949 B. C., a Comet was
+seen shining over the Valley of Siddim for twenty-two nights. This is
+the date given by Bible historians for the destruction of Sodom and
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_33">[Pg 33]</span>
+Gomorrah, the two cities of iniquity which lay in the Vale of Siddim.</p>
+
+<p>Jewish annalists record a Comet in Egypt in the year corresponding to
+B. C. 1841. This Comet shone at the time of the bitter persecution of
+the Jews by the Egyptians.</p>
+
+<p>Arabian star gazers have recorded a Comet shining over Arabia 1732 B.
+C. In that year there was a terrible famine, of which mention is made
+in the Old Testament.</p>
+
+<p>The ancient Chinese year books record the appearance of a Comet over
+northern China and Manchuria in the year corresponding to 1537 B.
+C. The appearance of the Comet, so the Chinese chronicles tell, was
+followed by a great flood and disastrous famine.</p>
+
+<p>The next Comet of which we have any record, appeared 1515 B. C. This
+was at the time of the expulsion of the Jews from Egypt.</p>
+
+<p>In the year B. C. 1194, we are told by Hyginus that “On the fall of
+Troy, one of the Pleiades group of stars rushed along the Heavens
+toward the Arctic pole, where the star remained visible with
+dishevelled hair, to which the name of Comet is applied.”</p>
+
+<p>We are informed by Pliny, the Roman historian, that in B. C. 975, the
+“Egyptians and Ethiopians suffered from a terrible famine, the dire
+effects of a Comet. It appeared all on fire, and was twisted in the
+form of a wreath, and had a hideous aspect. It seemed not to be a star,
+but rather a knot of fire.”</p>
+
+<p>Babylonian cuneiform inscriptions tell us that about 575 B. C., when
+Nebuchadnezzar overran Elam, “a star arose whose head was bright as day,
+while from its luminous body a tail extended like the sting of a scorpion.”
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_34">[Pg 34]</span></p>
+
+<p>According to Pliny, again, a Comet in the form of a horn was seen in
+the year B. C. 480, just before the great invasion of Greece by Xerxes
+ending in the bloody sea fight of Salamis.</p>
+
+<p>The next Comet mentioned by Lubienitius appeared in B. C. 466, when it
+was seen for 75 nights all over Greece. In that year Greece was ravaged
+by war between the Spartans and Athenians, and the city of Sparta was
+all but destroyed by an earthquake.</p>
+
+<p>The next Comet appeared one generation later in 431 B. C., and was seen
+through 60 nights all over the ancient world. This Comet was followed
+by a terrible pestilence which swept over Aethiopia, Egypt, Athens, and
+Rome. War broke out all over Greece. It was the beginning of the great
+Peloponnesian War, which devastated Greece for a generation to follow.</p>
+
+<p>In the year 394 B. C., there was another Comet seen in Greece, followed
+by the great Corinthian War with the bloody battles of Knidus and Koronea.</p>
+
+<p>Aristotle records a Comet seen by him in his fifteenth year, 371 B. C.
+The sight of it inspired the youth to a special study of astronomy.
+The Comet was visible until the end of the first week of July. On July
+eighth was fought the great battle between the Thebans and Spartans,
+when Epaminondas, one of the greatest generals of antiquity, overthrew
+the Spartans.</p>
+
+<p>The next Comet, that of 338 B. C., which was likewise observed by
+Aristotle, who had then become the teacher of Alexander the Great,
+marked Alexander’s first public entry into the history of the world.
+The Comet blazed its brightest on the eve of the bloody battle of
+Chaeronea, Alexander’s first victory and achievement in war.</p>
+
+<p>In the year 344 B. C., there was another Comet, followed by another war
+in Greece and Sicily. Diodorus of Sicily wrote of this Comet: “On the
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_35">[Pg 35]</span>
+departure of the expedition of Timoleon from Corinth for Sicily with
+all his war ships, the Gods foretold success by an extraordinary
+prodigy: A burning torch appeared in the Heavens for an entire night
+and went before the fleet into Sicily.”</p>
+
+<h3><i>The Comets of Carthage.</i></h3>
+
+<p>Nearly a hundred years passed before the appearance of another Comet
+in 240 B. C. This is the first recorded appearance of Halley’s Comet.
+By the light of this Comet, Hamilcar, the great Carthaginian general, made
+his young son Hannibal swear eternal enmity to the Romans. Hamilcar was
+then in the midst of preparations for the war against Rome, which broke
+out soon afterward.</p>
+
+<p>Comets appear to have been stars of special omen to Hannibal and to his
+native city, Carthage. Twenty years later, appeared another Comet which
+shone over Carthage for 22 nights. Its appearance was followed by the
+outbreak of the great war between Hannibal and the Romans, and by a
+terrible earthquake in Greece.</p>
+
+<p>The next Comet shone in 204 B. C., when Hannibal suffered his first
+bloody defeat by Sempronius, while Scipio, Hannibal’s arch enemy, was
+crossing over to Africa, for the first attack upon Carthage.</p>
+
+<p>The appearance of the next Comet, twenty years later, 184 B. C., which
+shone through 88 nights over Asia Minor “with a horrible lustre” was
+followed by the death of Hannibal. Soothsayers at the court of King
+Prusias of Bithynia, in Asia Minor, whither Hannibal had fled from the
+Romans, told the King that the Comet betokened Hannibal’s early death.
+This so wrought on Hannibal’s spirit that he ended his life with poison.
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_36">[Pg 36]</span></p>
+
+<p>In the year 150 B. C., appeared another Comet “of horrible size.” It
+was seen for many nights running all over the Mediterranean Sea. Its
+appearance was followed by the outbreak of the third great Punic War
+between Rome and Carthage.</p>
+
+<p>Within four years another Comet, blazing over northern Africa in 146 B.
+C., was followed by the fall of Carthage, which was stormed and utterly
+destroyed by the Romans.</p>
+
+<h3><i>Mithridates’ Star.</i></h3>
+
+<p>Mithridates, King of Pontus, and conqueror of Asia Minor, another arch
+foe of the Romans, having been born under a Comet, seems to have fallen
+under the bane of Comets.</p>
+
+<p>During the Winter of 134-135 B. C., preceding Mithridates’ birth, a
+Comet of unusual lustre flared over Asia Minor through 72 days. This
+Comet was so bright that its long, flaming tail was plainly visible
+even in day time. The ancient historian Justinus thus described it:</p>
+
+<p>“Its splendour eclipsed that of the midday sun and occupied the fourth
+part of Heaven.”</p>
+
+<p>The next Comet, burning through 72 nights again, preceded Mithridates’
+accession to the throne of Pontus, 119 B. C.</p>
+
+<p>Mithridates’ fourth Comet, now identified as Halley’s Comet, was seen
+over Asia Minor through the Winter months of 87-88 B. C., just before
+the horrible massacre of 150,000 Italians ordered by Mithridates.</p>
+
+<p>Twenty-five years later, 63 B. C., Mithridates saw his Comet for the
+last time when his own son rose up in arms against him. The omen of the
+Comet so wrought on Mithridates that he first poisoned himself and then
+had one of his own soldiers despatch him with his sword.
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_37">[Pg 37]</span></p>
+
+<p>No other Comet is recorded in ancient history during this century,
+except the one which was seen shining over Italy preceding the birth
+(July 11, 100 B. C.) of Julius Caesar, destined to become “The foremost
+man of all this world,” as Shakespeare calls him.</p>
+
+<p>“Caesar’s Comet” as it came to be known (now identified as Halley’s
+Comet) appeared again over Italy during the great Civil War between
+Marius and Sylla, when Caesar was first entering into public affairs
+and earned his spurs as a warrior.</p>
+
+<p>“Caesar’s Comet” shone again over Rome in the year 60 B. C., when
+Julius Caesar, together with Pompey and Crassus, took charge of the
+government of Rome and presently seized supreme power as Consul of Rome.</p>
+
+<p>Ten years later “Caesar’s Comet” was seen once more in Italy in the
+Winter months of 49-50 B. C., when Caesar, returning from his conquest
+of Gaul, crossed the Rubicon and began the great Civil War against his
+rival for power, Pompey.</p>
+
+<p>The last appearance of “Caesar’s Comet,” was in 44 B. C., on the
+death of Caesar. Its coming was foreseen in a dream by Caesar’s wife
+Calpurnia, who warned him of the omen, as immortalized in Shakespeare’s
+lines, put into the mouth of Caesar’s wife:</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent3">“When beggars die, there are no Comets seen,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent4">The Heavens themselves blaze forth the death of Princes”;</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>followed by Caesar’s famous answer, as culled from Plutarch by Shakespeare:</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent3">“What can be avoided,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent4">Whose end is purposed by the mighty gods?</div>
+    <div class="verse indent4">Yet Caesar shall go forth; for these predictions</div>
+    <div class="verse indent4">Are to the world in general as to Caesar.”</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_38">[Pg 38]</span>
+On the following morning Caesar was murdered at the foot of Pompey’s
+statue in the Curia.</p>
+
+<p>Immediately after Caesar’s death, records the Roman historian Suetonius
+in his “Life of Caesar”: “A Comet blazed for seven nights together,
+rising always about eleven o’clock, visible to all in Rome. It was
+taken by all to be the soul of Caesar, now received into Heaven; for
+which reason, accordingly, Caesar is represented in his statue with a
+star on his brow.”</p>
+
+<p>Only one more Comet is recorded in ancient history before the birth of
+Christ. This was the Comet, now identified as Halley’s Comet, which
+shone over the dense forests of Germany, eleven years before the birth
+of Christ, when Drusus, the brother of Tiberius, was warring against
+the ancient Germans and robbing them of their last vestige of liberty.
+At the same time fell the death of Agrippa, who ruled over the Roman
+Empire in the absence of Augustus.</p>
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" />
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_39">[Pg 39]</span></p>
+<h3><i>THE STAR OF BETHLEHEM</i></h3>
+</div>
+
+<p class="drop-cap"><span class="smcap">The</span> coming of the Messia,
+according to the sacred legends of the Jews, was to be foretold
+by a flaming star.</p>
+
+<p>Many sacred writers have held, and many still hold, as did the
+distinguished American astronomer R. A. Proctor, that the “Star of
+Bethlehem,” whose shining trail guided the Wise Men from The East, was
+a Comet. Lubienitius in his “History of Comets” expressly mentions the
+Star of Bethlehem as the most important Comet of history.</p>
+
+<p>As a matter of fact our modern astronomical computations prove that a
+Comet appeared in that year so as to be visible to the naked eye over
+Arabia, Syria, and the Holy Land.</p>
+
+<p>When this Comet appeared Herod was King of Judea. On the appearance of
+the Comet, Herod consulted the oracle of the Sibyl in Rome. She told him
+that the Comet shone in token of a boy destined to be far greater than he.</p>
+
+<p>Herod grew so afraid at this that he caused to be murdered his own
+two infant sons, Aristobolus and Alexander, and after that his eldest
+son, the boy Antipater. Herod further ordered the massacre of all
+male infants born in Judea under this Comet, as told in the Gospel of
+Matthew (Chap. II., Verse 1). As the Comet kept on blazing in the sky,
+Herod, becoming desperate, tried to kill himself. Five days after this
+he died of a loathsome disease.
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_40">[Pg 40]</span></p>
+
+<p>Christian painters and writers from olden times until now, accordingly
+have pictured the Star of Bethlehem as a Comet.</p>
+
+<p>Take for instance this description of “The Light in the Sky” as given
+by Lew Wallace in his “Ben Hur: A Tale of the Christ”:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+<p>“About midnight some one on the roof cried out: ‘What light is that
+in the sky? Awake, brethren, awake and see!’</p>
+
+<p>The people, half asleep, sat up and looked; then they became wide
+awake, though wonder struck.... Soon the entire tenantry of the house
+and court and enclosure were out gazing at the sky.</p>
+
+<p>And this is what they saw: A ray of light, beginning at a height
+immeasurably beyond the nearest stars, and dropping obliquely to the
+earth; at its top, a diminishing point; at its base, many furlongs in
+width; its sides blending softly with the darkness of night; its core
+a roseate electrical splendour. The apparition seemed to rest on the
+nearest mountain southeast of the town, making a pale corona along the
+line of the summit. The khan was touched luminously so that those upon
+the roof saw each others’ faces all filled with wonder.</p>
+
+<p class="no-indent">Steadily the ray lingered....</p>
+
+<p>‘Saw you ever the like?’ asked one.</p>
+
+<p>‘Can it be that a star has burst and fallen?’ asked another, his
+tongue faltering.</p>
+
+<p>‘When a star falls its light goes out.’</p>
+</div>
+
+<hr class="tb" />
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+<p class="no-indent">After that there was silence on the housetop,
+broken but once again while the mystery continued.</p>
+
+<p>‘Brethren!’ exclaimed a Jew of venerable mien, ‘what we see is the
+ladder our father Jacob saw in his dream. Blessed be the Lord God of
+Our Fathers!’”</p>
+</div>
+
+<p class="space-above2"><span class="pagenum" id="Page_41">[Pg 41]</span>
+Meanwhile the Wise Men from the East, as described in the same story,
+were travelling over the desert, on the alert for the apparition of the
+star, whose coming had been revealed to them.</p>
+
+<p class="blockquot">“Suddenly, in the air before them, not farther up
+than a low hill-top,” writes Lew Wallace, “flared a lambent flame; as
+they looked at it, the apparition contracted into a focus of dazzling
+lustre. Their hearts beat fast; their souls thrilled; and they shouted
+as with one voice: ‘The Star! the Star! God is with us!’”</p>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" />
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_42">[Pg 42]</span></p>
+<h2 class="nobreak">GREAT EVENTS LINKED WITH<br /> COMETS SINCE CHRIST</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class="drop-cap"><span class="smcap">Since</span> the time of
+Christ, thanks to the spread of Christianity and learning, with the
+growing zeal for keeping records and studying the stars, a far greater
+number of Comets and events connected therewith have been recorded.</p>
+
+<p>A number of learned writers have made a special study of the history of
+Comets and their effect upon man. Long before Lubienitius’ ponderous
+work on the subject there were other histories written in Latin and
+Arabic, with references to which his book abounds.</p>
+
+<p>Since then others have followed in the same direction, notably Pingré,
+Hind, Lalande, Messier, Chambers and latterly Messrs. Crommelin and
+Cowell, of the Greenwich Observatory.</p>
+
+<p>The number of known Comets has grown immeasurably since Galileo’s
+invention of the telescope, 300 years ago, and our later perfections
+of this instrument, together with latter-day devices for photographing
+Comets invisible to the naked eye.</p>
+
+<p>It would carry us too far to trace the possible connection between
+modern events and Comets that were seen only by astronomers. Since
+our record of Comets is already too full, we shall limit our story of
+the Comets and their influence upon man to a bare recital of the most
+important events connected with the more memorable and conspicuous
+Comets from the time of Christ until now.</p>
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" />
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_43">[Pg 43]</span></p>
+
+<p class="f120"><b>DATES OF COMETS FOLLOWED<br /> BY IMPORTANT EVENTS</b></p>
+</div>
+
+<table border="0" cellspacing="0" summary="Comet Dates" cellpadding="0" >
+  <tbody><tr>
+      <td class="tdl" colspan="2"><b>A. D.</b></td>
+   </tr><tr>
+      <td class="tdr_top">14&mdash;</td>
+      <td class="tdl"><p class="no-indent">A Comet preceded the death of Augustus,
+                        the first Emperor of Rome. Earthquake in Italy.</p></td>
+   </tr><tr>
+      <td class="tdr_top">55&mdash;</td>
+      <td class="tdl"><p class="no-indent">Suicide of Pontius Pilate,
+                          the judge who condemned Christ.</p></td>
+   </tr><tr>
+      <td class="tdr_top">68&mdash;</td>
+      <td class="tdl"><p class="no-indent">Halley’s Comet. Suicide of Nero,
+             persecutor of Christians. Siege of Jerusalem.</p></td>
+   </tr><tr>
+      <td class="tdr_top">73&mdash;</td>
+      <td class="tdl"><p class="no-indent">A Comet shone 180 days over Cyprus.
+               Earthquake in Cypress in which 10,000 persons perished.</p></td>
+   </tr><tr>
+      <td class="tdr_top"></td>
+      <td class="tdl"><p class="no-indent"></p></td>
+   </tr><tr>
+      <td class="tdr_top"></td>
+      <td class="tdl"><p class="no-indent"></p></td>
+   </tr><tr>
+      <td class="tdr_top">79&mdash;</td>
+      <td class="tdl"><p class="no-indent">Death of Emperor Vespasian, who began the siege of
+                 Jerusalem. The Roman historians Dion Cassius and
+                 Suetonius relate that Vespasian, when taken sick,
+                 heard his astrologers discussing in a low tone
+                 of voice the Comet which was then visible, which
+                 they said predicted his death. The Emperor roused
+                 angrily and said: “This hairy star is not meant for
+                 me. It must be meant for my enemy, the King of the
+                 Parthians, for he is hairy, while I am bald.”</p></td>
+   </tr><tr>
+      <td class="tdr_top">&nbsp;</td>
+      <td class="tdl"><p class="no-indent">On the following night Vespasian died in great pain,
+         and the Comet was seen no more.</p></td>
+   </tr><tr>
+      <td class="tdr_top"><span class="pagenum" id="Page_44">[Pg 44]</span></td>
+      <td class="tdl"><p class="no-indent">Shortly after Vespasian’s death followed the fierce
+                eruption of Mt. Vesuvius, Nov. 1, which destroyed the
+                two flourishing cities of Herculaneum and Pompeii.</p></td>
+   </tr><tr>
+      <td class="tdr_top">130&mdash;</td>
+      <td class="tdl"><p class="no-indent">A Comet shone over Holy Land for 39 nights,
+                followed by destructive earthquake in Holy Land.</p></td>
+   </tr><tr>
+      <td class="tdr_top">145&mdash;</td>
+      <td class="tdl"><p class="no-indent">One week’s Comet over Island of Rhodus.
+                 Earthquake in Rhodus, followed by famine and pestilence.</p></td>
+   </tr><tr>
+      <td class="tdr_top">217&mdash;</td>
+      <td class="tdl"><p class="no-indent">From a Comet which shone for eighteen nights
+                   soothsayers predicted the death of the Roman
+                   Emperor, Caracalla. The Emperor was murdered
+                   immediately afterwards by his rival Macrinus.</p></td>
+   </tr><tr>
+      <td class="tdr_top">312&mdash;</td>
+      <td class="tdl"><p class="no-indent">A Comet in the sign of a cross seen by Constantine
+              the Great during battle of Saxa Rubra under the
+              walls of Rome. Constantine was victorious and
+              afterward turned to Christian faith.</p></td>
+   </tr><tr>
+      <td class="tdr_top">337&mdash;</td>
+      <td class="tdl"><p class="no-indent">A Comet seen just before death of Constantine the Great.</p></td>
+   </tr><tr>
+      <td class="tdr_top">373&mdash;</td>
+      <td class="tdl"><p class="no-indent">Halley’s Comet. Beginning of tremendous migration
+                  of peoples which overran all Central Asia and Europe.</p></td>
+   </tr><tr>
+      <td class="tdr_top">399&mdash;</td>
+      <td class="tdl"><p class="no-indent">This Comet was described by Nicephorus as “of
+                prodigious magnitude and horrible aspect, with a
+                point like a sword and fiery hair reaching nearly
+                to the ground, from which a great peril to the
+                people was predicted.” Its appearance was followed
+                by the conquest and capture of Rome by Gainas.</p></td>
+   </tr><tr>
+      <td class="tdr_top">410&mdash;</td>
+      <td class="tdl"><p class="no-indent">A sword-shaped Comet shone over Italy for four
+               months until the third week in August. On Aug. 24
+               Rome was taken and plundered by Alaric, King of
+               the Visigoths. This marks the end of the old Roman Empire.</p></td>
+   </tr><tr>
+      <td class="tdr_top">442&mdash;</td>
+      <td class="tdl"><p class="no-indent">First appearance in Europe of Attila,
+              “The Scourge of God,” and his Hunnic hordes.</p></td>
+   </tr><tr>
+      <td class="tdr_top">449-50&mdash;<span class="pagenum" id="Page_45">[Pg 45]</span></td>
+      <td class="tdl"><p class="no-indent">Two Comets (now believed to be coming and going
+                 of Halley’s Comet) were observed over England and
+                 France. First invasion of England by the
+                 Anglo-Saxons under Hengist and Horsa. Attila
+                 overthrown in the great battle on the Catalaunian
+                 Fields, at which a hundred and eighty thousand
+                 warriors fell, among them Theoderic, the King of
+                 the Goths. The Roman historian Callimachus recorded
+                 that this battle was preceded by a brilliant Comet
+                 and an earthquake.</p></td>
+   </tr><tr>
+      <td class="tdr_top">453&mdash;</td>
+      <td class="tdl"><p class="no-indent">Death of Attila and end of his Hunnic empire.</p></td>
+   </tr><tr>
+      <td class="tdr_top">530&mdash;</td>
+      <td class="tdl"><p class="no-indent">Halley’s Comet. Merlin, the British seer,
+                  prophesied from this Comet. His prophesies came true.</p></td>
+   </tr><tr>
+      <td class="tdr_top">531&mdash;</td>
+      <td class="tdl"><p class="no-indent">Comet observed in Constantinople by the astronomers
+             of Emperor Justinian. Earthquake in Constantinople
+             followed by famine and uprising of the people in
+             which two thousand were killed. Pestilence.</p></td>
+   </tr><tr>
+      <td class="tdr_top">538&mdash;</td>
+      <td class="tdl"><p class="no-indent">Terrible famine throughout civilized world,
+              so that many people became cannibals.</p></td>
+   </tr><tr>
+      <td class="tdr_top">547&mdash;</td>
+      <td class="tdl"><p class="no-indent">A lance-shaped Comet over Italy. Ostro-Goths under
+              Totila overrun Italy. Totila storms Rome.</p></td>
+   </tr><tr>
+      <td class="tdc" colspan="2"><big><i>Mohamet’s Star.</i></big></td>
+   </tr><tr>
+      <td class="tdr_top">570&mdash;</td>
+      <td class="tdl"><p class="no-indent">Scimitar-shaped Comet over Arabia.
+              Birth of Mohamet.</p></td>
+   </tr><tr>
+      <td class="tdr_top">610&mdash;</td>
+      <td class="tdl"><p class="no-indent">Another scimitar-shaped Comet over Arabia.
+              Mohamet begins preaching the Koran.</p></td>
+   </tr><tr>
+      <td class="tdr_top">622&mdash;</td>
+      <td class="tdl"><p class="no-indent">Flight of Mohamet to Medina.</p></td>
+   </tr><tr>
+      <td class="tdr_top">624&mdash;</td>
+      <td class="tdl"><p class="no-indent">Fourth scimitar-shaped Comet over Arabia and Holy
+              Land. Mohamet’s first battle for the new faith. His
+              massacre of 700 Jews.</p></td>
+   </tr><tr>
+      <td class="tdr_top">632&mdash;<span class="pagenum" id="Page_46">[Pg 46]</span></td>
+      <td class="tdl"><p class="no-indent">Last appearance of Mohamet’s Comet during first
+              week of June. Death of Mohamet on June 8 at Medina.</p></td>
+   </tr><tr>
+      <td class="tdr_top">800&mdash;</td>
+      <td class="tdl"><p class="no-indent">A Comet seen during Coronation of Charlemagne as
+              Emperor of Rome.</p></td>
+   </tr><tr>
+      <td class="tdr_top">814&mdash;</td>
+      <td class="tdl"><p class="no-indent">Torch-shaped Comet seen in Germany during the first
+             three weeks of January. Death of Charlemagne on
+             Jan. 28, at Aix la Chappelle. The monk Eginard
+             relates in his chronicles that on the appearance
+             of the Comet all those at Charlemagne’s court
+             feared for the Emperor’s life. Eginard preached to
+             them from the text of Isaiah not to believe in the
+             signs of the heathens. But Charlemagne reproved
+             him, saying that he felt that he had reason to
+             thank God for having sent him a timely warning of
+             his impending death. Thereupon the Emperor made
+             his testament and divided his empire among his
+             successors. On the day following the disappearance
+             of the Comet, he died.</p></td>
+   </tr><tr>
+      <td class="tdr_top">837&mdash;</td>
+      <td class="tdl"><p class="no-indent">Halley’s Comet observed in France
+             by King Louis the Debonair, who died from fear of it.</p></td>
+   </tr><tr>
+      <td class="tdr_top">876&mdash;</td>
+      <td class="tdl"><p class="no-indent">Disastrous flood in Italy, followed by plague.</p></td>
+   </tr><tr>
+      <td class="tdr_top">900&mdash;</td>
+      <td class="tdl"><p class="no-indent">Another Comet over Italy. Saracens invade Italy.</p></td>
+   </tr><tr>
+      <td class="tdr_top">944&mdash;</td>
+      <td class="tdl"><p class="no-indent">Comet with an immense tail over Italy, followed by
+              disastrous earthquake.</p></td>
+   </tr><tr>
+      <td class="tdr_top">1000&mdash;<span class="pagenum" id="Page_47">[Pg 47]</span></td>
+      <td class="tdl"><p class="no-indent">In January of this year a Comet was observed all
+             over Europe. Gigibertus describes it “shaped like
+             a horrible serpent and so bright that its light
+             was seen even indoors.” It was generally taken to
+             foretell the end of the world,&mdash;the millennium
+             prophesied in the Apocalypse. When it was followed
+             soon by earthquakes, floods and famine there was
+             universal panic which was not allayed until the end
+             of the “fateful year.”</p></td>
+   </tr><tr>
+      <td class="tdr_top">1002&mdash;</td>
+      <td class="tdl"><p class="no-indent">A Comet over England and Scandinavia.
+             Massacre of all Danes in England by King Ethelred.</p></td>
+   </tr><tr>
+      <td class="tdr_top">1066&mdash;</td>
+      <td class="tdl"><p class="no-indent">Halley’s Comet. It appeared in May at Easter time
+             and shone for forty nights, waxing and waning with
+             the moon. William the Conqueror haled it as an omen
+             of destruction to Harold of England just before the
+             battle of Hastings.</p></td>
+   </tr><tr>
+      <td class="tdr_top">1077&mdash;</td>
+      <td class="tdl"><p class="no-indent">Comet over Italy and Germany. Emperor Henry IV. of
+            Germany was excommunicated by the Pope, followed by
+            war in Italy and Germany.</p></td>
+   </tr><tr>
+      <td class="tdc" colspan="2"><big><i>Crusaders’ Comets.</i></big></td>
+   </tr><tr>
+      <td class="tdr_top">1099&mdash;</td>
+      <td class="tdl"><p class="no-indent">Arabic astronomers record a Comet in the shape of
+           a scimitar over Arabia and the Holy Land for six
+           weeks in Spring and early Summer. First crusade
+           and storming of Jerusalem by the crusaders on July
+           15 after a siege of five weeks. Bloody massacre of Mohammedans.</p></td>
+   </tr><tr>
+      <td class="tdr_top">1109&mdash;</td>
+      <td class="tdl"><p class="no-indent">Emperor Henry V. of Germany enters Rome and makes
+           Pope prisoner.</p></td>
+   </tr><tr>
+      <td class="tdr_top">1148-9&mdash;</td>
+      <td class="tdl"><p class="no-indent">Second crusade. Utter destruction of whole army
+           of French and German crusaders.</p></td>
+   </tr><tr>
+      <td class="tdr_top">1200&mdash;</td>
+      <td class="tdl"><p class="no-indent">Comet recorded by Hal Ben Rodoan, an Arab
+            astronomer, over North Africa. Bloody revolt of
+            Arab warriors in Morocco.</p></td>
+   </tr><tr>
+      <td class="tdr_top">1212&mdash;</td>
+      <td class="tdl"><p class="no-indent">Lance-shaped Comet shining over western Europe for
+            eighteen nights. The Children’s Crusade. Thousands
+            of German and French boy crusaders perished or were
+            sold into slavery. Bloody invasion of Tartar hordes
+            into Russia and Poland.</p></td>
+   </tr><tr>
+      <td class="tdr_top">1223&mdash;<span class="pagenum" id="Page_48">[Pg 48]</span></td>
+      <td class="tdl"><p class="no-indent">Preaching of fifth crusade. Outbreak of “Guelph and
+           Ghibelline” war between Emperor Frederick II. of
+           Germany and Pope Gregory the IX.</p></td>
+   </tr><tr>
+      <td class="tdr_top">1264&mdash;</td>
+      <td class="tdl"><p class="no-indent">Very bright Comet observed shining all over Europe
+           for three months. Pope Urban IV. died on the night
+           of the Comet’s disappearance. A Latin verse gained
+           great currency in which it was said that the
+           Comet portended “disasters, sickness, hunger, and
+           war.” The chronicles of that age ascribe to this
+           Comet besides the death of the Pope a famine and
+           pestilence in Italy, the ravages of the Russians
+           into Poland and of the Slavs into Prussia.</p></td>
+   </tr><tr>
+      <td class="tdc" colspan="2"><big><i>Comets of Bloodshed.</i></big></td>
+   </tr><tr>
+      <td class="tdr_top">1282&mdash;</td>
+      <td class="tdl"><p class="no-indent">An immense Comet over Italy. Disastrous earthquake
+           in southern Italy. On March 30, a fortnight after
+           the first appearance of the Comet followed the
+           massacre of all Frenchmen in Sicily on the evening
+           of Easter Monday, known in history as the “Sicilian Vespers.”</p></td>
+   </tr><tr>
+      <td class="tdr_top">1298&mdash;</td>
+      <td class="tdl"><p class="no-indent">Because of the appearance of a Comet over middle
+           Germany, there were riots in Nuremberg and other
+           neighbouring cities followed by a general massacre
+           of the Jews in those cities.</p></td>
+   </tr><tr>
+      <td class="tdr_top">1300&mdash;</td>
+      <td class="tdl"><p class="no-indent">A brilliant Comet preceded the Jubilee of Pope
+           Boniface the VIII. The Pope interpreted the Comet
+           as a happy omen, but because of the popular dread
+           of the Comet there were riots and blood shed in
+           Rome and elsewhere in Italy. The chroniclers of the
+           times pointed out the significant fact that shortly
+           after his jubilee Pope Boniface was made a prisoner
+           by King Philip of France, causing him to die of rage.</p></td>
+   </tr><tr>
+      <td class="tdc" colspan="2"><big><i>Plague Comets.</i></big></td>
+   </tr><tr>
+      <td class="tdr_top">1305&mdash;<span class="pagenum" id="Page_49">[Pg 49]</span></td>
+      <td class="tdl"><p class="no-indent">A Comet “of horrible aspect” burning all through
+              Passion Week preceded the outbreak of the terrible
+              black plague which swept from the Orient all over
+              Europe and Asia.</p></td>
+   </tr><tr>
+      <td class="tdr_top">1333&mdash;</td>
+      <td class="tdl"><p class="no-indent">Chinese and Arab astronomers record a bright
+            Comet over China, Turkestan and Persia. Birth
+            of Tamerlane, the “Scourge of the Nations” at
+            Samarkand, in Turkestan.</p></td>
+   </tr><tr>
+      <td class="tdr_top">1347&mdash;</td>
+      <td class="tdl"><p class="no-indent">A Comet precedes the “Black Death,” a terrible
+            pestilence followed by famine all over the world.
+            One-fourth of all the people of Europe died.
+            Fifteen million deaths in China,&mdash;twenty-five
+            million in Europe.</p></td>
+   </tr><tr>
+      <td class="tdr_top">1363&mdash;</td>
+      <td class="tdl"><p class="no-indent">A Comet of immense size shone for three months over
+            northern Europe. Pestilence and famine in England,
+            Poland and Russia.</p></td>
+   </tr><tr>
+      <td class="tdr_top">1378&mdash;</td>
+      <td class="tdl"><p class="no-indent">Halley’s Comet. Pestilence in Germany.
+             Holy Church is rent by the great schism, with rival popes at
+             Rome and Avignon.</p></td>
+   </tr><tr>
+      <td class="tdc" colspan="2"><big><i>Tamerlane’s Star.</i></big></td>
+   </tr><tr>
+      <td class="tdr_top">1382&mdash;</td>
+      <td class="tdl"><p class="no-indent">Arab astronomers and Chinese report a very bright
+            Comet which shone a fortnight. Tamerlane and his
+            hordes overrun Central Asia. Pestilence breaks out
+            there and spreads all over the world.</p></td>
+   </tr><tr>
+      <td class="tdr_top">1402&mdash;</td>
+      <td class="tdl"><p class="no-indent">Arab astronomers report another Comet seen all over
+            the East. Tamerlane carries war into Europe and
+            takes Constantinople by storm. Sultan Bayezid is
+            taken prisoner by Tamerlane and is carried to Asia
+            in a cage.</p></td>
+   </tr><tr>
+      <td class="tdr_top">1405&mdash;</td>
+      <td class="tdl"><p class="no-indent">Chinese astronomers record a spear-shaped Comet
+            over China. Tamerlane dies while invading China.</p></td>
+   </tr><tr>
+      <td class="tdr_top">1456&mdash;<span class="pagenum" id="Page_50">[Pg 50]</span></td>
+      <td class="tdl"><p class="no-indent">Halley’s Comet. Bloody war between the Christians
+            and the Turks. Battle of Belgrade.</p></td>
+   </tr><tr>
+      <td class="tdr_top">1492&mdash;</td>
+      <td class="tdl"><p class="no-indent">Arab astronomers record a Comet over northern
+            Africa and Spain. Final conquest of Granada from
+            the Moors by Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain.
+            Discovery of the New World.</p></td>
+   </tr><tr>
+      <td class="tdr_top">1500&mdash;</td>
+      <td class="tdl"><p class="no-indent">Sword-shaped Comet over northern Europe, followed
+            by Tartar invasion into Russia and Poland.</p></td>
+   </tr><tr>
+      <td class="tdr_top">1528&mdash;</td>
+      <td class="tdl"><p class="no-indent">A Comet noted by Ambroise Paré, who recorded that
+            many people fell sick and died of fright. War
+            between Emperor Charles V. of Germany and Francis I.
+            of France, with fighting in France, Germany and Italy.</p></td>
+   </tr><tr>
+      <td class="tdr_top">1531&mdash;</td>
+      <td class="tdl"><p class="no-indent">Halley’s Comet. Plague in Italy. Great schism in
+            the Church. Defection of German Protestants from
+            Rome. Henry VIII. of England declares English
+            Church independent of Rome. Sultan Soleyman ravaged
+            Hungary. Disastrous floods in Holland, where
+            400,000 people were drowned.</p></td>
+   </tr><tr>
+      <td class="tdr_top">1556&mdash;</td>
+      <td class="tdl"><p class="no-indent">Emperor Charles V. of Germany and Spain, on account
+            of his fear of the Comet that appeared in that
+            year, abdicated his throne and became a monk.
+            Wide-spread wars all over Europe. The Turks ravaged
+            Hungary. Persecutions of English Protestants under
+            “Bloody Mary.” Many Protestants burned at the
+            stake, beheaded or broken on the rack.</p></td>
+   </tr><tr>
+      <td class="tdr_top">1572&mdash;</td>
+      <td class="tdl"><p class="no-indent">St. Bartholomew’s Comet. Massacre of St.
+            Bartholomew, when 30,000 Huguenots were slaughtered in France.</p></td>
+   </tr><tr>
+      <td class="tdr_top">1577&mdash;</td>
+      <td class="tdl"><p class="no-indent">General persecution of Huguenots in France,
+            followed by Civil War in France.</p></td>
+   </tr><tr>
+      <td class="tdr_top">1607&mdash;<span class="pagenum" id="Page_51">[Pg 51]</span></td>
+      <td class="tdl"><p class="no-indent">A Comet seen over Constantinople for several weeks.
+            Wide-spread war on the part of the Turks against
+            the Persians on one side, the Poles on another, and
+            against Venice on the third.</p></td>
+   </tr><tr>
+      <td class="tdr_top">1618&mdash;</td>
+      <td class="tdl"><p class="no-indent">A blood-coloured Comet observed just before the
+            execution of Sir Walter Raleigh in England. A
+            bloody rising of the Protestants in Bohemia,
+            followed by the outbreak of the terrible Thirty
+            Years’ War in Germany and the Netherlands. This
+            was the Comet which gave rise to the German school rhyme:</p></td>
+   </tr><tr>
+      <td class="tdr_top">&nbsp;</td>
+      <td class="tdl"><div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0">“Eight things a Comet always brings,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent1">Wind, Famine, Plague and Death to Kings,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent1">War, Earthquake, Floods and Dire Things.”</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+</div></td>
+   </tr><tr>
+      <td class="tdc" colspan="2"><big><i>Louis XIV.’s Star.</i></big></td>
+   </tr><tr>
+      <td class="tdr_top">1661&mdash;</td>
+      <td class="tdl"><p class="no-indent">Inspired by the appearance of a Comet, a horde
+            of fanatics under Venner, a cooper, preached the
+            coming of the “Fifth Monarchy” in England, and
+            proclaimed Jesus Christ as their only King. The
+            fanatics were routed and put to death. Death of
+            Mazarin, the “Master of France.” Rise of Louis XIV.,
+            the most powerful ruler of France. French war
+            against the Pope.</p></td>
+   </tr><tr>
+      <td class="tdr_top">1680&mdash;</td>
+      <td class="tdl"><p class="no-indent">This Comet was studied by Halley, in Paris, and
+            by Newton, in England. It was called “Heaven’s
+            Chariot.” Plague in Europe. The French overrun
+            Alsace and carried war into Germany. War between
+            Venice and the Turks.</p></td>
+   </tr><tr>
+      <td class="tdr_top">1682&mdash;</td>
+      <td class="tdl"><p class="no-indent">Halley’s Comet. War in Italy. War in Hungary
+            against the Turks.</p></td>
+   </tr><tr>
+      <td class="tdr_top">1689&mdash;<span class="pagenum" id="Page_52">[Pg 52]</span></td>
+      <td class="tdl"><p class="no-indent">A remarkable Comet observed all over Europe,
+            followed by war all over Europe. Wars between
+            France, Germany, England, Spain and Italy. The
+            Rhine lands were harried by the French with fire
+            and sword, rendering 4,000,000 people homeless.
+            Burning of the castle of Heidelberg by the French.
+            Religious war in Ireland and Scotland. Siege of
+            Londonderry and Dundee. Battle of Newton Butler
+            in Ireland.</p></td>
+   </tr><tr>
+      <td class="tdr_top">1729&mdash;</td>
+      <td class="tdl"><p class="no-indent">War between France, England and Spain.</p></td>
+   </tr><tr>
+      <td class="tdc" colspan="2"><big><i>Frederick the Great’s Star.</i></big></td>
+   </tr><tr>
+      <td class="tdr_top">1744&mdash;</td>
+      <td class="tdl"><p class="no-indent">A six-tailed Comet observed in Germany just before
+            the death of Emperor Charles VII. His death
+            followed by war between Frederick the Great and
+            Maria Teresa of Austria. War spreads to England,
+            Holland, France, Spain and Italy. A British fleet
+            beaten by French and Spaniards off Toulon.</p></td>
+   </tr><tr>
+      <td class="tdr_top">1755&mdash;</td>
+      <td class="tdl"><p class="no-indent">A Comet precedes earthquake of Lisbon, by which
+            40,000 people lost their lives.</p></td>
+   </tr><tr>
+      <td class="tdr_top">1759&mdash;</td>
+      <td class="tdl"><p class="no-indent">Halley’s Comet. Seven Years’ War in Germany.
+            Frederick the Great overthrown in four bloody
+            battles. French lose Canada by their disastrous
+            defeat of the plains of Abraham, and lose India by
+            the loss of their fleet through three successive
+            defeats on the sea.</p></td>
+   </tr><tr>
+      <td class="tdc" colspan="2"><big><i>Napoleon’s Star.</i></big></td>
+   </tr><tr>
+      <td class="tdr_top">1769&mdash;</td>
+      <td class="tdl"><p class="no-indent">“Napoleon’s Comet.” A Comet of unusual red lustre
+            was observed over Italy and France. French overrun
+            Corsica. Bloody massacre of Corsicans. Birth of
+            Napoleon on August 15 in Corsica, just after the
+            Comet was seen no more.</p></td>
+   </tr><tr>
+      <td class="tdr_top">1811-12&mdash;</td>
+      <td class="tdl"><p class="no-indent">This huge Comet was one of the most famous
+            Comets of modern times. It was first seen in France
+            on March 26, 1811, and was last observed over
+            southern Russia on August 17, 1812&mdash;an appearance
+            of seventeen months, the longest on record. For
+            a while it had two tails, then only one. The
+            length of this tail was estimated as 100,000,000
+            miles. It was called “Napoleon’s Comet.” Under its
+            lustre Napoleon gathered his “grand armée,” the
+            greatest army assembled in Europe since Xerxes, and
+            invaded Russia. Wars were fought at the same time
+            in Portugal and Spain, where the British stormed
+            Ciudad Rodrigo and Badajos; and in America, where
+            Harrison’s victory over the Indians under Tecumseh
+            at Tippecanoe, and the seafight between the
+            “President” and “Little Belt” ushered in the War of
+            1812. In Egypt the Comet was taken as an omen of the
+            bloody massacre of the Mamelukes perpetrated at Cairo.</p></td>
+   </tr>
+ </tbody>
+</table>
+<p class="space-above2"><span class="pagenum" id="Page_53">[Pg 53]</span></p>
+
+<div id="I053" class="figcenter">
+  <img  src="images/i_053.jpg" alt="" width="400" height="644" />
+  <p class="center">THE GREAT COMET OF 1811.</p>
+</div>
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_54">[Pg 54]</span></p>
+
+<table border="0" cellspacing="0" summary="Comet Dates" cellpadding="0" >
+  <tbody><tr>
+      <td class="tdr_top">1821&mdash;</td>
+      <td class="tdl"><p class="no-indent">“Napoleon’s Comet.” Seen one night only over France
+            and over St. Helena the night before the death of
+            Napoleon at St. Helena.</p></td>
+   </tr><tr>
+      <td class="tdr_top">1823&mdash;</td>
+      <td class="tdl"><p class="no-indent">A Comet much mentioned by Spanish writers.
+            While it shone over Spain, South America and
+            the Mediterranean, the French overran Spain and
+            reinstated the Spanish king. Revival of the
+            Spanish Inquisition and bloody persecutions of the
+            revolutionists. War of Independence in Central and
+            South America. Bloody war of Greek Independence.</p></td>
+   </tr><tr>
+      <td class="tdr_top">1835-6&mdash;</td>
+      <td class="tdl"><p class="no-indent">Halley’s Comet. New York City all but destroyed
+            by fire. Zulu massacre of Boers at Weenen. Mexican
+            massacre of Americans at the Alamo. Wars throughout
+            South America.</p></td>
+   </tr><tr>
+      <td class="tdr_top">1843&mdash;</td>
+      <td class="tdl"><p class="no-indent">Another famous Comet seen all over the world during
+            the Spring of that year. Especially brilliant in
+            the Southern Hemisphere and in India. War in India
+            on the part of the British against Afghanistan,
+            Beluchistan, Scinde and against the Sikhs.</p></td>
+   </tr><tr>
+      <td class="tdr_top">1848&mdash;<span class="pagenum" id="Page_55">[Pg 55]</span></td>
+      <td class="tdl"><p class="no-indent">Encke’s famous periodic Comet. Bloody revolutionary
+            risings and civil wars in France, Hungary, Bohemia,
+            Austria, Germany, Italy and Poland.</p></td>
+   </tr><tr>
+      <td class="tdr_top">1858-9&mdash;</td>
+      <td class="tdl"><p class="no-indent">Donati’s Comet. This Comet, which appeared to be
+            charging straight down from the zenith, and had a
+            curved tail, was observed from June 1858 to April
+            1859. It was seen at its brightest in the South, in
+            Italy, Mexico and in the Far East. While it shone
+            over the Far East there were bloody wars between
+            the British and the risen people of India; between
+            the British and the Chinese, who objected to
+            having opium thrust upon them; while Japan was in
+            the throes of revolution and civil war. In Mexico
+            the standard of revolt against the clericals was
+            raised by Juarez, thus plunging Mexico into civil
+            war and war with France. Immediately after the
+            disappearance of the Comet war broke out in Italy
+            between the French and Italians on one side and the
+            Austrians on the other, ending in the bloody Battle
+            of Solferino.</p></td>
+   </tr><tr>
+      <td class="tdc" colspan="2"><big><i>Civil War Comets.</i></big></td>
+   </tr><tr>
+      <td class="tdr_top">1861&mdash;</td>
+      <td class="tdl"><p class="no-indent">“First Civil War Comet.” The brightest Comet of
+            the nineteenth century. Sir John Herschel, the
+            great English astronomer, said of this Comet: “It
+            far exceeded in brightness any Comet I have before
+            observed, those of 1811 and the recent splendid one
+            of 1858 not excepted.” The Comet was first seen
+            by a layman, and appeared at its brightest during
+            the Summer months in North America. Its coming was
+            heralded as a token of the great Civil War which
+            broke out then in America.</p></td>
+   </tr><tr>
+      <td class="tdr_top">1862&mdash;</td>
+      <td class="tdl"><p class="no-indent">“Second Civil War Comet.” Another Comet of very
+            peculiar appearance, with jets of flame flaring
+            from its head, showed itself during the Summer
+            months in North America. The Civil War was then at
+            its height. The coming of the Comet was taken to
+            herald the bloody battles of Shiloh, Williamsburg,
+            Seven Days, Seven Pines, Cedar Mountain and
+            Antietam, all fought that year after the Comet’s
+            appearance.</p></td>
+   </tr>
+ </tbody>
+</table>
+<p class="space-above2"><span class="pagenum" id="Page_56">[Pg 56]</span></p>
+
+<div id="I056" class="figcenter">
+  <img  src="images/i_056.jpg" alt="" width="600" height="381" />
+  <p class="center">THE GREAT COMET OF 1843<br />
+         AS SEEN ON MARCH 17 FROM BLACKHEATH, KENT.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_57">[Pg 57]</span></p>
+<table border="0" cellspacing="0" summary="Comet Dates" cellpadding="0" >
+  <tbody><tr>
+      <td class="tdr_top">1874&mdash;</td>
+      <td class="tdl"><p class="no-indent">Coggia’s Comet. This Comet was seen at its
+            brightest over Southern France and Spain during the
+            Summer months of that year. Spain was then in the
+            throes of the bloody Carlist War.</p></td>
+   </tr><tr>
+      <td class="tdc" colspan="2"><big><i>Garfield’s Comet.</i></big></td>
+   </tr><tr>
+      <td class="tdr_top">1881&mdash;</td>
+      <td class="tdl"><p class="no-indent">Garfield’s Comet. This Comet showed itself for a
+            few nights only in March during the week following
+            President Garfield’s inauguration. It was observed
+            also in Russia. On March 13, Emperor Alexander II.
+            of Russia, was assassinated with a bomb. Three
+            months later President Garfield was assassinated in
+            Washington.</p></td>
+   </tr><tr>
+      <td class="tdc" colspan="2"><big><i>War Comets.</i></big></td>
+   </tr><tr>
+      <td class="tdr_top">1882&mdash;</td>
+      <td class="tdl"><p class="no-indent">Comet of Tel-el-Kebir. A Comet with two tails was
+            seen at its brightest over Egypt during the first
+            two weeks of September. Egypt was then in the midst
+            of Arabi Pasha’s uprising against the British. On
+            September 18, when the Comet was last seen, Arabi
+            Pasha was overthrown by General Wolseley in the
+            bloody battle of Tel-el-Kebir.</p></td>
+   </tr><tr>
+      <td class="tdr_top">1904-5&mdash;</td>
+      <td class="tdl"><p class="no-indent">Manchurian War Comet. From the early part of
+            February, 1904, until Midsummer, 1905, Chinese
+            observers recorded the appearance of a Comet over
+            Northern China. Throughout that period Manchuria
+            was ravaged by the bloody war between the Japanese
+            and Russians.</p></td>
+   </tr><tr>
+      <td class="tdc" colspan="2"><big><i>Earthquake Comets.</i></big></td>
+   </tr><tr>
+      <td class="tdr_top">1906&mdash;<span class="pagenum" id="Page_58">[Pg 58]</span></td>
+      <td class="tdl"><p class="no-indent">San Francisco Comet. A Comet discovered by Ross on
+            March 17, remaining visible for one month. Observed
+            from the Lick Observatory in California. On April 17
+            came the California earthquake and burning of
+            San Francisco.</p></td>
+   </tr><tr>
+      <td class="tdr_top">1908&mdash;</td>
+      <td class="tdl"><p class="no-indent">Morehouse’s Comet. Visible for more than a month,
+            during the autumn. In Italy it was interpreted
+            afterward as an omen foreboding the Messina
+            earthquake late in the year.</p></td>
+   </tr><tr>
+      <td class="tdc" colspan="2"><big><i>This Year’s Comets.</i></big></td>
+   </tr><tr>
+      <td class="tdr_top">1910&mdash;</td>
+      <td class="tdl"><p class="no-indent">Inness’ Comet, otherwise known as “1910 A”. An
+            unexpected Comet of short duration during January.
+            On the appearance of this Comet Madame de Thebes,
+            a French astrologer, predicted floods and general
+            disaster for France. The disappearance of the Comet
+            in France was followed by unprecedented rains and
+            floods which covered one-fourth of France with
+            water and inundated Paris, completely submerging
+            all the bridges over the Seine. Floods also in
+            Italy and Germany. This Comet was likewise observed
+            in China late in January, where it caused universal consternation.</p></td>
+   </tr><tr>
+      <td class="tdr_top">1910&mdash;</td>
+      <td class="tdl"><p class="no-indent">Pidoux’s Comet. Another unexpected Comet was first
+            observed by Pidoux, in Geneva, during a few nights
+            late in February. It is recorded astronomically as
+            “1910 B”. Its fleeting observations by astronomers
+            were followed by Socialist franchise riots in
+            Germany and by the labour riots of Philadelphia,
+            with widespread bloodshed between the rioters and
+            the constabulary.</p></td>
+   </tr><tr>
+      <td class="tdr_top">1910&mdash;</td>
+      <td class="tdl"><p class="no-indent">Halley’s Comet of this year was first “picked
+            up” by Dr. Wolf, in Germany. Already various
+            astrologers have foretold disaster from its coming.
+            It remains to be seen whether their predictions
+            will come true.</p></td>
+   </tr>
+ </tbody>
+</table>
+
+<p class="space-below2"><span class="pagenum" id="Page_59">[Pg 59]</span></p>
+<div id="I059" class="figcenter">
+  <img  src="images/i_059.jpg" alt="" width="400" height="632" />
+  <p class="center">THE GREAT COMET OF 1882,<br /> ON OCTOBER 9, AT 4 A. M.</p>
+</div>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" />
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_60">[Pg 60]</span></p>
+<h2 class="nobreak">HALLEY’S BALEFUL COMET</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class="drop-cap"><span class="smcap">Among</span> all the stars
+known in astronomy, the periodically returning Comet now known as
+Halley’s Comet has the most baleful record.</p>
+
+<p>In this Comet’s wake, after every one of its recorded appearances,
+there have always followed terrible disasters.</p>
+
+<p>Not only war and battles, or other deeds of bloodshed, such as
+massacres and murders, but each of the dread disasters that are held to
+go with Comets have followed along one after the other in this Comet’s train.</p>
+
+<p>Of the eight baneful after-effects of Comets mentioned in the old
+German ditty that has been sung in the Fatherland ever since the great
+Comet which ushered in the dreadful Thirty Years’ War,</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent3">“Wind, Famine, Plague and Death to Kings</div>
+    <div class="verse indent4">War, Earthquakes, Floods and Dire Things.”</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>Halley’s Comet is known to have preceded each and every form of these
+evils in turn.</p>
+
+<p>Directly after each return of Halley’s Comet there has always followed
+somewhere within the influence of its rays one or other of those “dire
+things,”&mdash;a flood, an earthquake, a hurricane, famine, plague, war,
+bloodshed, or the sudden death of a ruler.</p>
+
+<p>Thanks to the careful work of such painstaking astronomers and
+historians as Lubienitius, Pingré, Dionys de Séjour, J. Russell Hind,
+Laugier, and Messrs. Cowell and Crommelin, the records of great events
+connected with Halley’s Comet have been traced back nearly 2,000 years,
+to the days before Christ.
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_61">[Pg 61]</span></p>
+
+<p>Among the signal events following in the train of this Comet there have
+been so many bloody massacres and appalling disasters that Halley’s
+Comet now has the ominous distinction of being the bloodiest of all
+stars of ill omen.</p>
+
+<p>Herewith follows the story of this Comet’s periodic appearances in
+history and of the events connected therewith, as traced back from its
+last return in 1835 to its first recorded entrance into the history of
+mankind.</p>
+
+<p class="f120"><b>1835-1836</b></p>
+
+<p class="drop-cap"><span class="smcap">Halley’s</span> Comet last
+appeared in the Summer of 1835, and was seen until Spring of the
+following year.</p>
+
+<p>It was first discerned by Father Dumouchel with a powerful telescope
+from the observatory of the Collegio Romano in Rome on the night of
+August 6, 1835. Father Dumouchel, who had been watching for it many
+months, picked it up close to the spot in the heavens that Rosenberger,
+a German astronomer, had predicted for its appearance on that date.</p>
+
+<p>The last astronomer to see the Comet was Sir John Herschel, who
+observed it from the Cape of Good Hope until the middle of May, 1836.</p>
+
+<p>Other noted astronomers who made observations of it were Arago, Struve,
+Bessel, Kaiser, Sir Thomas Maclear, Admiral Smyth, Baron Damoiseau and
+Count Pontécoulant.</p>
+
+<p>This last astronomer, many years before, had computed the exact time
+of its coming and came within four days of it. For this brilliant feat
+Count Pontécoulant received a gold medal from the French Academy of Sciences.
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_62">[Pg 62]</span></p>
+
+<div id="I062" class="figcenter">
+  <img  src="images/i_062.jpg" alt="" width="400" height="656" />
+  <p class="center">HALLEY’S COMET OF 1835.<br /> FROM A DRAWING BY ROSENBERGER.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_63">[Pg 63]</span>
+The German astronomer, Rosenberger, who had likewise computed the
+Comet’s return, coming within five days of its passage nearest to the
+Sun, received a similar gold medal from the Royal Astronomical Society
+of Great Britain.</p>
+
+<p>Professor Struve, who studied the Comet through the great telescope
+at Dorpat in Russia, described it as “glowing like a red-hot coal of
+oblong form.”</p>
+
+<p>Bessel, who observed it from the Koenigsberg observatory in Northern
+Germany, described the Comet’s appearance as that of “a blazing rocket,
+the flame from which was driven aside as by a strong gale, or as the
+stream of fire from the discharge of a cannon when the sparks and smoke
+are carried backwards by the wind.”</p>
+
+<p>Struve at Koenigsberg and Kaiser at Leyden were the first to see the
+Comet with their naked eyes in the third week of September.</p>
+
+<p>Immediately after the Comet became generally visible in the Old World
+the bubonic plague, known of old as the “Black Death,” broke out in
+Egypt. In the City of Alexandria alone 9,000 people died on one day.
+By the Moslems this calamity was generally attributed to the evil
+influence of the Comet.</p>
+
+<p>In America the Comet became visible to the naked eye only late in the
+year. Then, on its approach to the Sun, it was lost to view and passed
+over to the Southern Hemisphere where it was next observed by Sir John
+Herschel in South Africa.</p>
+
+<p>Shortly after its brief blaze over North America the great “New York
+Fire” laid waste the entire business section of the biggest city in the
+New World. All the commercial centre of the city, including the richest
+firms and largest commercial warehouses, were laid in ashes. The fire
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_64">[Pg 64]</span>
+raged through days and nights. In all, 530 houses burned down and
+$18,000,000 of property was consumed. Owing to the intense cold, the
+sufferings of the homeless were pitiable.</p>
+
+<p>Down in Florida, at the same time, Osceola, the chieftain of the
+Seminole Indians, called upon the Comet as a signal for war against the
+whites. The Indians called the Comet “Big Knife in the Sky.”</p>
+
+<p>The war began with a bloody massacre of American soldiers under General
+Wiley Thompson at Fort King. All were slaughtered. Osceola scalped
+General Thompson with his own hands.</p>
+
+<p>On the same day, Major Dade of the American Army, who was leading a
+relief expedition into Florida from Tampa Bay, was ambushed by the
+Indians near Wahoo Swamp and was massacred with his men. Of the whole
+expedition only four men escaped death.</p>
+
+<p>Within forty-eight hours of this horrible massacre came another bloody
+Indian fight on the banks of the Big Withlacoochee.</p>
+
+<p>With the passing of the Comet to the Southern Hemisphere, bloody wars
+broke out one after another in Mexico, Cuba, Central America, Ecuador,
+Bolivia, Peru and Argentina. All those countries were in a welter of
+blood.</p>
+
+<p>At the same time the American settlers of Texas declared themselves
+independent and made open war on Mexico. The war began with the bloody
+battle of Gonzales, in which 500 American frontiersmen fought and
+defeated over a thousand Mexican soldiers. This was followed by other
+fierce fights at Goliad and Bexar.</p>
+
+<p>Next came the bloody massacre of the Alamo, when all of Jim Bowie’s and
+Davy Crockett’s American followers were killed in an all night fight.
+Out of 200 Americans every man fell at his post. This was the deed of
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_65">[Pg 65]</span>
+blood on which Joaquin Miller wrote his stirring Ballad of the Alamo.</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent3">“Santa Ana came storming as a storm might come,&mdash;</div>
+    <div class="verse indent4">There was rumble of cannon; there was rattle of blade;</div>
+    <div class="verse indent4">There was cavalry, infantry, bugle and drum,&mdash;</div>
+    <div class="verse indent4">Full seven thousand, in pomp and parade,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent4">The chivalry, flower of Mexico,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent4">And a gaunt two hundred in the Alamo.”</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>One month before the final disappearance of the Comet, the Texas War
+came to an end with the bloody battle of San Jacinto, when Sam Houston,
+with 800 American frontiersmen, defeated 1,500 Mexicans, and made a
+prisoner of President Santa Ana of Mexico.</p>
+
+<p>When the Comet had passed to the Southern Hemisphere, it was seen at
+its brightest in South Africa.</p>
+
+<p>The pious Boers of Cape Colony understood it to be a sign from heaven
+and forthwith set out on their great trek across the Orange and Vaal
+rivers, where they founded the Orange Free State and Transvaal Republic.</p>
+
+<p>Thus the Comet was the signal for the first blood drawn in the long
+fight between the British and Boers.</p>
+
+<p>A little later, though, the Boers found another, more woeful
+significance for the blazing of the Comet.</p>
+
+<p>Under the leadership of Piet Relief, a thousand Boer families had
+trekked across the Drakensberg Mountains into Natal. A solemn treaty
+of peace with the Zulu warriors was entered into with Dingaan, the
+chief of the Zulus at Dingaan’s Kraal. Suddenly the Zulus pounced upon
+the unsuspecting Piet Relief and his sixty-five Boer followers and
+massacred them to a man.</p>
+
+<p>Then the Zulus, numbering some 10,000 warriors, swept out into the
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_66">[Pg 66]</span>
+veldt and made for the Boer wagon trains. Near Colenso, at a spot
+called Weenen (weeping), in remembrance of the dreadful tragedy there
+perpetrated, the Zulus overwhelmed the Boer laager and slaughtered all
+its inmates&mdash;41 men, 56 women, 185 children and 250 Kaffir slaves.</p>
+
+<p>After this bloody massacre, equalling in horror the Massacre of the
+Alamo on the other side of the world, the Comet of 1835-36 was seen no
+more.</p>
+
+<p class="f120"><b>1758-1759</b></p>
+
+<p class="drop-cap"><span class="smcap">This</span> was the first
+return of the Comet predicted by Halley. Hence it must be reckoned as
+the first appearance of “Halley’s Comet” under his name.</p>
+
+<p>It was first seen on Christmas night, 1758, by John Palitsch, a Saxon
+farmer, near Dresden, who was looking for it with a self-constructed
+telescope of eight-foot focus. The Comet did not become visible to the
+naked eye until well into 1759. It passed around the sun on March 12,
+1759. After that it was seen throughout Europe during April and May,
+appearing at its brightest during the first week in May. Later it was
+seen to advantage in the Southern Hemisphere.</p>
+
+<p>In Germany, where it was seen at its fiercest, the Comet was taken as
+a token of the bloody Seven Years’ War, which was then being fought
+between Frederick the Great and his enemies on all sides.</p>
+
+<p>The ominous Comet had scarcely vanished from view when all Germany was
+overrun by marching armies from France, from Austria, from Russia.</p>
+
+<p>The French, under the Duke of Broglie, overthrew the Germans, under the
+Duke of Brunswick, at Bergen, and seized the city of Frankfurt. Then
+came the bloody battle of Minden, in which two large French armies were
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_67">[Pg 67]</span>
+beaten. Meanwhile the Russians were marching into Prussia, and another
+bloody battle was fought at Kay in midsummer.</p>
+
+<p>Within a fortnight King Frederick the Great and his whole army were
+overthrown by the Austrians and Russians in the disastrous battle of
+Kunersdorf.</p>
+
+<p>Another Prussian army was overcome at Maxen, where 13,000 Prussians
+were taken.</p>
+
+<p>Altogether, during this year’s campaigns, several hundred thousand
+soldiers lost their lives.</p>
+
+<p>It was the worst year of the Seven Years’ War for Frederick the Great
+and his soldiers, who attributed their bloody defeats to the ill omen
+of the Comet.</p>
+
+<p>In other parts of the world, likewise, the coming of the Comet was
+followed by widespread war and bloody fighting.</p>
+
+<p>For the French, the Comet signalled disaster after disaster. After
+their armies had been beaten in Germany, their navy was defeated on
+August 17 in a great sea fight in the Bay of Lagos, on the coast of
+Portugal. Six weeks later there was another bloody sea fight between
+the British and French, when Admiral Pocock inflicted a telling defeat
+on the French fleet.</p>
+
+<p>Then came the final French naval disaster off Quiberon, in the Bay of
+Biscay, when Admiral Hawke destroyed French naval power by sinking
+or blowing up over a score of the French fighting ships. This bloody
+defeat was a disaster of untold consequences to the French, since it
+meant the loss of India.</p>
+
+<p>But this was not all that this Comet of ill omen had brought to the
+French.</p>
+
+<p>On September 13th of that year the French lost their strongest hold on
+America in the disastrous defeat inflicted upon them by General Wolfe
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_68">[Pg 68]</span>
+in the bloody battle on the Plains of Abraham, where Wolfe himself fell
+fighting. On the French side, General Montcalm, the Commander-in-Chief,
+was mortally wounded. This meant the loss of Quebec and of all Canada
+to the French, an event of far-reaching importance that has changed the
+destiny of all America and of the modern world.</p>
+
+<p class="f120"><b>1682</b></p>
+
+<p class="drop-cap"><span class="smcap">The</span> Comet which put
+Halley on the right track in his theories of Comets, first came
+into view on the night of August 15, 1682. It was first detected by
+Flamsteed’s assistant at the Greenwich Observatory, while searching the
+northern heavens with a telescope.</p>
+
+<p>Flamsteed, the first Astronomer Royal, and Halley, his successor, kept
+a close watch upon the Comet every night, and followed its course over
+the sky. Others who watched it were Sir Isaac Newton, Cassini, Picard
+and La Hire in Paris, Baert at Toulon, Kirch and Zimmermann in Germany,
+Montanari at Padua, and Hevelius in Dantsic. They observed that the
+tail lengthened considerably as the Comet came nearer the sun. Later
+a jet of luminous matter was seen shooting out toward the sun, which
+afterward fell back into the tail. Hevelius has left us a drawing of
+this phenomenon.</p>
+
+<p>On November 11th, Halley found that the Comet had come within a
+semi-diameter of the path of our earth. This startling discovery
+caused Halley to reflect what might happen if the earth and the Comet
+had arrived at the same time at the spot in space where their two
+orbits intersect. Assuming as he did that the mass of the Comet was
+considerably larger than our earth, he declared: “If so large a body
+with so rapid a motion were to strike the earth&mdash;a thing by no means
+impossible&mdash;the shock might reduce this beautiful world to its original chaos.”
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_69">[Pg 69]</span></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+  <img id="I069"  src="images/i_069a.jpg" alt="" width="600" height="144" />
+  <p class="center space-below2">HALLEY’S COMET, JANUARY 9,<br />
+       1683, AS DRAWN BY HEVELIUS.</p>
+  <img  src="images/i_069b.jpg" alt="" width="600" height="480" />
+  <p class="center space-below2">THE COMET OF 1682, AS REPRESENTED<br />
+       IN THE NUREMBURG CHRONICLE.</p>
+  <img  src="images/i_069c.jpg" alt="" width="600" height="210" />
+  <p class="center space-below2">MEDAL STRUCK IN GERMANY TO ALLAY THE<br />
+       TERROR CAUSED BY THE COMET OF 1680-81.</p>
+  <p class="center">TRANSLATION OF INSCRIPTION:</p>
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent3">“THE STAR THREATENS EVIL THINGS&mdash;ONLY TRUST!</div>
+    <div class="verse indent4">GOD WILL MAKE IT TURN OUT WELL.”</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_70">[Pg 70]</span>
+Others beside Halley took alarm at the Comet. They called it
+“The Chariot of Fire.”</p>
+
+<p>Dr. Whiston&mdash;he who succeeded Newton in the Lucasian chair of
+mathematics at Cambridge&mdash;in a moment of prophetic vision fervently
+declared that this Comet was God’s agent that would bring about the
+General Conflagration by involving the world in flames.</p>
+
+<p>In America, the Rev. Increase Mather, President of Harvard College,
+on the appearance of the Comet in New England, preached his great sermon
+on “Heaven’s Alarm to the World ... wherein is shown that fearful sights
+and signs in the Heavens are the presages of great calamities at hand.”</p>
+
+<p>Increase Mather’s warning was handed down as an inspired prophesy,
+in view of the fact that the English settlers in North America soon
+afterwards got into bloody warfare with the Indians. The war raged at
+its fiercest in the Carolinas, where the English settlers made war upon
+the redskins simply for the purpose of taking them captive and selling
+them into slavery in the West Indies.</p>
+
+<p>To the Indians the Comet appeared as a sign of ill omen, as shown by
+their frequent references to it during the parleys with the white men.</p>
+
+<p>The Comet was shining at its fiercest when the six greatest chiefs of
+the Susquehanna nation were enticed into a pretended council of peace
+with the white men, only to be foully murdered with all their followers.</p>
+
+<p>While this was going on in America, the Comet gave the signal in India
+for the first hostilities there upon the white settlers from Portugal,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_71">[Pg 71]</span>
+as well as for the outbreak of the bloody Mahratta War, which ravaged
+India for a generation to come.</p>
+
+<p>Nearer East, the Turks, under the leadership of Mohammed Bey, ravaged
+Egypt, while, on the other side, a Turkish army under Kara Mustapha
+carried war into Hungary, to the very gates of Vienna, until Emperor
+Leopold felt constrained to call for help from Sobieski, the warrior
+king of the Poles.</p>
+
+<p>In Europe the French overran Alsace, and suddenly seized the German
+city of Strasburg.</p>
+
+<p>At the same time the bubonic plague broke out in North Germany. In the
+little university town of Halle alone, within a few days, 4,397 people
+died out of a total population of ten thousand.</p>
+
+<p>It was then that medals were struck off in Germany with a design of
+the comet on their face, and an inscription imploring God to avert the
+evils threatened by the Comet:</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0">“The star threatens evil things;</div>
+    <div class="verse indent2">Only trust! God will make it right.”</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p class="f120"><b>1607</b></p>
+
+<p class="drop-cap"><span class="smcap">The</span> Comet this year
+was seen all over Europe. The best observations of it were made by
+Kepler and Longomontanus (Langberger). It was seen at its brightest
+in England.</p>
+
+<p>Shortly after its appearance over England, there came freshets and
+floods which completely submerged the richest counties of England. In
+Somersetshire and Gloucestershire the water rose above the tops of the
+houses. This was followed by a visitation of the plague.</p>
+
+<p>In Ireland the Comet was taken as an omen of the fate of Londonderry,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_72">[Pg 72]</span>
+where the Irish rebels, suddenly seizing the city, massacred Sir George
+Powlett and all his English garrison.</p>
+
+<p>In Germany the Comet was taken as a token of the war then brewing
+between the Emperor and the German Protestant Princes&mdash;the so-called
+Protestant League&mdash;which ushered in the dreadful Thirty Years’ War
+in Germany.</p>
+
+<p>Off Gibraltar, a Dutch fleet completely destroyed a fleet of Spanish
+war galleons, thereby crippling Spanish sea power for a generation to come.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile, in America, the early settlers in Virginia, led by John
+Smith, found themselves beset by the redskins, who were incited to
+war by the appearance of the Comet. They called it “Red Knife in the
+Sky.” During the war, John Smith was taken prisoner, and escaped with
+his life only through the intercession of Pocahontas, the daughter of
+Powhattan.</p>
+
+<p class="f120"><b>1531</b></p>
+
+<p class="drop-cap"><span class="smcap">The</span> Comet was first
+sighted by the German astronomer Bienewitz (“Apianus”) in midsummer of
+this year. Zwingli preached about it as an omen of disaster.</p>
+
+<p>German astrologers regarded it as a herald of the wars between Spain
+and France, which broke out in that year, and of the bloody war carried
+into Hungary by the Turks under Soleyman, who ravaged the Danube
+country to the very walls of Vienna. These wars were followed by a
+visitation of the black plague.</p>
+
+<p>In the Netherlands the breaking of the ocean dykes caused terrific
+floods, in which over 400,000 people were drowned.</p>
+
+<p>Toward the close of the year the Comet passed over to the Southern Hemisphere.
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_73">[Pg 73]</span></p>
+
+<p>To the aborigines of South America it proved a star of dreadful omen.
+During this year the most cruel of Spanish conquerors did their
+bloodiest work in the New World&mdash;Cortez in Mexico, Alvarado at the
+Equator, and Pizarro in Peru. Before the Comet disappeared from view,
+several hundred thousand wretched Incas and Aztecs had been slaughtered
+by the Spaniards, while many more hundred thousands were worked to
+death as slaves.</p>
+
+<p class="f120"><b>1456</b></p>
+
+<p class="drop-cap"><span class="smcap">The</span> Comet this year was
+observed throughout Europe and also in China. It came into view over
+Europe on the 29th of May, and was seen gliding over the sky towards
+the moon.</p>
+
+<p>Writers of that period say that it shone with exceeding brightness and
+spread out a fan-shaped train of fire. The Arab astronomers describe
+its shape as that of a Turkish scimitar, which, blazing against the
+dark sky, was regarded as a sign from heaven of the war then raging
+against the Christian infidels.</p>
+
+<p>A clear story of the Comet’s appearance has been left by the Bavarian
+Jesuit, Brueckner (Pontanus). He based his story on the record of
+Georgos Phranza, Grandmaster of the Wardrobes to the Emperor of
+Constantinople. There the Comet is described as “rising in the West;
+moving towards the East, and approaching the Moon.”</p>
+
+<p>By the Chinese this Comet was described as having a tail sixty degrees
+long, and a head “which at one time was round, and the size of a bull’s
+eye, the tail being like a peacock’s.”
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_74">[Pg 74]</span></p>
+
+<p class="blockquot">Halley wrote of this Comet in 1686: “In the
+summer of the year 1456 a Comet was seen, which passed in a retrograde
+direction between the earth and the sun. From its period and path, I
+infer that it was the same Comet as that of the years 1531, 1607 and
+1682. I may therefore with confidence predict its return in the year 1758.”</p>
+
+<p>The appearance of the Comet in 1456 was so well remembered even 225
+years later, because this was the scimitar-shaped Comet hailed by the
+conquering Turks as their guiding star, against the evil influence of
+which Pope Calixtus III. exhorted all Christians to pray to God.</p>
+
+<p>This story has been denied by certain latter-day sceptics, but the
+medieval historian Platina, who was living in Rome at the time, and who
+knew whereof he spoke, wrote in his “Lives of the Popes” in 1470:</p>
+
+<p class="blockquot">“A hairy and fiery star having then made its
+appearance for several days, the mathematicians declared that there
+would follow grievous pestilence, dearth and some great calamity.
+Calixtus, to avert the wrath of God, ordered supplications that if
+evils were impending for the human race He would turn all upon the
+Turks, the enemies of the Christian name. He likewise ordered, to move
+God by continual entreaty, that notice should be given by the bells to
+call the faithful at midday to aid by their prayers those engaged in
+battle with the Turk.”</p>
+
+<p>In truth, all Christendom appeared indeed to have fallen under the
+“wrath of God,” for the Turks; having wrested Constantinople away from
+the Christians, now came ravaging up the Danube countries and laid
+siege to the Christian city of Belgrade. Bloody battles were fought
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_75">[Pg 75]</span>
+between the Magyars and Turks on the Danube, until Hunyadi, the great
+Magyar leader, at last overthrew the Turks under Mahomet II., under
+the walls of Belgrade, in a great battle, in which no less than 24,000
+Turks were slain. This was on July 21st, on the eve of which day the
+Comet had been seen to blaze at its fiercest.</p>
+
+<p class="f120"><b>1378</b></p>
+
+<p class="drop-cap"><span class="smcap">The</span> Comet appeared late
+in the year, and was seen at its brightest over Northern Europe, in
+Scotland, Scandinavia, Russia and Poland.</p>
+
+<p>All these countries, during the same period and immediately afterwards,
+were cursed by the terrible pestilence called the “Black Death,” now
+known to have been the worst visitation of the bubonic plague known in
+history. Wherever the dread sickness appeared, the people “died like
+rats.” So many succumbed to the disease, and so many others fled aghast
+from the pestilence, that whole cities and towns were left empty, and
+no labourers could be found to till the fields.</p>
+
+<p class="f120"><b>1301</b></p>
+
+<p class="drop-cap"><span class="smcap">The</span> Comet this year was
+first observed by German and Flemish astrologers during the late Summer
+and Autumn. It was interpreted as an ill omen of the wars which then
+ravaged Europe. Immediately after the appearance of the Comet, Emperor
+Albrecht of Germany ravaged the Rhine lands with fire and sword.
+Afterwards the German astrologers explained the Comet as a warning omen
+of the death of the Emperor’s son Rudolf, who died within a twelvemonth
+of his coronation as King of Bohemia.</p>
+
+<p>In Flanders the Comet was taken as a heavenly token of the fierce war
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_76">[Pg 76]</span>
+which followed the bloodstained massacre of 3,000 French soldiers by the
+enraged people of Flanders.</p>
+
+<p>Soon after this came Robert of Artois’ bloody defeat at Coutrai, the
+famous “Battle of the Spurs,” so called from the thousands of gilt
+spurs that were taken afterwards from the feet of the slain French
+cavaliers.</p>
+
+<p class="f120"><b>1222</b></p>
+
+<p class="drop-cap"><span class="smcap">The</span> Comet during this
+year is recorded by the Chinese astronomers in the months of September
+and October. During these months, and immediately afterwards, Jenghis
+Khan, the bloody Mongol conqueror, with his fierce Mongol hordes, was
+ravaging all China, Persia, India and the Caucasus country as far as
+the River Don.</p>
+
+<p>The Comet was taken as a special omen of the terrible fate of the City
+of Herat and its surrounding country, where the bloodthirsty conqueror
+caused to be slaughtered over a million of people. Jenghis Khan, who
+believed in stars and omens, having been born with bloodstained hands,
+hailed the Comet as his special Star. Under its rays he extended his
+immense Empire to its outermost boundaries from the China seas to the
+banks of the Dniepr in Russia. After the Comet’s disappearance, Jenghis
+Khan regarded the planets that had crossed its orbit as stars of ill
+omen, betokening his death, so he set his face backward from his march
+of conquest, and soon afterwards died in Mongolia.</p>
+
+<p class="f120"><b>1145</b></p>
+
+<p class="drop-cap"><span class="smcap">The</span> Comet appeared over
+Europe early in Spring. It was seen at Rome in March and April.</p>
+
+<p>Inspired by the appearance of the Comet, Pope Eugenius III. called for
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_77">[Pg 77]</span>
+a crusade against the Moslems. St. Bernard in France took up the cry,
+and preached a holy war all over France. On Easter Sunday, King Louis
+VII. of France, his Queen and all his nobles, received the Cross from
+St. Bernard at Vizelay.</p>
+
+<p>In Rome, however, the Comet was taken as a token of the Pope’s
+downfall. Arnold of Brescia preached against the Pope and aroused the
+Roman populace against him. The Holy Father had to flee.</p>
+
+<p>On the disappearance of the Comet, the Pope returned and excommunicated
+the Patricians of Rome. Arnold of Brescia was taken and strangled in
+his cell. Later historians, like Lubienitius, accordingly interpreted
+the Comet as a sign of warning rather than as an ill omen.</p>
+
+<p class="f120"><b>1066</b></p>
+
+<p class="drop-cap"><span class="smcap">This</span> is the most famous
+appearance of the Comet now known as Halley’s Comet. Under its seven
+rays, that year, William the Conqueror felt inspired to fall upon
+England, while Harold, the Saxon, on the other hand, saw in the Comet a
+star of dread foreboding and of doom.</p>
+
+<p>The medieval chronicles of this year all make special mention of the
+Comet. A picture of the Comet, as it appeared to the doomed Harold, was
+embroidered by Matilde of France, on the famous coloured tapestry of
+the Norman Conquest, which is still preserved at Bayeux in Normandy.</p>
+
+<p>Zonares, the Greek historian, in his account of the death of Emperor
+Constantinus Ducas (who died in May, 1067), writes of the Comet as
+“large as the full moon, and at first without a tail, on the appearance
+of which the star dwindled in size.”</p>
+
+<p>The Chinese astronomers have recorded that this Comet had seven tails,
+and was seen for sixty-seven days, after which “the star, the blaze,
+and the star’s tails all drew away.”
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_78">[Pg 78]</span></p>
+
+<div id="I078" class="figcenter">
+  <img  src="images/i_078.jpg" alt="" width="600" height="363" />
+  <p class="center">HALLEY’S COMET, 1066.<br /> (<i>From the Bayeux Tapestry.</i>)</p>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_79">[Pg 79]</span>
+The Christian chroniclers record that this Comet, “in size and
+brightness equalled the full moon, while its tail, slowly lengthening
+as it came near the Sun, spread out into seven rays and arched over the
+heavens in the shape of a dragon’s tail.”</p>
+
+<p>Sigebert of Brabant, the Belgian chronicler of that time, wrote of it:
+“Over the island of Britain was seen a star of a wonderful bigness, to
+the train of which hung a fiery sword not unlike a dragon’s tail; and
+out of the dragon’s mouth issued two vast rays, whereof one reached as
+far as France, and the other, divided into seven lesser rays, stretched
+away towards Ireland.”</p>
+
+<p>William of Malmesbury wrote how the apparition affected the mind of
+a fellow monk of his monastery in England. His words were: “Soon
+after the death of Henry, King of France, by poison, a wonderful star
+appeared trailing its long tail over the sky. Wherefore, a certain monk
+of our monastery, by name Elmir, bowed down with terror at the sight of
+the strange star, wisely exclaimed, ‘Thou art come back at last, thou
+that will cause so many mothers to weep; many years have I seen thee
+shine, but thou seemest to me more terrible now that thou foretellest
+the ruin of my country.’”</p>
+
+<p>Another old Norman chronicler, by way of defending the divine right
+of William of Normandy to invade England, wrote: “How a Starre with
+seven long Tayles appeared in the Skye. How the Learned sayd that newe
+Starres only shewed themselves when a Kingdom wanted a King, and how
+the sayd Starre was yclept a Comette.”</p>
+
+<p>William himself appealed to the Comet as his guiding star. It shone at
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_80">[Pg 80]</span>
+its brightest during the Summer months while William was preparing his
+expedition at St. Valery. When the spirits of his followers failed
+them, William pointed to the blazing Comet and bid monks and priests
+who accompanied his expedition to preach stirring sermons on the
+“wonderful Sign from Heaven.”</p>
+
+<p>The trip across the English Channel, late in September, was lighted up
+by the Comet, and under its lustre the Norman invaders first pitched
+their camp at Pevensey.</p>
+
+<p>Once more, when William’s Norman followers quailed at the fierce work
+before them, William pointed to the Comet as a token of coming victory.</p>
+
+<p>A fortnight later, directly after the disappearance of the Comet, the
+Battle of Hastings was fought, in which King Harold and his Saxon
+thanes lost their lives and their country.</p>
+
+<p>Afterwards, when Queen Matilda and her court ladies embroidered the
+pictorial story of her husband’s Conquest of England in the huge
+tapestry of Bayeux, they did not forget the Comet. They represented
+Harold cowering in alarm on his throne, whilst his people are huddled
+together, pointing with their fingers at the fearful omen in the sky,
+the birds even being upset at the sight. The Latin legend over the
+picture “Isti Mirant Stella” (they marvel at the star), makes it all
+plain.</p>
+
+<p>As I. C. Bruce, the editor of “The Bayeux Tapestry Elucidated,” has
+said: “This embroidery is remarkable for furnishing us with the
+earliest human representation we have of a Comet.”</p>
+
+<p>The Comet of 1066 will ever be famous for ushering in a new era for
+England. Even to-day Halley’s Comet is remembered as “The Comet of the
+Conquest.”
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_81">[Pg 81]</span></p>
+
+<div id="I081" class="figcenter">
+  <img  src="images/i_081.jpg" alt="" width="400" height="505" />
+  <p class="center">WILLIAM THE CONQUEROR.<br /> (An English Dream.)</p>
+<p class="f90">Halley’s Comet appeared in 1066&mdash;<br />When William the Conqueror took
+England.<br /> Halley’s Comet is here to-day.&mdash;Kladderadatsch (Berlin).</p>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_82">[Pg 82]</span></p>
+
+<p class="f120"><b>989</b></p>
+
+<p class="drop-cap"><span class="smcap">The</span> appearance of the
+Comet this year was marked by bloody wars all over Europe. The Lombards
+under Otho were harrying the ancient Roman Empire, while the heathen
+Danes and Wends ravaged Germany.</p>
+
+<p class="f120"><b>912</b></p>
+
+<p class="drop-cap"><span class="smcap">The</span> Comet appeared early
+in the year and was seen over Germany, as noted in the chronicles
+of the monks of St. Gallus in Switzerland. Immediately after the
+appearance of the Comet, Germany was ravaged by war, both inside and
+outside, the Empire being invaded on all sides by the Danes in the
+North, the Slavs in the Northeast, and the Magyars from Hungary.</p>
+
+<p class="f120"><b>837</b></p>
+
+<p class="drop-cap"><span class="smcap">The</span> Chinese Astronomers
+record two Comets for this year, one in February, and the other in
+April. But the modern view is that this was the same Comet, as seen
+going to the Sun, and afterward, when it was coming away from the
+Sun.</p>
+
+<p>Immediately after the appearance of the Comet there followed a
+widespread rebellion in China with much bloodshed and fierce reprisals.</p>
+
+<p>The only Christian record of the Comet we have is that of Eginard, an
+astrologer employed at the Court of Louis the Debonair, in France. This
+is Eginard’s account of the Comet: “In the midst of the holy festival
+of Easter there shone forth in our sky a sign always ominous and of sad
+foreboding. As soon as the Emperor&mdash;who was in the habit of gazing up
+into the sky at night&mdash;first saw the Comet, he had me called before him,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_83">[Pg 83]</span>
+together with another learned star gazer. As soon as I came before him
+he asked me what I thought of the sign in heaven.”</p>
+
+<p>“‘Let me have but a little time,’ I asked of him, ‘that I may study
+this sign and see the exact constellation of the other stars around
+it, thus to gather from the stars the true meaning of this portent,’
+promising him that I would tell him on the morrow of the results of my
+studies.</p>
+
+<p>“But the Emperor, guessing that I was trying to gain time&mdash;as was
+indeed the truth, lest I be driven to tell him something unlucky and
+fatal to him&mdash;he said to me:</p>
+
+<p>“‘Go up on the terrace of the palace and look. Then come back at once
+and tell me what thou hast seen! For I did not see this star last
+night; nor didst thou point it out to me; but I know that sign in
+heaven is a Comet. Thou must tell me true what it forebodes to me!’</p>
+
+<p>“Then, before I could say anything, he said: ‘There is another thing
+thou art hiding from me. It is that changes in Kingdoms and the deaths
+of rulers are foretold by this sign.’</p>
+
+<p>“To soothe him I reminded the Emperor of the words of the Prophet
+Isaiah, who said: ‘Fear not signs in the Heaven, like unto the Heathen.’</p>
+
+<p>“But the Emperor smiled sadly and said: ‘We should believe only in God
+on High, who has created us and also all Stars in Heaven. Since He has
+sent this Star, and since this unlooked for Sign may be meant for us,
+let us look upon it as a warning from Heaven.’”</p>
+
+<p>Thereupon Louis the Debonair betook himself to fasting, prayers, and
+the building of churches and shrines, he and all his Court. Shortly
+thereafter he died.
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_84">[Pg 84]</span></p>
+
+<p>The French chronicler, Raoul Glaber, afterward wrote in his chronicle:
+“Comets never show themselves to man without foreboding surely some
+coming event, marvellous or terrible.”</p>
+
+<p class="f120"><b>760</b></p>
+
+<p class="drop-cap"><span class="smcap">A</span> Comet appeared in the
+Spring of this year, which without any doubt whatever was Halley’s. It
+was recorded in detail both by European and Chinese annalists, and its
+orbit has been calculated and identified by Laugier.</p>
+
+<p>A Greek record of Constantinople tells how “a Comet like a great beam”
+and very brilliant was observed in the twentieth year of Emperor
+Constantine V., surnamed Copronymus, first in the East and then in the
+West, for about thirty days. Its appearance was followed next Winter
+by a biting frost throughout the Orient, which endured 150 days, from
+October until February, blighting all crops in Egypt and elsewhere in
+the Eastern Empire.</p>
+
+<p class="f120"><b>684</b></p>
+
+<p class="drop-cap"><span class="smcap">Chinese</span>
+annals record a Comet observed in the West in September and
+October. This accords with the computed time for the course of Halley’s
+Comet that year. Immediately after the Comet’s appearance, China and
+the Far East were ravaged by the black plague. Millions died of it.
+Baeda the Venerable, in his “Chronicle of the English People,” records
+that the plague also reached England.
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_85">[Pg 85]</span></p>
+
+<p class="f120"><b>607</b></p>
+
+<p class="drop-cap"><span class="smcap">All</span>
+Europe and the former Roman Empire were in such dire confusion
+during this period that no records of this year, either astronomic
+or historical, have come down to us. Messrs. Cowell and Crommelin,
+however, have computed astronomically that the Comet must have appeared
+during this year. All we know is that Italy and the Latin World were
+overrun by ravaging Slavonian hordes from Hungary, who made all the
+country run with blood.</p>
+
+<p class="f120"><b>530</b></p>
+
+<p class="drop-cap"><span class="smcap">Of the</span> Comet this year,
+likewise, there is no astronomic record. All we know is that the
+appearance of a Comet is noted in European chronicles. It was followed
+by a virulent outbreak of the black plague.</p>
+
+<p>In the legendary history of Merlin, the ancient British seer, it is
+stated that on the appearance of a Comet this year he prophesied that
+Uter, brother of Ambrosius, on the death of the latter, should rule the
+kingdom; that a ray from the Comet which pointed toward Gaul presaged
+a son who should be born to him and who should be great in power; and
+that the ray “that goes toward Ireland represents a daughter, of whom
+thou shalt be the father, and her sons and grandsons shall reign over
+all the Britons.” These prophecies all came true.</p>
+
+<p class="f120"><b>451</b></p>
+
+<p class="drop-cap"><span class="smcap">The</span> Comet which appeared
+over Europe this year has been proven by Laugier to have been Halley’s Comet.
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_86">[Pg 86]</span></p>
+
+<p>It was seen in France just before the monster battle on the Catalaunian
+Fields (Châlons-sur-Marne), when Aetius, the last of the Romans,
+together with King Theoderic and his Goths, stemmed the tide of Hunnish
+invasion led by Attila, the “Scourge of God.”</p>
+
+<p>Theoderic, together with 148,000 warriors on both sides, were slain in
+this tremendous fight, which alone saved Europe from Tartar savagery.</p>
+
+<p class="f120"><b>373</b></p>
+
+<p class="drop-cap"><span class="smcap">Chinese</span>
+annals of this year record a Comet seen in the northern
+constellation of Ophiuchus in October. This year marks the beginning
+of the tremendous migration of peoples, which started in Mongolia and
+Tartary, and crossing the Volga gradually overflowed all the known
+world, like a huge human deluge.</p>
+
+<p class="f120"><b>295</b></p>
+
+<p class="drop-cap"><span class="smcap">The</span> appearance of a
+Comet this year (identified by Hind with Halley’s) was followed by
+a bloody rebellion of the ancient Britons against the Romans, and
+by another rebellion against Rome by the Egyptians. These patriotic
+uprisings of the people were suppressed with fire and sword and both
+countries ran with blood.</p>
+
+<p class="f120"><b>218</b></p>
+
+<p class="drop-cap"><span class="smcap">The</span>
+Chinese catalogue of Ma-tuan-lin records a Comet with a path
+exactly analogous with the orbit of Halley’s Comet computed for that
+year by Hind. In the Chinese record the Comet is described as “pointed
+and bright.” Its coming was connected with the death of Emperor Ween-te
+directly afterward, and the Civil Wars between various claimants to the
+throne of the Celestial Empire, which then rent China asunder.
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_87">[Pg 87]</span></p>
+
+<p>Dion Cassius, the Roman historian, describes the Comet of this year as
+“a very fearful star with a tail stretching from the West towards the East.”</p>
+
+<p>The Roman augurs explained the Comet as a portent of the bloody death
+of Emperor Macrinus of Rome, who was murdered by his own soldiers on
+the night after the disappearance of the Comet.</p>
+
+<p class="f120"><b>141</b></p>
+
+<p class="drop-cap"><span class="smcap">In this</span>
+year the Chinese astronomers recorded a Comet in March and
+April (the time computed for Halley’s Comet), which they described as
+“a star six or seven cubits long and of a bluish-white colour.” The
+coming of the Comet was followed by a virulent outbreak of the plague
+in China and the Far East, which spread all over the known world. So
+virulent was this pestilence that in the City of Naples alone 400,000
+people died of the disease.</p>
+
+<p class="f120"><b>65-66</b></p>
+
+<p class="drop-cap"><span class="smcap">Halley’s</span>
+Comet, according to astronomic calculations, must have made
+its reappearance during the winter months of 65-66 A. D. The Chinese
+have recorded “two Comets,” one in 65, which was seen for fifty-six
+days, and “the other” in February, 66, which remained visible fifty days.</p>
+
+<p>This was the Comet which St. Peter and Josephus saw over the City of
+Jerusalem, before the fall of the Holy City. Josephus wrote of it:
+“Amongst other warnings, a Comet, of the kind called Xiphias, because
+their tails appear to represent the blade of a sword, was seen above
+the doomed city for the space of nearly a whole year.”
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_88">[Pg 88]</span></p>
+
+<p>Jerusalem was ravaged by pestilence and famine and soon afterward was
+stormed by the Roman soldiery led by Titus. The Temple was burned down
+and the streets of the Holy City ran with blood. It was the end of
+Jerusalem and of the Jews as a free city and people.</p>
+
+<p class="f120"><b>B. C. 11</b></p>
+
+<p class="drop-cap"><span class="smcap">This</span>
+is the farthest back that the appearances of Halley’s Comet
+have been traced in history. For earlier appearances there are no
+sufficiently trustworthy computations or records.</p>
+
+<p>Dion Cassius in his “History of Rome” has recorded “a Comet which hung
+suspended over the City of Rome just before the death of Agrippa,” who
+ruled over the Roman Empire during the absence of Augustus in Greece
+and Asia. Agrippa was so universally beloved, and his death was held to
+be such a loss to Rome that he was buried with imperial honours in the
+tomb intended for Augustus.</p>
+
+<p>The death of Agrippa occurred in the year 12, shortly after the
+disappearance of the Comet which Hind has identified with Halley’s.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb" />
+
+<p class="drop-cap"><span class="smcap">This</span> completes the
+record of all the known appearances of Halley’s Comet. The record fully
+justifies Chambers’ dictum, that the “Comet known as Halley’s is by far
+the most interesting of all the Comets recorded in history.”</p>
+
+<p>This historic record also appears to justify in no small measure the
+popular beliefs of the last two thousand years concerning Comets, as
+expressed by Leonard Digges in his book on Prognostics, published 350
+years ago:
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_89">[Pg 89]</span></p>
+
+<p class="blockquot">“Cometes signifie corruption of the ayre. They
+are signs of earthquakes, of warres, of changying of Kyngdomes,
+great dearth of food, yea a common death of man and beast from
+pestilence.”</p>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" />
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_90">[Pg 90]</span></p>
+<h2 class="nobreak">THE STORY OF EDMUND HALLEY</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class="drop-cap"><span class="smcap">The</span> great French
+astronomer Lalande considered Halley the greatest astronomer of his
+time. This opinion is still held. Halley’s “time” means the age of
+Kepler, Sir Isaac Newton, Flamsteed, Hevelius, and Leibnitz, all of
+whom achieved first rank in Astronomy.</p>
+
+<p>Halley’s greatest achievement in Astronomy was the discovery that our
+solar system was but an atom in immeasurable space whence wandering
+stars could be caught within the influence of our Sun, our Earth and
+the other Planets swinging around our Sun.</p>
+
+<p>Halley was the first to discover and to prove that the Comets that come
+within the vision of man have fixed periods of return. He made this
+discovery during the appearance of the great Comet of 1682, which has
+since been known by his name.</p>
+
+<p>In his studies of the motions of Comets, of which Halley computed the
+orbits of twenty-four, he observed that a Comet of similar phenomena,
+recorded by Appian in 1531 and by Kepler in 1607, had swung through the
+same orbit as the Comet under his observation in 1682. Halley surmised
+from this that these Comets might be one and the same, whose intervals
+of return appeared to cover a period of seventy-five or seventy-six
+years. Halley’s surmise seemed to be confirmed by the recorded
+appearance of similar bright Comets in the years 1456, 1378, and 1301,
+the intervals again being seventy-five or seventy-six years.</p>
+
+<p>Halley was deeply imbued with Newton’s new discovery of gravitation,
+for the publication of which Halley paid the expenses, so he brought
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_91">[Pg 91]</span>
+the principles of Newton’s theory of gravitation to bear on his own new
+theory of the motions of Comets. He rightly conjectured that Comets
+were drawn to our Sun across the disturbing orbits of our planetary
+system, and that the comparatively small differences of one or two
+years in the recorded intervals of this one Comet (Halley’s Comet) were
+due to the attraction of the larger planets.</p>
+
+<p>During the previous year, 1681, Halley computed that the Comet had
+passed near the planet Jupiter, the attraction of which must have had a
+considerable influence on the Comet’s motion. Making due allowance for
+this disturbing influence of Jupiter, he computed that the Comet would
+return to the vicinity of our Sun about the end of 1758 or beginning of 1759.</p>
+
+<p>Halley did not live to see his prediction fulfilled (he died in 1742),
+but he wrote shortly before he died: “If this Comet should return
+according to our predictions about the year 1758, impartial posterity
+will not refuse to acknowledge that this was first discovered by an
+Englishman.”</p>
+
+<p>All through the year 1758 the most noted astronomers of Europe were
+on the lookout for the return of the predicted Comet. One of these
+astronomers, Messier, looked for it through his telescope at the Paris
+Observatory every night from sunset to sunrise throughout that whole
+year. On Christmas night, 1758, the Comet was first seen by a German
+peasant near Dresden, who had heard about the Comet and was looking
+for it. He was a man of unusually good eyesight, yet his discovery was
+doubted until Messier, nearly a month afterward, at Paris, “picked up”
+the Comet with his telescope.</p>
+
+<p>From that time forth this Comet, which returned in 1835, and is
+reappearing in this year (1910), has been known as Halley’s Comet.
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_92">[Pg 92]</span></p>
+
+<div id="I092" class="figcenter">
+  <img  src="images/i_092.jpg" alt="" width="450" height="623" />
+  <p class="center">EDMUND HALLEY.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_93">[Pg 93]</span>
+Besides this achievement, Halley accomplished many other noteworthy
+feats in astronomy, such as his discovery of the proper motions of the
+fixed stars; his detection of the “long inequality” of Jupiter and
+Saturn, and of the acceleration of the moon’s mean motion; his theory
+of variation, including the hypothesis of various magnetic poles, with
+his suggestion of the magnetic origin of the aurora borealis; and his
+indication of a method still used for determining the solar parallax by
+means of the transits of Venus.</p>
+
+<p>On the strength of these achievements, Halley for many years was
+elected to serve as secretary to the Royal Society. Commissioned as a
+Captain in the Royal Navy, he also commanded a vessel on a long cruise
+of exploration, and late in life he was made Astronomer Royal.</p>
+
+<p>Although in his sixty-fourth year, he then undertook to observe the
+moon through an entire revolution of her nodes (eighteen years), and
+actually carried out his purpose. To appreciate the full significance
+of so painstaking an achievement it should be borne in mind that
+astronomical observations must be made in a temperature equal to that
+of the open air. Observatories cannot be heated because the heat would
+impair the accuracy of the instruments.</p>
+
+<p>Great astronomers, like poets, are born, not made. Edmund Halley was
+one of these. At the age of seventeen he had already observed the
+change in the variations of the compass. At nineteen he was recognized
+as an astronomer of reputation, having supplied a new and improved
+method of determining the elements of the planetary orbits. His
+detection of considerable errors in the tables then in use led him to
+the conclusion that a more accurate determination of the places of the
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_94">[Pg 94]</span>
+fixed Stars was indispensable to the progress of astronomy. With this
+end in view he set out on a voyage to the other side of the globe, St.
+Helena, where he undertook the task of making complete new observations
+of the entire Southern Hemisphere. Though the Heavens proved clouded
+he succeeded within two years in registering three hundred and sixty
+stars, a colossal achievement which won for him the title of the
+“Southern Tycho.” This was when Halley was barely of age.</p>
+
+<p>(The famous astronomer Tycho Brahe, long before this had won his fame
+by mapping the stars of the Northern Heavens.)</p>
+
+<p>No one could well have begun with prospects more remote from so high a
+career, for Edmund Halley was born in 1656, the son of a soap boiler
+in a shabby London suburb. From the refuse of rancid fat and lye the
+boy was rescued by friends, who procured for him a scholarship at Saint
+Paul’s school. By his brilliant attainments in mathematics he won
+another scholarship to Oxford University.</p>
+
+<p>While at Oxford the youth published a treatise on the planetary orbits
+and argued the Sun’s axial rotation.</p>
+
+<p>On his graduation from Oxford, the young would-be astronomer conceived
+the project of turning his attention to the southern Stars, of which
+no good observations had been made. Shortly before this time a Dutch
+astronomer, named Houtman, had observed these Stars in the island of
+Sumatra; and Blaeu, the best globe maker of the age, had used these
+new observations in the correction of his celestial globes. Halley, on
+examining these corrections, came to the conclusion that he himself
+could do better. He also concluded that the Island of St. Helena might
+be a better point for southern observations. His father, unable to pay
+the expenses of so long a trip, broached the project to some friends.
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_95">[Pg 95]</span>
+The young astronomer was recommended to King Charles II. by Williamson
+and Jones Moore, and the King in turn recommended the youth to the
+Indian Company, which then had control over the island of St. Helena.</p>
+
+<p>After this all was plain sailing. The India Company placed a ship
+at his disposition and promised him all the assistance he required.
+Young Halley provided himself with telescopes, and micrometers, and
+other instruments of the latest approved pattern. In November, 1666,
+at the age of twenty, he sailed for St. Helena. Among his luggage was
+a sextant of five and a half feet and a telescope twenty-four feet in
+length constructed under the supervision of Flamsteed, the Astronomer
+Royal.</p>
+
+<p>Halley was disappointed in the climate of St. Helena. Frequent rains
+and a constantly hazy sky scarcely permitted any observations in the
+months of August and September. Notwithstanding these difficulties, he
+succeeded in observing and cataloguing some 360 Stars.</p>
+
+<p>In addition to his work on the Stars, Halley made some investigations
+on the Moon’s parallax, combining his observations at St. Helena
+with those made in northern skies. He also evolved a new theory of
+the Moon’s motion, which proved of great aid in the determination of
+longitudes.</p>
+
+<p>On November 7, 1677, Halley observed a transit of Mercury which
+suggested to him the important idea of employing similar phenomena for
+the calculation of the Sun’s distance.</p>
+
+<p>Halley returned to England in November, 1678, and was hailed by his
+fellow astronomers as the “Southern Tycho.” He was elected a fellow of
+the Royal Society, and by the King’s command the degree of Master of
+Arts was conferred upon him by the University of Oxford.
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_96">[Pg 96]</span></p>
+
+<p>Six months later Halley set out for Dantsic for a personal conference
+with Hevelius, the Polish astronomer. Halley wanted to satisfy himself
+as to the accuracy of observations claimed by Hevelius without the
+aid of a telescope. Halley convinced himself that the errors of the
+observations made by Hevelius were less than had been supposed, and did
+not exceed a minute of an arc. The two became life-long friends. Halley
+proceeded to other cities of Europe where there were observatories. In
+Paris he observed with Cassini the great Comet of 1680. This was the
+beginning of Halley’s special study of Comets.</p>
+
+<p>Returning to England, the young astronomer married the daughter of
+Mr. Tooke, auditor of the Exchequer, with whom he lived harmoniously
+until her death, fifty-five years later. The young couple settled at
+Islington, where Halley erected an observatory of his own and engaged
+in constant lunar observations with a view toward finding a method for
+computing longitudes at sea.</p>
+
+<p>Halley’s mind at the same time was busy with the momentous problem of
+gravity, upon which Isaac Newton was working then. Independently of
+Newton, Halley reached the conclusion that the central force of the
+Solar System must decrease inversely as the square of the distance.
+Having applied vainly to his fellow astronomers, Hooke and Wren, Halley
+in August, 1684, made a special journey to Cambridge to consult Isaac
+Newton, who confirmed his conjectures.</p>
+
+<p>Halley and Newton became life-long friends. Halley had Newton elected
+to the Royal Society, and when Newton became too poor to pay his
+quarterly dues, Halley, through his influence with the leading members
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_97">[Pg 97]</span>
+of the Society, had them remitted. It was Halley who encouraged Newton
+to put his momentous discovery and elucidation of the forces of gravity
+into permanent form in his “Principia,” the first volume of which, “De
+Motu,” was presented to the Royal Society at Halley’s suggestion.</p>
+
+<p>In the proceedings of the Royal Society for December, 1684, there is an
+entry that “Mr. Halley had lately seen Mr. Newton at Cambridge, who had
+told him of a curious treatise ‘De Motu,’ which at Mr. Halley’s desire
+he promised to send to the Society to be entered upon their register.
+Mr. Halley was desired to put Mr. Newton in mind of his promise for the
+securing this invention to himself, till such time as he could be at
+leisure to publish it.”</p>
+
+<p>Early in the following year Newton sent his treatise to the Society, to
+whom it was read aloud by Halley. This treatise “De Motu” was the germ
+of the “Principia” and was intended to be a short account of what the
+greater work was to embrace.</p>
+
+<p>During the next two years Newton was hard at work on his “Principia,”
+while Halley was equally hard at work on his computations of the Comet
+of 1682, and on his theory of the orbits and the periodical returns of
+Comets which grew out of his observations.</p>
+
+<p>On April 21, 1686, Halley read to the Royal Society his own “Discourse
+Concerning Gravity and its Properties,” in which he stated that his
+“worthy countryman, Mr. Issac Newton, has an incomparable treatise on
+Motion almost ready for the press,” and that the law of the inverse
+square “is the principle on which Mr. Newton has made out all the
+phenomena of the celestial motions so easily and naturally that its
+truth is past dispute.”
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_98">[Pg 98]</span></p>
+
+<p>Shortly afterward Newton sent in the manuscript of his great work.
+The Society voted “that a letter of thanks be written to Mr. Newton and
+that the printing of his book be referred to the consideration of the
+council and that in the meantime the book be put into the hands of Mr.
+Halley.”</p>
+
+<p>The truth was that the Royal Society, at that time, did not have money
+enough to print the book. The Society went through the empty form of
+“ordering” that the book be printed “forthwith,” but no printer was
+forthcoming until Halley himself undertook the publication of the great
+work at his own expense.</p>
+
+<p>The delicacy of Halley’s feeling is revealed by his correspondence with
+Newton, in which he informed Newton that the book had “been ordered
+to be printed at the Society’s charge.” The preliminary delay about
+printing he explained to Newton “arose from the President’s attendance
+on the King, and the absence of the vice-presidents, whom the good
+weather had drawn out of town.”</p>
+
+<p>Later Newton came to realize how much he owed to Halley in this matter.
+In his letters to Halley henceforth he always referred to his book
+as if it had been Halley’s book. When the great work was finished at
+last Newton wrote to Halley under the date of July 5, 1687: “I have at
+length brought your book to an end, and hope it will please you.”</p>
+
+<p>The finished work contained a note to this effect: “The inverse law
+of gravity holds in all the celestial motions, as was discovered also
+independently by my countrymen Wren, Hooke, and Halley.”</p>
+
+<p>The book was dedicated to the Royal Society, and to it was prefixed a
+set of Latin hexameters addressed by Halley to the author, ending with
+the well known line:
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_99">[Pg 99]</span></p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0">“Nec fac est propius mortali attingere divos.”</div>
+  </div>  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0">(“It is not given to a mortal to get in closer</div>
+    <div class="verse indent2">touch with the gods.”)</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>Halley was fifty years old when he made his famous prediction of
+the return of the Comet of 1682. This was in his “Synopsis of Comet
+Astronomy,” which ended with these words: “Hence I may venture to
+foretell that this Comet will return again in the year 1758.”</p>
+
+<p>Besides being an astronomer of the first class, Halley was also a good
+navigator. In 1698 he was commissioned a captain in the Royal Navy
+and was put in command of the King’s ship, “The Paramour Pink.” With
+this vessel he set out on a long cruise to the Pacific for the purpose
+of making observations on the laws which govern magnetic variations.
+This task he accomplished in a voyage which lasted two years and
+extended to the fifty-second degree of southern latitude, when the ice
+compelled him to turn back. On the return voyage his crew mutinied and
+his lieutenant sided with the mutineers. Halley quelled the mutiny by
+sheer force of personality, and returning to England got rid of his
+lieutenant. The results of his voyage were published in his “General
+Chart of the Variation of the Compass” in 1701. Immediately afterwards
+Halley set out on another King’s ship and executed by royal command
+a careful survey of the tides and coasts of the British Channel, an
+elaborate chart of which he published in 1702.</p>
+
+<p>Next Halley was sent by the King to Dalmatia, for the purpose of
+selecting and fortifying the port of Trieste.</p>
+
+<p>On Halley’s return to England, he was made Savilian professor of
+geometry at Oxford, and received an honorary doctor’s degree. He filled
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_100">[Pg 100]</span>
+two terms of eight years each as secretary to the Royal Society, and
+early in 1720 he succeeded Flamsteed as Astronomer Royal.</p>
+
+<p>He died on January 14, 1742, at the age of eighty-five in the full
+possession of his faculties, the foremost astronomer of the day and a
+man universally beloved and respected. His gravestone stands at the
+Greenwich Observatory.</p>
+
+<p>Halley’s works fill several shelves in the library of the Royal
+Society. His fame is kept green by the periodical return of the
+wandering star known by his name.</p>
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" />
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_101">[Pg 101]</span></p>
+<h2 class="nobreak">WHAT ARE COMETS?</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class="drop-cap"><span class="smcap">The</span> modern answer
+to the question “What are Comets made of?” is this:</p>
+
+<p>Probably the heads are a mixture of solid and gaseous matter. The tails
+are gaseous&mdash;the result of the volatilisation of the solid matter of
+the heads.</p>
+
+<p>The spectroscope shows that gases appear to be a constituent of all
+Comets. The spectra of Comets are very similar to those of a Bunsen
+flame. Recent spectroscopic photographs have revealed the presence of
+hydrocarbons, nitro-carbons, of cyanogen and of the vapours of sodium,
+iron and other metals.</p>
+
+<p>The connection between Comets and Meteors implies the presence in
+Comets of solid matter. A modern theory, voiced by Schiaparelli, is
+that meteor showers are broken up Comets.</p>
+
+<p>The tails of Comets appear to be composed of luminous gases ejected
+from the head of the Comet through a solar force held to be “Light
+Pressure,” which causes these tails to shoot off and disperse into
+space at the rate of 865,000 miles an hour.</p>
+
+<p>The length of some Comets’ tails has been estimated at 125,000,000
+miles, while the Comets’ heads themselves are generally much larger in
+size than our Earth. Halley’s Comet is more than ten-fold the size of
+our Earth.</p>
+
+<p>E. W. Maunder, of the Royal Observatory of Greenwich, a modern
+astronomer, has thus summarized the latest theories of the substance of
+Comets:</p>
+
+<p>“Though the bulk of comets is huge, they contain extraordinarily little
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_102">[Pg 102]</span>
+substance. Their heads must contain some solid matter, but it is
+probably in the form of a loose aggregation of stones enveloped in
+vaporous material. There is some reason to suppose that Comets are apt
+to shed some of these stones as they travel along their paths, for the
+orbits of the meteors that cause some of our greatest ‘star showers’
+are coincident with the paths of Comets that have been observed. But it
+is not only by shedding its loose stones that a Comet diminishes its
+bulk; it loses also through its tail. As the Comet gets close to the
+Sun its head becomes heated, and throws off concentric envelopes, much
+of which consists of matter in an extremely fine station of division.”</p>
+
+<p>The orbits of Comets visible to human eyes are all governed by the Sun.
+In the words of C. L. Poor: “The attraction of the Sun is to the Comet
+like the flame to the moth. The Comet flutters for a moment about the
+Sun, and then swings back into outward space. But not unscathed; like
+the moth, the Comet has been singed. The fierce light of the Sun has
+beaten upon it, and spread out its particles and scattered them along
+its path.”</p>
+
+<p>As a comet swings toward and away from the Sun, it travels at a
+tremendous rate of speed&mdash;over a million miles an hour. The distance
+covered from one end of the orbit to the other is 3,370,000,000 miles.</p>
+
+<p>The great majority of Comets appear to travel in parabolas, open curves
+leading from infinite space to and around the Sun, and thence back into
+infinite space to some other fixed star invisible to us. As a matter
+of fact, though, the parabolic curves of Comets’ orbits through the
+gravitational attraction of the planets, whose orbits are crossed by
+it, may be changed into hyperbolic curves and ellipses by planetary
+perturbations. Hence the differences in time between the returns of
+certain Comets, like Halley’s, for instance.
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_103">[Pg 103]</span></p>
+
+<div class="figcontainer">
+  <div class="figsub">
+   <img id="I103A" src="images/i_103a.jpg" alt="" width="250" height="697" />
+   <p class="center">RELATIVE SIZES OF THE EARTH,<br />
+            THE MOON’S ORBIT AND<br />HALLEY’S COMET.</p>
+  </div>
+  <div class="figsub">
+   <img  id="I103B" src="images/i_103b.jpg" alt="" width="225" height="689" />
+   <p class="center">ORBIT OF HALLEY’S COMET.<br />THE TAIL ALWAYS POINTS<br />
+            AWAY FROM THE SUN.</p>
+   </div>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_104">[Pg 104]</span>
+In a general way, it may be said that every Comet comprises a nucleus,
+an envelope (called the “coma”) surrounding the nucleus and measuring
+from 20,000 to 1,000,000 miles in diameter, and a long tail which streams
+behind the nucleus from sixty to a hundred million miles or more.</p>
+
+<p>Astronomers have decided that the nucleus is probably a heap of
+meteorites varying in size from a grain to masses weighing several
+tons each; a heap, moreover, so easily sundered that its elements are
+distributed gradually along the orbit. It follows that every Comet must
+eventually perish unless it restores its nucleus by collecting stray
+meteors. That disintegration does occur has been observed time and time again.</p>
+
+<p>For example, Biela’s Comet, which was discovered in 1826, burst into
+two fragments, which drifted apart a distance of one million miles.
+Thus it became a twin Comet. Eventually it disappeared as a Comet, and
+in its stead we see a shoal of meteors whenever we cross its track
+every six and a half years.</p>
+
+<p>It is possible that the Comets of 1668, 1843, 1880, 1882 and 1887, all
+travelling in approximately the same path, are fragments of a single
+large body which was broken up by the gravitational action of other
+bodies in the system, or through violent encounter with the Sun’s
+surroundings.</p>
+
+<p>The luminous tail which streams behind the nucleus, which Shakespeare
+described so beautifully as “crystal tresses,” is startling, to say the
+least. Despite a length which may exceed a hundred million miles, it
+is so diaphanously light and subtle that it is difficult to compare it
+with any earthly fabric. The air that we breathe is a dense blanket in
+comparison. Several hundred cubic miles of the matter composing that
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_105">[Pg 105]</span>
+wonderful luminous plume would not outweigh a jarful of air. By reason
+of its fairy lightness, it is possible for a tail occupying a volume
+thousands of times greater than the sun to sweep through our solar
+system without causing any perturbations in planetary movements.</p>
+
+<p>No celestial phenomenon has caused more perplexity than the ghostly
+sheaf of light we call a Comet’s tail. In a day, in a few hours even,
+the form of that wonderful gossamer may change. Hence it is that
+periodic Comets are identified when they return, not by the length and
+arch of their tails, but by their orbits. These alone are permanent.</p>
+
+<p>When a Comet is first seen in the telescope, it appears as a diminutive
+filmy patch, often unadorned by any tail. As it travels on toward the
+Sun, at a speed compared with which a modern rifle bullet would seem to
+crawl, violent eruptions occur in the nucleus.</p>
+
+<p>The ejected matter is bent back to form the cloak called the “coma.”
+With a nearer approach to the sun, the tail begins to sprout,
+increasing in size and brightness as it proceeds. Evidently there is
+some connection between the Sun and the tail, something akin to cause
+and effect.</p>
+
+<p>When the Comet rushes on toward the Sun, invariably the tail drifts
+behind the nucleus like the smoke from a locomotive. But when the Comet
+swings around the Sun and travels away from it, a startling change
+takes place. The tail no longer trails behind, but projects in front as
+if some mighty solar wind were blowing it in advance of the head.</p>
+
+<p>This phenomenon has long been an astronomical riddle. Here was a kind
+of matter that refused to obey the laws of gravitation and yield to the
+enormous pull of the Sun.
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_106">[Pg 106]</span></p>
+
+<div id="I106" class="figcenter">
+  <img  src="images/i_106.jpg" alt="" width="400" height="638" />
+  <p class="center">OCTOBER 5.&nbsp;&emsp;&nbsp;OCTOBER 9.<br /> DONATI’S COMET OF 1858.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_107">[Pg 107]</span>
+It was thought for a time that the tail was flung away from the Sun by
+stupendous repelling electrical forces. That electricity plays its part
+in the formation of the fairy plume is conceivable, and even probable;
+but recently the physicist has discovered a new source of repellent
+energy which very plausibly explains the mystery of a Comet’s tail.</p>
+
+<p>This new source of energy is nothing less than the pressure or push of
+the Sun’s light. Solar gravitation is a force more powerful than we can
+realize. If it were possible for us to live on the Sun, we would find
+ourselves pulled down so violently that our body would weigh two tons.
+Our clothing alone would weigh more than one hundred pounds. Running
+would be a very difficult athletic feat. Light-pressure must indeed be
+powerful if it can conquer so relentless a force.</p>
+
+<p>Because we have never seen objects torn from our hands by the pressure
+of light, it may be inferred that this newly discovered force affects
+only bodies that are invisibly small. With the aid of instruments that
+feel what our hands can never feel and see what our eyes can never see,
+the modern physicist has critically analyzed the radiation that beats
+upon the earth from the distant Sun.</p>
+
+<p>Light really does sway infinitely small particles, as was first
+experimentally proved by the Russian Lebedev. Two American astronomers,
+Nichols and Hull, improved upon his method. They cast the solar
+effulgence into mighty mathematical scales and found that the earth
+sustains a light-load of no less than 75,000 tons.</p>
+
+<p>Most city-bred people are familiar with the so-called “Sun
+Motors”&mdash;little mills with black and white wings, enclosed in airtight
+vessels, which spin around in “perpetual motion” under the effect of
+“Sun Pressure.”
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_108">[Pg 108]</span></p>
+
+<p>It remained for the broad mind of a Swedish physicist, Svante
+Arrhenius, to apply the principle of light-pressure cosmically. He
+explained, very simply, that because a Comet’s tail is composed of a
+very fine dust it can easily be driven away from the Sun by radiation
+pressure.</p>
+
+<p>To understand how it is possible for so immaterial a thing as a sunbeam
+to produce so huge an effect, we have only to take a very simple
+example.</p>
+
+<p>Assume that you have before you a block of wood weighing one pound. The
+block exposes a certain amount of surface to the Sun’s light. Saw the
+block in half, and you increase the amount of that surface. Divide each
+half again into half, and the exposed surface is further augmented. If
+this process of subdivision is carried on far enough, the block will be
+reduced to sawdust.</p>
+
+<p>The entire mass of sawdust still weighs one pound; but its surface has
+been vastly enlarged. Indeed, the particles of sawdust, individually
+considered, may be said to consist of much surface and very little
+weight. If it were possible to take each granule of visible sawdust
+and subdivide it into invisible particles, a point would be reached
+where the pressure of light would exactly counterbalance the pull of
+gravitation, so that the particles would remain suspended in space,
+perfectly balanced in the scale of opposing cosmic forces.</p>
+
+<p>Finally, if the subdivision be continued beyond this critical point,
+the particles will be wrenched away from the grip of gravitation and
+hurled out into space by the pressure of light.</p>
+
+<p>So much has been discovered about the particles that compose a Comet’s
+tail that the more progressive scientists of our day have accepted this
+ingenious theory. Thus it has been decided by them that the delicate
+tresses of a Comet are to a large extent composed of fine particles of
+dust and soot.
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_109">[Pg 109]</span></p>
+
+<div id="I109" class="figcontainer">
+  <div class="figsub">
+   <img src="images/i_109a.jpg" alt="" width="250" height="240" />
+   <p class="f120">June 26.</p>
+  </div>
+  <div class="figsub">
+   <img src="images/i_109b.jpg" alt="" width="250" height="233" />
+   <p class="f120">June 28.</p>
+   </div>
+</div>
+
+<div class="figcontainer">
+  <div class="figsub">
+   <img src="images/i_109c.jpg" alt="" width="250" height="230" />
+   <p class="f120">June 30.</p>
+  </div>
+  <div class="figsub">
+   <img src="images/i_109d.jpg" alt="" width="250" height="225" />
+   <p class="f120">July 1.</p>
+   </div>
+</div>
+
+<div class="figcontainer">
+  <div class="figsub">
+   <img src="images/i_109e.jpg" alt="" width="250" height="228" />
+   <p class="f120">July 6.</p>
+  </div>
+  <div class="figsub">
+   <img src="images/i_109f.jpg" alt="" width="250" height="229" />
+   <p class="f120">July 8.</p>
+   </div>
+   <p class="f120 space-below2">CHANGES IN THE COMET OF 1863.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_110">[Pg 110]</span>
+Before we can completely accept the view that light-pressure forms
+this train of soot we must ascertain whether the pressure of light is
+capable of accounting for the flash-like rapidity with which a Comet’s
+tail changes.</p>
+
+<p>A Comet may throw out a tail sixty million miles long in two days. Is
+it actually possible for light-pressure to accomplish that astonishing
+feat? Arrhenius has computed that 865,000 miles an hour is the speed
+of a light-flung particle of one-half the critical diameter. Because
+they are only one-eighteenth as large as this particle of critical
+diameter, the dust grains in a Comet’s tail would be propelled over the
+same 865,000 miles in less than four minutes. It follows that the solar
+radiation is amply strong enough to toss out a tail of sixty million
+miles in two days.</p>
+
+<p>Photography in the hands of Prof. E. E. Barnard, of the Yerkes
+Observatory, has revealed some extraordinary changes in Comets’ tails,
+changes which are not apparent to the eye and which cannot be explained
+by light-pressure or by solar electrical forces. He has collected a
+formidable mass of photographic evidence which seems to show that
+there are other influences at work besides the Sun’s radiation, and
+that these influences manifest themselves in distorting and breaking a
+Comet’s tail. In some Comets of recent years, streams of matter have
+been shot out in large angles to the main direction of the tail without
+being at all bent by the pressure of light. In Morehouse’s Comet of
+1908, tails were repeatedly formed and discarded to drift bodily out
+into space and melt away. Sometimes the photographic plate has shown
+the tail twisted like a corkscrew and sometimes it has revealed masses
+of matter at some distance from the head, where apparently no supply
+had reached it. At one time the entire tail of Morehouse’s Comet was
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_111">[Pg 111]</span>
+thrown violently forward, a peculiarity so utterly opposed to the laws
+of gravitation that Professor Barnard suspects some unknown force at
+work in planetary space besides a force which undoubtedly resides
+in the Comet itself. If Halley’s Comet serves no other purpose than
+to throw light upon this mystery, its return will more than repay
+astronomers for all their observatory vigils.</p>
+
+<p>From the fact that the matter is ejected from the head to form the
+tail, it would follow that, unless it has the means of rejuvenating
+itself, a comet must eventually be disintegrated. Instances of this
+fragmentation and, eventual disappearance of a Comet are not wanting in
+astronomical annals. It has been stated previously that when Biela’s
+Comet appeared in 1846 it became distorted and elongated, that it
+eventually split up into two separate bodies, that in 1852 it again
+appeared in its double form, and that it has since disappeared.</p>
+
+<p>In a way, Comets may be said to bleed to death. At each return of
+Halley’s Comet, future astronomers will find it less brilliant than it
+was seventy-six or seventy-seven years before. Some time there will
+be no Halley’s Comet left, and the most famous Comet of its kind will
+be reduced to a shoal of meteors varying in weight from a few ounces
+to several tons and faithfully pursuing the orbit which their parent
+traced and retraced century after century.
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_112">[Pg 112]</span></p>
+
+<div id="I112" class="figcenter">
+  <img  src="images/i_112.jpg" alt="" width="400" height="566" />
+  <p class="center">COGGIA’S COMET, 1874: ON JULY 13.</p>
+</div>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" />
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_113">[Pg 113]</span></p>
+<h2 class="nobreak">THE PERIL OF THE COMET</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class="drop-cap"><span class="smcap">It was</span> Edmund Halley who
+first revealed a source of danger from Comets, of which even medieval
+superstition had never dreamed.</p>
+
+<p>While he was patiently plotting out the orbit of the Comet of 1680,
+which had inspired no little dismay among his contemporaries, Halley
+found that the Earth’s orbit had been approached by the Comet within
+four thousand miles&mdash;half the diameter of the Earth.</p>
+
+<p>If the Earth had been struck by that fiery wanderer?</p>
+
+<p>None had ever thought of the possibility.</p>
+
+<p>Halley began to do some mathematical figuring, and decided that, if a
+Comet’s mass were comparable with that of the Earth, our year would
+have been changed in length because the Earth’s orbit would have been
+altered. He also speculated what would happen to the Earth, and reached
+this conclusion:</p>
+
+<p class="blockquot">“If so large a body with so rapid a motion were to
+strike the Earth&mdash;a thing by no means impossible&mdash;the shock
+might reduce this beautiful world to its original chaos.” </p>
+
+<p>Halley even thought it probable that the Earth had actually been struck
+by a Comet at some remote period, struck obliquely, moreover, so that
+the axis of rotation had been changed. Thus he was led to infer that
+possibly the North Pole had once been at a point near Hudson’s Bay, and
+that the rigour of North America’s climate might thus be accounted for.</p>
+
+<p>The seed which was thus sown by Halley has borne fruit. In Halley’s own
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_114">[Pg 114]</span>
+time, learned men were brooding over the ultimate destruction of the
+Earth by collision with a Comet.</p>
+
+<p>Dr. Whiston, who succeeded Newton at Cambridge in the Lucasian chair of
+mathematics, was sure that a Comet caused the Deluge, and went so far
+as to prophesy that a Comet, as it passed us on its outward course from
+the Sun, would ultimately bring about a “General Conflagration,” and
+thus envelope the Earth in flames.</p>
+
+<p>One century after Halley, the French astronomer Laplace, whose
+mathematical attainments were surpassed only by those of Newton,
+applied his brilliant mind to the possibility of a collision with a
+Comet, and arrived at this conclusion:</p>
+
+<p class="blockquot">“The seas would abandon their ancient beds and
+rush towards the new equator, drowning in one universal deluge the
+greater part of the human race.... We see, then, in effect, why the
+ocean has receded from the high lands upon which we find incontestable
+marks of its sojourn; we see how the animals and plants of the south
+have been able to exist in the climate of the north, where their
+remains and imprints have been discovered.”</p>
+
+<p>The famous French mathematician Lalande showed that if a Comet as heavy
+as the Earth were to come within six times the distance of the Moon,
+it would exert such a powerful attraction upon the waters of the globe
+as to pull up a tidal wave 13,000 feet above the ordinary sea-level
+and inundate the continents Every European mountain would be submerged
+except Mt. Blanc, and only the inhabitants of the Rockies, the Andes
+and the Himalayas would escape death.</p>
+
+<p>Since Lalande’s day there has been more than one Comet “scare.” One
+of these startled Europe in 1832. On October 29th of that year, Biela’s
+Comet crossed the Earth’s orbit. The announcement was received with
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_115">[Pg 115]</span>
+stupefaction. It was only when Arago soothingly pointed out that the
+Earth would not reach the exact point where the Comet had intersected
+the Earth’s orbit until November 30, at which time the Comet would be
+50,000,000 miles away, that the popular excitement subsided. A similar
+alarm seized the world in 1857. Some prophet declared that on June 13
+the world would collide with a certain periodic Comet having a period
+of revolution of three centuries. It is related that the churches
+and confessionals were crowded for days. Still another prediction,
+made in 1872 by Plantamour, the distinguished director of the Geneva
+Observatory, set Europe in a ferment. His calculations were based on
+errors, which were pointed out by other astronomers, and the public
+mind was quieted.</p>
+
+<p>Although more than two centuries have passed since Halley was in his
+prime, the possibility of a collision with some vagabond star still
+haunts the mind of the astronomer.</p>
+
+<p>That a collision is apt to occur is an admitted astronomic fact. The
+latest estimate, made in 1909 by Prof. William H. Pickering of Harvard
+University, would seem to prove that the core of one Comet in about
+100,000,000 Comets will hit the earth squarely. An encounter with some
+part of a Comet’s head will happen once in 4,000,000 years. Since
+Comets’ orbit are more thickly distributed near the ecliptic than else
+where in the celestial sphere, the collisions will occur according to
+Pickering, perhaps more frequently than this.</p>
+
+<p>Because Pickering’s figures differ from those other astronomers&mdash;Arago
+and Babinet, for instance&mdash;it must not be inferred that his
+predecessors are wrong and that he is right in his calculations. The
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_116">[Pg 116]</span>
+problem is too complex for that. Pickering, Arago and Babinet differ
+partly because they have assumed different average sizes for their
+Comets, and partly because their definitions of visible Comets are not
+in accord.</p>
+
+<p>That the possibility is very real, we shall all have an opportunity of
+judging on May 18, 1910. On that date the Earth will be plunged in the
+tail of Halley’s Comet, and the head will be less than 15,000,000 miles
+away&mdash;a mere hand’s breadth in the vastness of the universe.</p>
+
+<p>What will happen?</p>
+
+<p>Nobody knows for certain.</p>
+
+<p>By means of the wonderful instrument called the spectroscope, an
+instrument which analyzes a distant star as readily as if it were a
+stone picked up in the road, it has been discovered that a Comet’s tail
+is composed of gases called “hydrocarbons” (combinations of hydrogen
+and carbon), and that it bears a close chemical resemblance to the blue
+flame of a kitchen gas-stove.</p>
+
+<p>Illuminating gas, as we all know, is poisonous. If a Comet’s tail were
+dense enough, it is conceivable, therefore, that every human being on
+this planet might be asphyxiated by breathing the Comet’s poisonous
+vapour as the Earth plowed through it. There is also this possibility,
+suggested by Flammarion, that the gases of a very dense tail might so
+combine with the nitrogen which constitutes nearly 80 per cent. of
+the air we breathe, that the atmosphere would be converted into the
+“laughing gas” employed by dentists. The world would die in a delirium
+of joy. At first a delightful serenity would settle upon mankind. Then
+would follow a contagious gaiety, febrile exaltation, a paroxysm of
+delight, and then madness. Flammarion even conceives the world merrily
+dancing a joyous, hysterical sarabande in which it perishes laughing.
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_117">[Pg 117]</span></p>
+
+<p>The tail of a Comet is fraught with still other possible dangers. Our
+atmosphere contains a certain amount of hydrogen, a marvellously light
+gas to which balloons owe their buoyancy. Besides its lightness, this
+gas is characterized by an extreme inflammability. The law of the
+diffusion of gases teaches us that part of this hydrogen in the air
+is mechanically mixed with other gases, and that part of it probably
+floats in the upper air, far beyond the reach of any balloon. A Comet
+may be regarded as a huge lighted torch whirling through space, which
+may be brought dangerously near that upper layer of highly inflammable
+hydrogen. If the gas shall ever be touched off by this flying torch,
+our planet will be ignited. The whole atmosphere will become a seething
+ocean of flame, in which forests and cities will burn like straw, in
+which oceans will boil away in vast clouds of steam, and in which all
+animal life will be snuffed out of existence before it shall realize
+that the world is on fire. In a word, the globe will become a planetary
+funeral pyre. Since water results from burning hydrogen in oxygen,
+this same fierce and terrible flame must be speedily extinguished by
+a mighty deluge which will engulf the Earth.</p>
+
+<p>A spectroscope analysis of Halley’s Comet has furthermore revealed
+the presence of cyanogen gas in the tail. Cyanogen is a compound of
+nitrogen and carbon, one of the most poisonous compounds with which the
+chemist is familiar. Prussic acid, potassium cyanide and many other
+cyanides, all of them almost instantaneously fatal if taken into the
+human system, are compounds of cyanogen. If that gas is present in
+large enough quantities, one flick of a Comet’s tail will end all human
+and animal existence.</p>
+
+<p>So much is certain. A collision of the Earth with a Comet will
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_118">[Pg 118]</span>
+undoubtedly prove disastrous&mdash;how disastrous will depend largely on
+the size of the Comet’s head and on its speed. That a violent heat will
+be developed, we have every reason to believe, from our knowledge of
+meteors. The mere movement of a meteor through the thin upper layers of
+our atmosphere produces a dazzling trail and reduces the meteor itself
+to a molten metallic mass. Arrest a body in swift motion, and you must
+dissipate its energy in some way. As a rule, the energy is converted
+into heat. A bullet discharged from a rifle is often melted when
+suddenly stopped by steel armour. A Comet travels at a pace compared
+with which a projectile, fired from the most powerful twelve-inch gun,
+seems only to crawl. What, then, must be the frightful effect when it
+strikes the Earth?</p>
+
+<p>A Comet rushes through space not at the bullet’s rate of thousands of
+feet an hour, but of a million miles an hour. The bigger it is, and the
+faster it moves, the greater will be the heat developed by its stoppage.</p>
+
+<p>“At the first contact with the upper regions of the atmosphere,” writes
+Prof. Simon Newcomb, “the whole heavens would be illuminated with a
+resplendence beyond that of a thousand Suns, the sky radiating a light
+which would blind every eye that beheld it, and a heat which would melt
+the hardest rocks.” The same conclusion was reached by Prof. Faye.</p>
+
+<p>When the time comes for a collision with a Comet of formidable size,
+the human race will be in the horrible predicament of knowing the exact
+hour and minute of its doom. The newspapers will print a dispatch from
+some great observatory, reading perhaps like this:</p>
+
+<p class="space-below2">“A telescopic Comet was discovered by Caxton in
+right ascension 7 hours 13 minutes 1 second, and declension 17 degrees
+28 minutes 31 seconds. Moderate motion in a northwest direction.”
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_119">[Pg 119]</span></p>
+
+<div id="I119" class="figcenter">
+  <img  src="images/i_119.jpg" alt="" width="400" height="627" />
+  <p class="blockquot">“If so large a body with so rapid a motion were to
+strike the Earth&mdash;a thing by no means impossible&mdash;the
+shock would reduce this beautiful world to its original
+chaos.”</p>
+<p class="author space-below2">&mdash;<span class="smcap">Edmund Halley.</span></p>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_120">[Pg 120]</span>
+At first the discovery produces not even a ripple of excitement.
+Telescopic Comets are discovered too frequently. Three days later the
+discoverer has worked out an ephemeris, which gives the date when the
+body will pass around the Sun, and which indicates the Comet’s path. He
+finds that on a certain date and at a certain hour the Earth and the
+Comet must crash together. Again and again he repeats his calculations,
+hoping that he may have erred. The utmost permissible allowance for
+accelerations and retardations caused by the outer planets of the solar
+system fails to change the result.</p>
+
+<p>The Earth and the Comet must meet. With some hesitation the astronomer
+sends a telegram to a central observatory, which acts as a distributor
+of astronomical news. At first his prediction is discredited and even
+laughed at. Another computation is made at the observatory. Again
+mathematics infallibly indicates the exact time and place of the
+encounter, and the last lingering hope is dispelled. Telegrams are sent
+to astronomical societies, to the leading scientific periodicals and to
+the newspapers.</p>
+
+<p>At first the prediction of the Earth’s doom is received with popular
+incredulity, engendered by years of newspaper misrepresentation. The
+world’s end has been too frequently and too frightfully foretold
+on flamboyant double-page Sunday editions. When the truth is at
+last accepted, after days of insistent repetition of the original
+announcement, a wave of terror runs through the world.</p>
+
+<p>There is no escape. International committees of astronomers meet daily
+to mark the approach of the Comet. Bulletins are published announcing
+the steadily dwindling distance between the world and the huge
+projectile in the sky. The great tail, arching the Heavens as the Comet
+approaches, seems like a mighty, fiery sword held in an unseen Titanic
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_121">[Pg 121]</span>
+hand and relentlessly sweeping down. The temples, churches and
+synagogues are thronged with supplicating multitudes on bended knees,
+in a catalepsy of terror. The stock exchanges, banks, shops and public
+institutions are deserted. Business is at a standstill. The roar of the
+street is hushed. No wagons rattle over the pavement; no hucksters call
+out their wares.</p>
+
+<p>As the Comet draws nearer and nearer, night changes into an awful,
+nocturnal day. Even at noon the Comet outshines the Sun. There is no
+twilight. The Sun sets; but the Comet glows in the sky, another more
+brilliant luminary, marvellously yet fearfully arrayed in a fiery plume
+that overspreads the sky. The Moon is completely lost, and the Stars
+are drowned out in this dazzling glare. Warned by the astronomers,
+mankind takes refuge in subterranean retreats to await its fate.</p>
+
+<p>Long before the actual collision&mdash;long before the Earth is reduced
+to a maelstrom of lava, gas, steam and planetary debris&mdash;mankind is
+annihilated with merciful swiftness by heat and suffocation. A candle
+flame blown out by a gust of wind is not more quickly extinguished.</p>
+
+<p>When the Comet encounters the upper layers of the atmosphere, there is
+a blinding flash, due to friction between the air and the Comet. A few
+seconds later the crash comes. From within, molten rock and flame, pent
+up for geologic ages, burst forth, geyser-like. The Earth is converted
+into a gigantic volcano, in the eruption of which oceans are spilled
+and continents are torn asunder, to vanish like wax in a furnace.</p>
+
+<p>When it is all over, the Earth swims through space, a blackened
+planetary cinder,&mdash;desolate and dead.</p>
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" />
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_122">[Pg 122]</span></p>
+<h2 class="nobreak">THE END OF THE WORLD</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class="drop-cap"><span class="smcap">Camille Flammarion</span>, the
+French astronomer, in his story, “The End of the World,” gives this
+graphic description of the results of a collision between a Comet and
+our Earth:</p>
+
+<p>In Paris, London, Rome, Berlin, St. Petersburg, Constantinople, New
+York and Chicago&mdash;in all the great capitals of the world, in all the
+cities, in all the villages&mdash;the frightened people wandered out of
+doors, as one sees ants run about when their ant-hills are disturbed.
+All the affairs of every-day life were forgotten.</p>
+
+<p>All human projects were at a standstill. People seemed to have
+lost interest in all their affairs. They were in a state of
+demoralization&mdash;a dejection more abject even than that which is
+produced by sea-sickness.</p>
+
+<p>All places of worship had been crowded on that memorable day when it
+was seen that a collision with a Comet had become inevitable.</p>
+
+<p>In Paris the crowds in the churches were so great that people could
+no longer get near Notre Dame, the Madeleine and the other churches.
+Within the churches, vast congregations of worshippers were on their
+knees praying to God on High. The churches rang with the sounds of
+supplication, but no other sound was heard. The great church organs and
+the bells in the steeples were hushed.</p>
+
+<p>In the streets, on the avenues, in the public squares, there was the
+same dread silence. Nothing was bought or sold. No newspapers were
+hawked about.</p>
+
+<p>The only vehicles seen on the streets were funeral hearses carrying to
+the cemeteries the bodies of the first victims of the Comet. Of these
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_123">[Pg 123]</span>
+there were already many. They were people who had died from fright and
+from heart disease.</p>
+
+<p>With what anxiety everyone waited for the night!</p>
+
+<p>Never, perhaps, was there a more beautiful sunset. Never a clearer sky.
+The sun seemed to dip into a sea of red and gold.</p>
+
+<p>The huge red ball of the sun sank majestically to the horizon. But the
+stars did not appear. Night did not come.</p>
+
+<p>To the solar day succeeded a new day, the daylight of the Comet. Its
+intense light resembled that of an Aurora Borealis, but more vivid,
+coming from a great incandescent spot, which had not been visible
+during the day because it was below the horizon, but which would
+certainly have rivalled the splendour of the Sun.</p>
+
+<p>This luminous spot rose in the East almost at the same time as the full
+Moon. The two luminous bodies rose together, side by side. As they
+rose, the light of the Moon seemed to pale, but the head of the Comet
+increased in splendour with the disappearance of the Sun below the
+western horizon.</p>
+
+<p>Now, after nightfall, the Comet dominated the world&mdash;a scarlet-red ball
+with jets of yellow and green flame which seemed to flutter like fiery wings.</p>
+
+<p>To the terrified people it seemed like a giant of fire taking
+possession of all Heaven and Earth.</p>
+
+<p>Already the outermost jets of flame had reached the Moon. From one
+instant to the next the flaming rays would descend upon the Earth.</p>
+
+<p>All eyes were distended with horror when it was seen that the horizon
+was lighting up with tiny violet flames as from a vast fire.</p>
+
+<p>An instant afterward, the Comet diminished in brilliancy. This was
+apparently because the Comet, upon touching the atmosphere of our
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_124">[Pg 124]</span>
+Earth, had come within the penumbra of our planet and had lost part of
+its reflected light coming from the Sun. But in reality this apparent
+extinction was the effect of contrast. When the less dazzled eyes of
+the awestruck, human spectators had grown used to this new light, it
+appeared almost as intense as at first, but paler, more sinister and
+sepulchral.</p>
+
+<p>Never before had the Earth been lit up with so sickly a light.</p>
+
+<p>The drouth of the air became intolerable. Heat, as from a huge burning
+oven, came from above. A horrible stench of burning sulphur&mdash;due, no
+doubt, to electrified ozone&mdash;poisoned the atmosphere.</p>
+
+<p>All the people then saw that their time had come.
+Many-thousand-throated cries rent the air. “The World is burning.
+We are on fire!” they cried.</p>
+
+<p>All the horizon, in fact, was now lit up with flame, forming a crown
+of blue light. It was, indeed, as had been foreseen by scientists, the
+oxide of carbon igniting in the air and producing anhydrid of carbon.
+Clearly, too, hydrogen from the Comet combined with it.</p>
+
+<p>On a sudden, as the people were gazing terrified, motionless, mute,
+holding their breath, and scared out of their wits, the vault of Heaven
+seemed to be rent asunder from the zenith to the horizon. Through the
+gaping breach there seemed to appear the huge red mouth of a dragon,
+belching forth sheaves of sputtering green flames.</p>
+
+<p>The glare of the atmosphere was so fierce that those who had not
+already hidden themselves in the cellars of their houses, now all
+rushed helter-skelter to the nearest underground openings, be they
+subway steps, cellar doors or sewer manholes. Thousands were crushed or
+maimed during this mad stampede, while many others, frantic from fright
+and stricken with the heat, fell dead from apoplexy.
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_125">[Pg 125]</span></p>
+
+<p>All reasoning powers seemed to have ceased. Among those cowering in
+dark cellars and subterranean passages below, there was nothing but
+silence, begot by dull resignation and stupor.</p>
+
+<p>Of all this panic-stricken multitude, only the astronomers had remained
+at their posts in the Observatories, making unceasing observations of
+this great astronomic phenomenon. They were the only eye-witnesses of
+the impending collision.</p>
+
+<p>Their calculations had been that the terrestrial globe would penetrate
+into the core of the Comet, as a cannon ball might into a cloud. From
+the first contact of the extreme atmospheric zones of the Earth and of
+the Comet, they had figured, the transit would last four hours and a half.</p>
+
+<p>It was easy to compute, since the Comet, being about fifty times as
+large as the Earth, was to be pierced, not in its centre, but at
+one-quarter of the distance from the centre, with a velocity of 173,000
+kilometers an hour.</p>
+
+<p>It was about forty minutes after the first atmospheric impact with the
+Comet, that the heat and horrible stench of burning sulphur became so
+suffocating that a few more moments of this torment would put an end
+to all life. Even the most intrepid of astronomers withdrew into the
+interior of their glass-domed observatories, which they could close
+hermetically as they descended into the deep subterranean vaults.</p>
+
+<p>The longest to stay above was a young assistant astronomer, a girl
+student from California, whose nerves had been steeled during the
+ordeal of the San Francisco earthquake. She remained long enough to
+witness the apparition of a huge, white-hot meteorite, precipitating
+itself southward with the velocity of lightning.</p>
+
+<p>But it was beyond human endurance to remain longer above. It was no
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_126">[Pg 126]</span>
+longer possible to breathe. To the intense heat and atmospheric drouth,
+destroying all vital functions, was added the poisoning of our air by
+the oxide of carbon.</p>
+
+<p>The ears rang as from the tolling of funeral bells, and all hearts were
+in a flutter of feverish palpitation. And always, everywhere, there was
+that suffocating stench of sulphur.</p>
+
+<p>Now a shower of fire fell from the glowing sky. It was raining
+shooting-stars and white-hot meteorites, most of which burst like
+bombs. The fragments of these, like flying shrapnel, crashed through
+the roofs and set fire to the buildings.</p>
+
+<p>To the conflagration of the sky were added the flames of fire
+everywhere on earth.</p>
+
+<p>Claps of ear-splitting thunder followed each other incessantly,
+produced partly by the explosions of the meteors, and partly by a
+tremendous electric thunderstorm. Rifts of lightning zig-zagged hither
+and thither.</p>
+
+<p>A continuous rumbling, like that of distant drums, filled the ears of
+the cowering people below, awaiting their fate. This low rumble was
+interspersed with the deafening detonations of exploding meteors and
+the high shriek of hurtling aerial fragments.</p>
+
+<p>Then followed unearthly noises, like the seething of some immense
+boiling cauldron, the wild wailing of winds, and the quaking of the
+soil where the earth’s crust was giving way.</p>
+
+<p>This unearthly tempest became so frightful, so fraught with agony and
+mad terror, that the multitudes grovelling below were overcome with
+paralysis, and lay prone. Laid low like dumb brutes, they met their doom.</p>
+
+<p>The end of all had come.</p>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" />
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_127">[Pg 127]</span></p>
+<h2 class="nobreak"><i>COLOPHON</i></h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class="center"><i>POST HOC, NON PROPTER HOC:<br />
+Sic veteres de multis rebus opinabantur,<br />
+Eodemque dicto eas jugiter absolvisse<br />
+Recte sibi visi sunt,<br />
+Vt puta quaecumque et qualiacumque<br />
+Cometarum saeculares reditus sequuntur.<br />
+CVR TV ITAQVE, forsitan quaeras,<br />
+Haec auditu minime jucunda nobis narrasti,<br />
+Terrae motus, fluminum inundationes, annonae defectus,<br />
+Pestes mortiferas, incendia, bella,<br />
+regumque magnorum excidia?<br />
+Si tibi cordi est,<br />
+LECTOR BENEVOLENTISSIME,<br />
+rationem nostram didicisse,<br />
+eia, veram accipe:<br />
+MVNDVS VVLT DECIPI.</i></p>
+
+<p class="f150 space-above2"><b><i>FINIS.</i></b></p>
+
+<div class="transnote bbox space-above2">
+<p class="f120 space-above1">Transcriber’s Notes:</p>
+<hr class="r5" />
+<p class="indent">Antiquated spellings or ancient words were not corrected.</p>
+<p class="indent">The illustrations have been moved so that they do not break up
+                  paragraphs and so that they are next to the text they illustrate.</p>
+<p class="indent">Typographical and punctuation errors have been silently corrected.</p>
+</div>
+<div>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 66824 ***</div>
+</body>
+</html>
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+The Project Gutenberg eBook of Comet Lore, by Edwin Emerson
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
+most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
+whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
+of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at
+www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you
+will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before
+using this eBook.
+
+Title: Comet Lore
+
+Author: Edwin Emerson
+
+Release Date: November 26, 2021 [eBook #66824]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+Produced by: deaurider and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at
+             https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images
+             generously made available by The Internet Archive)
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK COMET LORE ***
+
+
+
+
+Transcriber’s Notes:
+
+  Underscores “_” before and after a word or phrase indicate _italics_
+    in the original text.
+  Equal signs “=” before and after a word or phrase indicate =bold=
+    in the original text.
+  Small capitals have been converted to SOLID capitals.
+  Illustrations have been moved so they do not break up paragraphs.
+  Antiquated words have been preserved.
+  Typographical and punctuation errors have been silently corrected.
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: HALLEY’S COMET OF 1910, AS SEEN IN NEW YORK, LOOKING
+WESTWARD, DURING THE LATTER PART OF MAY.]
+
+
+
+
+                             COMET LORE
+
+                    Halley’s Comet in History and
+                              Astronomy
+
+                                 By
+                            EDWIN EMERSON
+    _Author of “A History of the Nineteenth Century,” Etc._
+
+                             PRINTED BY
+                         THE SCHILLING PRESS
+                      137-139 EAST 25th STREET
+                              NEW YORK
+
+                 Copyrighted, 1910, by EDWIN EMERSON
+                 Entered at Stationers’ Hall, London
+             All rights reserved under Berne Convention
+
+             Printed in the United States of America by
+                   the Schilling Press in New York
+                    from the electrotyped plates
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+                                                          PAGE
+    Halley’s Comet                                           7
+    The Terror of the Comet                                 10
+    Famous Comets of Olden Times                            30
+    The Star of Bethlehem                                   39
+    Great Events and Disasters Linked with Comets           42
+    Halley’s Comet the Bloodiest of All                     60
+    The Story of Edmund Halley                              90
+    What Are Comets?                                       101
+    Our Peril from Collision with the Comet                113
+    The End of the World                                   122
+
+
+
+
+ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+
+                                                                PAGE
+    Cover Designs by William Stevens
+    Halley’s Comet of 1910                             Frontispiece
+    The Terror of the Comet in Antiquity                         13
+    The Terror of the Comet in Mediæval Times                    20
+    The Terror of the Comet at the Present Day                   25
+    The Latest Photograph of the Comet of 1910                   28
+    Napoleon’s Comet of 1811                                     53
+    The Great Comet of 1843                                      56
+    Comet of Tel-el-Kebir, 1882                                  59
+    Halley’s Comet of 1835                                       62
+    Halley’s Comet of 1682                                       69
+    Halley’s Comet of 1066 in the Bayeux Tapestry                78
+    William the Conqueror, an English Dream                      81
+    Portrait of Edmund Halley                                    92
+    The Orbit of Halley’s Comet                                 103
+    Relative Sizes of the Earth, the Moon and Halley’s Comet    103
+    Donati’s Comet of 1858                                      106
+    The Civil War Comet of 1863                                 109
+    Coggia’s Comet of 1874                                      112
+    Halley’s Conception of a Collision with the Comet           119
+
+
+
+
+TO THE COMET
+
+    “Thereby Hangs a Tail.”—_Shakespeare._
+
+    Lone wanderer of the trackless sky!
+    Companionless! Say, dost thou fly
+    Along thy solitary path,
+    A flaming messenger of wrath—
+    Warning with thy portentous train
+    Of earthquake, plague and battle-plain?
+    Some say that thou dost never fail
+    To bring some evil in thy tail.
+                                W. LATTEY.
+
+
+
+
+THE COMING OF THE COMET
+
+
+The Sun will surely rise and set to-morrow.
+
+Just so surely must a Comet flare forth in our Heavens this Spring.
+
+Star gazers, astronomers and learned men have been waiting for this
+Comet all over the earth—in America, in Europe, in far China.
+
+They have known for certain that this Comet would come; and they knew
+just when and where in the Heavens the Comet would first show itself to
+the naked eye—down to the very night.
+
+All this has been known so surely because this same Comet has been seen
+by the people of this earth before.
+
+It came and went seventy-four years ago. Seventy-six years before that,
+it came and went. And seventy-six years before that, the Comet had come
+and gone.
+
+As long as human beings have lived on this earth—for thousands and
+thousands of years—human eyes have beheld this same Comet every
+seventy-six years or so.
+
+The longest time between the Comet’s coming has been seventy-nine
+years. The shortest interval of all—74½ years—was this time.
+
+For thousands of years in the past, wise men have written down records
+of this Comet.
+
+Long, long ago, when white men were still savages who dwelt in caves,
+patient star gazers in China and Chaldea studied the motions of this
+Comet.
+
+Farther back than that, in the hoary days before the art of writing
+was known, ancient bards sang of this Star and its hairy tail. Some of
+their words are still remembered.
+
+Artists have drawn pictures of this Comet. Their pictures are still
+shown.
+
+Women have stitched images of this Comet into their handiwork. Some of
+this handiwork can still be seen.
+
+Coiners have stamped designs of this comet on their coins and medals.
+Those coins are still shown in museums.
+
+Priests, Popes and great Divines have preached about this Comet. Their
+sermons are still preserved in the records of the Church.
+
+Learned men have written in their books what happened when the Comet
+came. Those books are read to-day.
+
+The coming of this Comet in olden times has been fixed in lasting
+records, which he who runs may read.
+
+Nothing in all History is more certain than the story of this Comet.
+
+
+
+
+WHY HALLEY’S COMET?
+
+
+Two hundred and twenty-eight years ago, when this Comet was seen
+shining over the City of London, the great astronomer, Edmund Halley,
+made a special study of it.
+
+Halley was the first to say that this Comet had come before and would
+surely come again. He wrote down the time when the Comet would come
+again, long after he should be dead.
+
+“If it should return,” he wrote, “according to our predictions, about
+the year 1758, impartial posterity will not refuse to acknowledge that
+this was first discovered by an Englishman.”
+
+The Comet returned, as he had foretold, seventeen years after Halley’s
+death, when it was first seen in 1758, on Christmas night, by a man in
+Saxony, named Palitsch, who was looking for the Comet.
+
+From that day this Comet has been called after Halley.
+
+Since then many famous astronomers, such as Clairaut, Pontécoulant and
+Laplace in France, have calculated the dates for the Comet’s return.
+
+Last time, in 1835, Halley’s Comet returned within a few nights of
+their prediction.
+
+This time, so the astronomers figured seventy-five years ago, the Comet
+should be plainly seen after dark late this May.
+
+What they predicted has come true.
+
+
+
+
+THE TERROR OF THE COMET
+
+    “Canst thou fearless gaze
+     Even night by night on that prodigious Blaze,
+     That hairy Comet, that long streaming Star,
+     Which threatens Earth with Famine, Plague and War?”
+                                     —_Sylvester._
+
+
+So long as the memory of man goes back, the appearance of a Comet has
+always been taken as a just cause for dread.
+
+In the train of Comets, it has ever been held, come wars, bloodshed,
+fires, floods, plagues, famine and the fall of mighty rulers.
+
+Our Holy Bible confirms this time-honoured belief.
+
+The Saviour Himself said, according to the Gospel of St. Luke, Chap.
+XXI., Verse 10-11:
+
+    “Nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom
+     against kingdom; and great earthquakes shall be in
+     divers places, and famines and pestilences; and
+     fearful sights and great signs shall there be from
+     Heaven.”
+
+In the Revelation of St. John the Divine (Chap. VIII., Verse 10) we
+read:
+
+    “There fell from Heaven a great star burning as a
+     torch,” and again (Chap. XII., Verse 3):
+
+    “There was seen another sign in Heaven, and behold
+     a great red dragon ... and his tail draweth a third
+     part of the stars in Heaven. And behold the third woe
+     cometh quickly.” (Chap. XII., Verse 14.)
+
+The “flaming sword” in the hands of the angel of the Lord, when Adam
+and Eve were driven from the Garden of Eden, many sacred writers hold,
+can only be interpreted as a Comet.
+
+     “For the Almighty set before the door
+    Of th’ holy park a seraphim that bore
+      A warning sword, whose body shined bright
+    A flaming Comet in the midst of night.”
+                                  —_Todd._
+
+So, too, when Jerusalem was to be wasted by a plague, David beheld a
+Comet in the shape of a flaming sword:
+
+    “And David lifted up his eyes and saw the angel of
+     the Lord stand between the earth and the Heaven,
+     having a drawn sword in his hand stretched out over
+     Jerusalem.”
+                             —_I. Chron. XXI. 16._
+
+The fall of Satan, some sacred writers hold, was marked by the
+appearance of a Comet. In Isaiah (XIV. 12) we find:
+
+    “How art thou fallen from Heaven, O flaming one, son
+     of the morning!”
+
+John Milton, in his “Paradise Lost,” has fixed this image in immortal
+verse:
+
+    “Satan stood
+     Unterrified, and as a Comet burned
+     That fired the length of Ophiuchus huge
+     In th’ arctic sky, and from its horrid hair,
+     Shakes pestilence and war.”
+
+The Great Deluge, described in Holy Writ, came after the appearance
+of a mighty Comet (Halley’s Comet), so Dr. William Whiston, Sir Isaac
+Newton’s successor in the Lucasian chair of Mathematics at Cambridge,
+set forth in a special treatise. The great French astronomer, Laplace,
+also reached the same conclusion.
+
+This same Comet (Halley’s Comet) likewise foretold the final fall of
+the Holy City, Jerusalem, in the year 70 after Christ. This Comet was
+seen by St. Peter. Josephus in his History of the Jewish Wars recorded
+the nightly appearance of this Comet over the City of Jerusalem just
+before the war which ended with the destruction of the Holy City.
+
+    “Amongst other warnings,” writes Josephus, who saw
+     this Comet with his own eyes, “a Comet of the kind
+     called sword-shaped, because their tails appear to
+     represent the blade of a sword, was seen above the
+     city for the space of a whole year.”
+
+Josephus at the time rebuked his Jewish countrymen for listening to
+false prophets while so clear a sign from Heaven was before their very
+eyes.
+
+This same Comet (Halley’s Comet) reappeared at a critical period of the
+rule of Constantine the Great, the first Christian Emperor of Rome. He
+first beheld his sign from Heaven in the midst of battle as it blazed
+overhead in the sign of a Cross. With the help of his mother, the
+sainted Helen, Constantine was moved thereby to turn Christian.
+
+Constantinople, the great capital of the Orient, which owes its name
+to this same Emperor Constantine, was lost to Christendom in the year
+1453, when the Turks overran the great city with fire and sword. This
+event, it is recorded, was heralded by another appearance of a Comet.
+Three years later, when the Turks were about to descend upon Belgrade,
+another Comet (Halley’s Comet) spread consternation throughout Europe.
+
+At that time Pope Calixtus III., on the appearance of this Comet,
+seeing that evils were impending for the human race, called for prayers
+that the Almighty would turn these evils upon the Turks, the enemies of
+the Christian faith.
+
+[Illustration: “A SWORD-SHAPED COMET BLAZED OVER THE DOOMED HOLY CITY.”
+
+—Josephus’ “_History of Judea_.”]
+
+At the same time the Holy Father gave orders for all Church bells to be
+tolled at noon to remind faithful Christians to pray for those battling
+against the Turk.
+
+Into the Ave Maria were put the words: “From the Devil, the Turk and
+the Comet, Good Lord, deliver us!”
+
+Since that time in most Catholic countries the Angelus is still
+regularly rung at noon. In Italy, even to-day, the cakes sold before
+the church doors at noon go by the name of _Comete_.
+
+All the great Fathers of the Church have taught that Comets are to be
+taken as signs from Heaven.
+
+Baeda, the Venerable, declared in the seventh century in England, that
+“Comets portend revolutions of kingdoms, pestilence, war, winds, or
+heat.”
+
+John of Damascus, preaching in the same century in the Orient, laid
+down the same belief.
+
+St. Thomas Aquinas, the great Light of the Church in the thirteenth
+century, accepted and handed down the same opinion.
+
+The sainted Albert the Great, the most noted thinker of the Church in
+the Middle Ages, received and taught the same doctrine.
+
+The teachings of these Church Fathers as to Comets have been commended
+in our own day by Pope Pius IX.
+
+The great teachers of other religions, likewise, have laid down
+identical beliefs as to the meaning of Comets.
+
+The sacred books of India are full of awed references to the baleful
+influence of Comets.
+
+The ancient year books of China, written centuries before white men
+kept any records, tell of the appearance of Comets and of the disasters
+they foretold.
+
+The Mohametans and their wise Arab star gazers, when they saw a Comet
+in the Heavens, knew that it meant war.
+
+The woe of one Comet (Halley’s Comet of 1456), which had the shape of
+a Turkish scimitar, so the Arab soothsayers foretold, would be turned
+against their enemies. This was the same Comet which brought such fear
+to the hearts of Pope Calixtus III. and all his Christian followers.
+
+Thus it can be seen that Comets have been held to foretell disaster on
+one side, and victory on the other.
+
+The Comets which conquerors hailed as their guiding stars, have meant
+war and bloodshed and disaster to those whom they came to conquer.
+
+The same Comets which shone upon the birth of mighty rulers, have
+blazed in warning of their death.
+
+Julius Caesar, who was born under a Comet, saw his bloody end foretold
+by another Comet.
+
+Therefore, Shakespeare in his play “Julius Caesar,” makes Calpurnia say
+to Caesar:
+
+    “When beggars die, there are no Comets seen;
+     The Heavens themselves blaze forth the death of princes.”
+
+On the night of Caesar’s assassination, when the Comet was seen blazing
+at its brightest, the Romans said that it had come to bear away the
+great soul of the murdered Caesar.
+
+At the death of Nero, the Roman Emperor, who persecuted the Christians,
+a Comet blazed forth again. The Roman historian Suetonius, who wrote
+the Life of Emperor Nero, thus described this Comet:
+
+    “A blazing star, which was commonly held to portend
+     destruction to Kings and Princes, reappeared above
+     the horizon several nights in succession.”
+
+Another great Comet (Halley’s again) reappeared when Attila, the King
+of the Huns, the “Scourge of God,” was overthrown in the greatest
+battle of Christendom on the Catalaunian fields.
+
+Claudius, a Roman writer of that period, then stated that “a Comet was
+never seen in the Heavens without implying some dreadful event.”
+
+This has ever been the belief of all the great poets of olden time.
+
+Homer, the greatest poet of Ancient Greece, a thousand years before the
+birth of Christ, sang of:
+
+    “The red star, that from his flaming hair
+     Shakes down diseases, pestilence and war.”
+
+Let it be explained here that the word Comet in Greek means
+“long-haired,” from _kome_,—hair.
+
+Virgil, the greatest Roman poet, sang of “the baleful glare of bloody
+Comets,” and again, of “dreadful Comets blazing in the sky.”
+
+Tasso, the greatest of Italian poets after Dante, sang thus of Comets
+in his “Jerusalem Delivered”:
+
+    “Qual con le chiome sanguinose horrende
+     Splender Cometa suol per l’aria adusta,
+     Che i regni muta, e i feri morbi adduce,
+     Ai purpurei tiranni infausta luce.”
+           —_Gerusalemme Liberata, Canto VII., Stanza 52._
+
+Rendered thus by Wiffen into English:
+
+    “As with its bloody locks let loose in air
+     Horribly bright, the Comet shows whose shine
+     Plagues the parched World, whose looks the Nations scare,
+     Before whose face States change, and Powers decline,
+     To purple Tyrants all, an inauspicious sign.”
+
+The great English poets, on their part, have lifted up their voices to
+sing of the dire effects of Comets.
+
+Shakespeare, the greatest of them all, abounds in allusions to these
+dread wandering stars.
+
+Thus he makes Horatio in the first scene of “Hamlet” speak with awe of:
+
+    “Stars with trains of fire and dews of blood;
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+    And even the like precurse of fierce events,
+    As harbingers preceding still the fates
+    And prologue to the omen coming on.”
+
+More briefly Shakespeare in his “Henry VI.” refers to:
+
+    “A Comet of revenge
+     A prophet to the fall of all our foes”;
+
+and again, in “The Taming of the Shrew” to:
+
+    “Some Comet or unusual prodigy.”
+
+Spenser in his “Faerie Queene” sings of a woman’s hair loosely
+dispersed in the wind:
+
+    “All as a blazing starre doth farre outcast
+     His heavy beames, and flaming lockes dispredd,
+     At sight whereof the people stand aghast;
+     But the sage Wizzard telles, as he has redd,
+     That it importunes death and doleful drearyhedd.”
+
+John Milton, besides likening Satan to a Comet, as before quoted, also
+showed that he shared in the belief that the flaming swords mentioned
+in Holy Writ were Comets:
+
+    “High in front advanced
+     The brandish’d sword of God before them blazed
+     Fierce as a Comet.”
+
+The poet Young, in his “Night Thoughts,” aptly writes of the Comet:
+
+    “Hast thou ne’er seen the Comet’s flaming light?
+     Th’ illustrious stranger passing, terror sheds
+     On gazing Nations, from his fiery train.”
+
+The poets of other nations have written of Comets in like vein. There
+is an old German rhyme, sung by German school children even to-day,
+which has been put into English by Dr. Andrew D. White in his “History
+of the Doctrine of Comets”:
+
+    “Eight things there be a Comet brings,
+     When it on high doth horrid range;
+     Wind, Famine, Plague, and Death to Kings,
+     War, Earthquake, Floods and Direful Change.”
+
+This little rhyme was originally put forth for German school children
+by two Protestant preachers of Basle, Switzerland, at the time of the
+great Comet of 1618, which heralded the outbreak of the great “Thirty
+Years’ War.”
+
+These Protestant ministers got their belief in Comets and their evil
+influence upon mankind not from the Church of Rome, but from the
+Bible teachings of such great Protestant reformers as Martin Luther,
+Melanchthon, Zwingli, Calvin, John Knox of Scotland, Bishop Jeremy
+Taylor and John Howe, the great Nonconformist divine.
+
+Martin Luther preached in one of his Advent sermons:
+
+    “The heathen write that the Comet may arise from
+    natural causes; but God creates not one that does not
+    foretoken a sure calamity.”
+
+Luther’s friend, Melanchthon, in a letter, declared Comets to be
+“heralds of Heaven’s wrath.”
+
+Zwingli, in 1531, declared that the great Comet of that year (Halley’s
+Comet) was sent by God to betoken calamity.
+
+John Knox, preaching in his Scottish kirk at Edinboro, declared that he
+saw in Comets tokens of the wrath of Heaven.
+
+The great divines of the Church of England,—from Cranmer, Bishop
+Latimer, Archbishops Spottiswoode and Bramhall, Bishop Jeremy Taylor,
+down to our own times, clearly preached the doctrine that Comets must
+be taken as tokens from Heaven.
+
+Thus the Comet of 1572 was pointed out from the pulpits of England
+and Scotland as a token of Heaven’s wrath and warning at the St.
+Bartholomew Massacre on the night of August 24, 1572, when thirty
+thousand Huguenots were murdered in the streets of Paris and elsewhere
+in France.
+
+Across the sea, in the new Commonwealth of Massachusetts, the great
+New England divine and President of Harvard College, Increase Mather,
+on the apparition of the great Comet now known as Halley’s, in 1682,
+preached on “Heaven’s Wrath Alarm to the World—wherein is shown that
+fearful sights and signs in the Heavens are the presages of great
+calamities at hand.”
+
+Increase Mather preached on the text taken from the Book of Revelation:
+“And the third Angel sounded, and there fell a great Star burning as a
+Torch, ... and behold the Third Woe cometh quickly.”
+
+In this sermon the great preacher told of the Roman Emperor Vespasian,
+who, when warned of the omen of a Comet, made fun of it, and then died
+miserably.
+
+So Mather preached: “For the Lord hath fired his beacon in the Heavens
+among the stars of God there. The fearful sign is not yet out of
+sight.... Do we not see the sword blazing over us?... Doth God threaten
+our very Heavens? O pray unto Him, that he would not take away stars
+and send Comets to succeed them!”
+
+[Illustration: THE TERROR OF THE COMET OF 1531. FROM AN OLD NUREMBERG
+WOOD-CUT.]
+
+The profound Russian thinker Tolstoy, in his great book “War and
+Peace,” has written of the flaming Comet of 1811. This was the famous
+“Comet of Napoleon,” which blazed over Western Europe when Napoleon was
+gathering his grand army for its disastrous march into Russia and to
+Moscow.
+
+At Moscow, the ancient capital of Russia, this Comet was observed by
+anxious thousands. One night there was this talk between a novice nun
+and the Abbess of her Convent. On their way to vesper service one
+evening in Moscow the nun suddenly beheld the Comet for the first time
+and asked: “What is that star?”
+
+The Abbess answered: “It is not a star. It is a Comet.”
+
+“But what is a Comet?” asked the young nun. “I have never heard that
+word.”
+
+The Abbess then answered: “Comets are signs in Heaven, which God sends
+before misfortunes.”
+
+Shortly after this the bloody battle of Borodino was fought, and
+Napoleon, with his army, appeared before the gates of Moscow. The
+hundred-towered city was abandoned by the Russians and was given over
+to the flames.
+
+Years afterward this same nun thus told her story, as printed in the
+“Revue des Deux Mondes”:
+
+    “Every night the Comet blazed in the Heavens, and we
+     all asked ourselves: What misfortune does it bring?
+     Then the enemy came, and our sacred city was put
+     to the torch. Our convent, together with all other
+     cloisters, monasteries and churches, was burned to
+     the ground.”
+
+Many other writers of the time who saw the great Comets that blazoned
+Napoleon’s destructive wars have recorded how they were universally
+taken as omens of the great conqueror’s bloody trail.
+
+Napoleon himself gloried in this dread omen and hailed the Comet as his
+“guiding star.”
+
+All this has been fully set forth by the famous French astronomer
+Messier, a latter-day observer of Halley’s Comet, who wrote a special
+book on “The Wonderful Comet which appeared at the Birth of Napoleon
+the Great.”
+
+As for the many Comets that have blazed down upon other great
+conquerors and other bloody wars, before the comparatively recent
+Comets of the American Civil War and the Napoleonic Wars, they are all
+set down in a special History of Comets.
+
+In this great work, entitled “A History of All Comets,” the Latin
+scholar Lubienitius has pointed out all the calamities and dire events
+which attended the appearance of each and every Comet recorded in
+history.
+
+
+
+
+THE EFFECTS OF COMETS ON MAN
+
+
+Some thinkers have pointed out that there has often been a direct
+connection between the feelings produced in the human soul by the
+appearance of a Comet and the human deeds of violence or the human
+epidemics and excessive mortality following the widespread terror
+produced by Comets.
+
+Only this year (1910) the appearance of Inness’ Comet over Mexico
+caused a panic-stricken holy pilgrimage to the Shrine of Talpa. In
+China, too, it caused terror, resulting in Christian massacres.
+
+Hence, also, several Jewish massacres inspired by Comets in the past
+and hence also so many terrifying plagues connected with Comets.
+
+Thus Ambroise Paré, the “Father of French Surgery,” who flourished
+in the sixteenth century, has recorded the effect produced upon his
+contemporaries by the Comet of 1528.
+
+“This Comet was so horrible,” wrote Dr. Paré, “so frightful, and it
+produced such great terror among the common people, that many died of
+fear and many others fell sick.”
+
+Dr. Paré himself appears to have come under the influence of this fear,
+judging from his awestruck description of the appearance of this Comet:
+
+    “It appeared to be of excessive length; and was of
+     the colour of blood. At the summit of it was seen the
+     figure of a bent arm, holding in its hand a great
+     sword as if about to strike.
+
+    “At the end of the point there were three stars.
+     On both sides of the rays of this Comet were seen
+     a great number of axes, knives, and blood-coloured
+     swords, among which were a great number of hideous
+     human faces with beards and bristling hair.”
+
+Hannibal committed suicide on account of a Comet. So did Mithridates.
+So did one Toma, in Hungary, only this year.
+
+King Louis “the Debonair” of France, died from fear of a Comet
+(Halley’s Comet) in 837 A. D.
+
+Emperor Charles V., of Germany and Spain, the monarch who boasted that
+“the sun never set on his dominions,” was so moved by the appearance of
+a Comet in 1556, that he gave up his crown and became a monk.
+
+Certain metaphysicians have held that there is a substance in a Comet,
+or in its tail, which has a weird effect on man’s brain, as moonshine
+is believed to have on some men, making them lunatics. As a matter
+of fact, as Arago pointed out, Comets have caused tremendous spring
+tides just like the moon. The same irresistible pull of gravity or
+electricity or light-pressure must perforce affect other substances
+besides water, such as human brains.
+
+According to this metaphysical theory, the close approach of a Comet to
+the earth affects and disturbs men’s brains, so that men are inwardly
+stirred with warlike impulses. Hence the great wars almost invariably
+following the appearance of Comets.
+
+Hence, too, the appeal to Comets made by so many conquerors, from
+William the Conqueror down to Napoleon. In the homely phrase of one
+writer, “the inner eye of man, under the weird effect of a Comet, sees
+red and makes him thirst for blood.”
+
+Those rare beings who have lying latent within them the gift of Second
+Sight or divination, according to this same metaphysical theory, upon
+the near approach of Comets find themselves stirred to prophesy. Hence,
+so many marvellous prophesies inspired by Comets since the ancient days
+of Merlin, the seer.
+
+[Illustration: “THE COMET OF 1910 SO ALARMED THE PEOPLE OF MEXICO THAT
+MANY THOUSANDS WENT ON A HOLY PILGRIMAGE TO THE SHRINE OF TALPA IN
+XALISCO.”—_Mexican Herald._]
+
+
+
+
+THIS YEAR’S PROPHECIES
+
+
+The return of Halley’s Comet in this Year of Our Lord 1910 has already
+called forth several memorable prophesies.
+
+On January 20th the French astrologer and prophetess Madame de Thebes,
+who predicted the disastrous French floods of this year, as well as the
+coming of Inness’ unexpected Comet, uttered the following prophesies:
+
+    “This year, 1910, will be one to look back to with
+    trembling.
+
+    “The earth is under a terrific strain from Comets and
+    planetary revolutions. Human destiny is red. That
+    means blood. Political events are black. Terrible
+    changes are imminent.
+
+    “This winter, France will be swept by terrible
+    floods. Paris will be under water. The influence of
+    form changes in other planets and the coming of a
+    Comet will affect us for the worse.
+
+    “The strain of the stars will be most severely felt
+    in America. The people of America will have to pay
+    dearly for all their riches and sudden prosperity.
+    With the coming of another Comet disaster will
+    descend upon America.
+
+    “A financial crash is impending, to be followed by a
+    long string of suicides. Black ruling us, men will
+    commit all manner of crimes and knaveries for money.
+
+    “The times are swaying toward degeneration. We are
+    swinging within the evil influence of a strange
+    orbit. Our souls are jarred from their proper
+    bearings. I dare not say all that is revealed to me.
+    It would be too terrible.”
+
+Soon after this prophesy was uttered came the first of such suicides.
+Adam Toma, a wealthy landowner of Szozona, Hungary, cut his throat
+because of the Comet. He left a note saying that the Comet was the
+cause of his death.
+
+Cardinal Gibbons later expressed his profound belief that the Paris
+floods of this year were sent by God as a punishment to the Parisians
+for their frivolities and sins, of which the Comet was a fiery warning.
+
+Commenting on Madame de Thebes’ predictions and her connection of the
+Comet of 1910 with this year’s spring-floods in France, Italy and
+Germany, the French astronomer Henri Deslandres, late Director of the
+Astronomical Observatory of Meudon and member of the French Academy of
+Sciences, said:
+
+    “However distant Comets may be, it is not at all
+     impossible that their enormous tails, measuring
+     75,000,000 to 125,000,000 miles in length, may come
+     in contact with our atmosphere. The theory that
+     a Comet may disturb the atmosphere of the earth,
+     causing rains of great duration, and consequently
+     inundations and the sudden overflow of rivers, is
+     not at all absurd. It can be sustained by scientific
+     reasoning.”
+
+It should be remembered here that Laplace, one of the greatest of all
+astronomers, credited the deluge to a Comet.
+
+Before Madame de Thebes’ ominous prophesy concerning Halley’s Comet and
+its effects upon America were cabled over to this country, another,
+no less dire prediction of financial disaster in the United States,
+coincident with the appearance of Halley’s Comet, was made by W. E.
+Corey, the President of the American Steel Trust.
+
+[Illustration: THE COMET OF 1910, FROM A TELESCOPIC PHOTOGRAPH TAKEN AT
+GREENWICH.]
+
+Mr. Corey then warned his friends to “call in their money and get from
+under” because a calamitous financial crash and general business ruin
+would surely come during the Spring of 1910.
+
+The most ominous of all prophesies connected with the coming of
+Halley’s Comet this year was made by the venerable General Ballington
+Booth, the head of the Salvation Army. Speaking in London, immediately
+after Halley’s Comet had been located, early this year, General Booth
+said:
+
+    “We are, this year, rapidly approaching the end of
+     all things, with similar results, but far surpassing
+     in horrors any disaster that has gone before.
+
+     “All things will be wound up. Besides a deluge of
+     water sweeping parts of the world and its inhabitants
+     there will be fierce destruction by fire.”
+
+
+
+
+FAMOUS COMETS OF OLDEN TIMES
+
+
+Bacon, the great English thinker, has said: “Comets have some action
+and effect on the universality of things.”
+
+All Comets recorded in history, so Lubienitius has shown in his
+“Universal History of All Comets,” appeared in connection with some
+great event or catastrophe in the History of Man.
+
+George F. Chambers, one of the most up-to-date writers on Astronomy
+and Comets, on the second page of his “Story of the Comets” (1909),
+declares:
+
+    “It is the general testimony of History during many
+     hundreds of years, one might even say during fully
+     2,000 years, that Comets were always considered to
+     be peculiarly ‘ominous of the wrath of Heaven and as
+     harbingers of wars and famines, of the dethronement
+     of Monarchs and the dissolution of Empires.’”
+
+Reaching back into remotest history, the sacred books of India show
+that the births of Krishna and of Buddha were foretold by moving lights
+in the Heavens.
+
+The ancient records of China tell of the appearance of a moving beacon
+in Heaven at the birth of Yu, the first ruler of the Celestial Empire,
+and again at the birth of the great Chinese prophet, Lao-Tse.
+
+The ancient Greeks have recorded similar appearances of Comets.
+Aesculapius, the divine healer and first physician, was born under a
+Comet.
+
+The oldest traditions of the Jews tell us that when Abraham was born a
+moving star was seen in the East.
+
+Another moving star with long radiant gleams of light streaming behind
+it shone forth at the birth of Moses. This Comet was seen by the Magi
+of Egypt, who pointed it out to the King as an omen meant for him.
+Hence Pharaoh’s order, as recorded in the Old Testament, for the
+slaughter of all male Jewish infants then born in Egypt.
+
+
+
+
+GREAT EVENTS CONNECTED WITH HISTORIC COMETS IN ANTIQUITY
+
+
+The earliest Comet of which there is any historic record was a Comet
+mentioned in the oldest cuneiform inscriptions of Babylonia several
+thousand years before our Christian era, recently found on the north
+bank of Nahr-al-Kalb, near Beyrut in Syria. This Comet is recorded to
+have been visible to the naked eye for 29 nights.
+
+At the time Lubienitius wrote his big “History of all the Comets” the
+exact date of this Comet had not been fixed. Lubienitius, though, had
+a record of this same Comet, the date of which he fixes at the year
+2312 before Christ, the date computed by him and other writers for the
+beginning of the deluge.
+
+In modern times the great French astronomer Laplace credited a Comet
+with causing huge floods at the time of the great Deluge.
+
+Two hundred and eighty-eight years after the great Deluge, according to
+the records of the Chaldean star gazers, there appeared another Comet.
+This is the date, computed by Lubienitius, for the building of the
+Tower of Babel and the confusion of tongues.
+
+Two thousand and sixty-four years before Christ, another Comet
+appeared, as recorded by the Chaldeans. This is the date given for the
+birth of Abraham.
+
+When Abraham was seventy years old, in the year 1949 B. C., a Comet was
+seen shining over the Valley of Siddim for twenty-two nights. This is
+the date given by Bible historians for the destruction of Sodom and
+Gomorrah, the two cities of iniquity which lay in the Vale of Siddim.
+
+Jewish annalists record a Comet in Egypt in the year corresponding to
+B. C. 1841. This Comet shone at the time of the bitter persecution of
+the Jews by the Egyptians.
+
+Arabian star gazers have recorded a Comet shining over Arabia 1732 B.
+C. In that year there was a terrible famine, of which mention is made
+in the Old Testament.
+
+The ancient Chinese year books record the appearance of a Comet over
+northern China and Manchuria in the year corresponding to 1537 B.
+C. The appearance of the Comet, so the Chinese chronicles tell, was
+followed by a great flood and disastrous famine.
+
+The next Comet of which we have any record, appeared 1515 B. C. This
+was at the time of the expulsion of the Jews from Egypt.
+
+In the year B. C. 1194, we are told by Hyginus that “On the fall of
+Troy, one of the Pleiades group of stars rushed along the Heavens
+toward the Arctic pole, where the star remained visible with
+dishevelled hair, to which the name of Comet is applied.”
+
+We are informed by Pliny, the Roman historian, that in B. C. 975, the
+“Egyptians and Ethiopians suffered from a terrible famine, the dire
+effects of a Comet. It appeared all on fire, and was twisted in the
+form of a wreath, and had a hideous aspect. It seemed not to be a star,
+but rather a knot of fire.”
+
+Babylonian cuneiform inscriptions tell us that about 575 B. C., when
+Nebuchadnezzar overran Elam, “a star arose whose head was bright as
+day, while from its luminous body a tail extended like the sting of a
+scorpion.”
+
+According to Pliny, again, a Comet in the form of a horn was seen in
+the year B. C. 480, just before the great invasion of Greece by Xerxes
+ending in the bloody sea fight of Salamis.
+
+The next Comet mentioned by Lubienitius appeared in B. C. 466, when it
+was seen for 75 nights all over Greece. In that year Greece was ravaged
+by war between the Spartans and Athenians, and the city of Sparta was
+all but destroyed by an earthquake.
+
+The next Comet appeared one generation later in 431 B. C., and was seen
+through 60 nights all over the ancient world. This Comet was followed
+by a terrible pestilence which swept over Aethiopia, Egypt, Athens, and
+Rome. War broke out all over Greece. It was the beginning of the great
+Peloponnesian War, which devastated Greece for a generation to follow.
+
+In the year 394 B. C., there was another Comet seen in Greece, followed
+by the great Corinthian War with the bloody battles of Knidus and
+Koronea.
+
+Aristotle records a Comet seen by him in his fifteenth year, 371 B. C.
+The sight of it inspired the youth to a special study of astronomy.
+The Comet was visible until the end of the first week of July. On July
+eighth was fought the great battle between the Thebans and Spartans,
+when Epaminondas, one of the greatest generals of antiquity, overthrew
+the Spartans.
+
+The next Comet, that of 338 B. C., which was likewise observed by
+Aristotle, who had then become the teacher of Alexander the Great,
+marked Alexander’s first public entry into the history of the world.
+The Comet blazed its brightest on the eve of the bloody battle of
+Chaeronea, Alexander’s first victory and achievement in war.
+
+In the year 344 B. C., there was another Comet, followed by another
+war in Greece and Sicily. Diodorus of Sicily wrote of this Comet: “On
+the departure of the expedition of Timoleon from Corinth for Sicily
+with all his war ships, the Gods foretold success by an extraordinary
+prodigy: A burning torch appeared in the Heavens for an entire night
+and went before the fleet into Sicily.”
+
+
+_The Comets of Carthage._
+
+Nearly a hundred years passed before the appearance of another Comet in
+240 B. C. This is the first recorded appearance of Halley’s Comet. By
+the light of this Comet, Hamilcar, the great Carthaginian general, made
+his young son Hannibal swear eternal enmity to the Romans. Hamilcar was
+then in the midst of preparations for the war against Rome, which broke
+out soon afterward.
+
+Comets appear to have been stars of special omen to Hannibal and to his
+native city, Carthage. Twenty years later, appeared another Comet which
+shone over Carthage for 22 nights. Its appearance was followed by the
+outbreak of the great war between Hannibal and the Romans, and by a
+terrible earthquake in Greece.
+
+The next Comet shone in 204 B. C., when Hannibal suffered his first
+bloody defeat by Sempronius, while Scipio, Hannibal’s arch enemy, was
+crossing over to Africa, for the first attack upon Carthage.
+
+The appearance of the next Comet, twenty years later, 184 B. C., which
+shone through 88 nights over Asia Minor “with a horrible lustre” was
+followed by the death of Hannibal. Soothsayers at the court of King
+Prusias of Bithynia, in Asia Minor, whither Hannibal had fled from
+the Romans, told the King that the Comet betokened Hannibal’s early
+death. This so wrought on Hannibal’s spirit that he ended his life with
+poison.
+
+In the year 150 B. C., appeared another Comet “of horrible size.” It
+was seen for many nights running all over the Mediterranean Sea. Its
+appearance was followed by the outbreak of the third great Punic War
+between Rome and Carthage.
+
+Within four years another Comet, blazing over northern Africa in 146 B.
+C., was followed by the fall of Carthage, which was stormed and utterly
+destroyed by the Romans.
+
+
+_Mithridates’ Star._
+
+Mithridates, King of Pontus, and conqueror of Asia Minor, another arch
+foe of the Romans, having been born under a Comet, seems to have fallen
+under the bane of Comets.
+
+During the Winter of 134-135 B. C., preceding Mithridates’ birth, a
+Comet of unusual lustre flared over Asia Minor through 72 days. This
+Comet was so bright that its long, flaming tail was plainly visible
+even in day time. The ancient historian Justinus thus described it:
+
+“Its splendour eclipsed that of the midday sun and occupied the fourth
+part of Heaven.”
+
+The next Comet, burning through 72 nights again, preceded Mithridates’
+accession to the throne of Pontus, 119 B. C.
+
+Mithridates’ fourth Comet, now identified as Halley’s Comet, was seen
+over Asia Minor through the Winter months of 87-88 B. C., just before
+the horrible massacre of 150,000 Italians ordered by Mithridates.
+
+Twenty-five years later, 63 B. C., Mithridates saw his Comet for the
+last time when his own son rose up in arms against him. The omen of the
+Comet so wrought on Mithridates that he first poisoned himself and then
+had one of his own soldiers despatch him with his sword.
+
+No other Comet is recorded in ancient history during this century,
+except the one which was seen shining over Italy preceding the birth
+(July 11, 100 B. C.) of Julius Caesar, destined to become “The foremost
+man of all this world,” as Shakespeare calls him.
+
+“Caesar’s Comet” as it came to be known (now identified as Halley’s
+Comet) appeared again over Italy during the great Civil War between
+Marius and Sylla, when Caesar was first entering into public affairs
+and earned his spurs as a warrior.
+
+“Caesar’s Comet” shone again over Rome in the year 60 B. C., when
+Julius Caesar, together with Pompey and Crassus, took charge of the
+government of Rome and presently seized supreme power as Consul of Rome.
+
+Ten years later “Caesar’s Comet” was seen once more in Italy in the
+Winter months of 49-50 B. C., when Caesar, returning from his conquest
+of Gaul, crossed the Rubicon and began the great Civil War against his
+rival for power, Pompey.
+
+The last appearance of “Caesar’s Comet,” was in 44 B. C., on the
+death of Caesar. Its coming was foreseen in a dream by Caesar’s wife
+Calpurnia, who warned him of the omen, as immortalized in Shakespeare’s
+lines, put into the mouth of Caesar’s wife:
+
+    “When beggars die, there are no Comets seen,
+     The Heavens themselves blaze forth the death of Princes”;
+
+followed by Caesar’s famous answer, as culled from Plutarch by
+Shakespeare:
+
+    “What can be avoided,
+     Whose end is purposed by the mighty gods?
+     Yet Caesar shall go forth; for these predictions
+     Are to the world in general as to Caesar.”
+
+On the following morning Caesar was murdered at the foot of Pompey’s
+statue in the Curia.
+
+Immediately after Caesar’s death, records the Roman historian Suetonius
+in his “Life of Caesar”: “A Comet blazed for seven nights together,
+rising always about eleven o’clock, visible to all in Rome. It was
+taken by all to be the soul of Caesar, now received into Heaven; for
+which reason, accordingly, Caesar is represented in his statue with a
+star on his brow.”
+
+Only one more Comet is recorded in ancient history before the birth of
+Christ. This was the Comet, now identified as Halley’s Comet, which
+shone over the dense forests of Germany, eleven years before the birth
+of Christ, when Drusus, the brother of Tiberius, was warring against
+the ancient Germans and robbing them of their last vestige of liberty.
+At the same time fell the death of Agrippa, who ruled over the Roman
+Empire in the absence of Augustus.
+
+
+_THE STAR OF BETHLEHEM_
+
+The coming of the Messia, according to the sacred legends of the Jews,
+was to be foretold by a flaming star.
+
+Many sacred writers have held, and many still hold, as did the
+distinguished American astronomer R. A. Proctor, that the “Star of
+Bethlehem,” whose shining trail guided the Wise Men from The East, was
+a Comet. Lubienitius in his “History of Comets” expressly mentions the
+Star of Bethlehem as the most important Comet of history.
+
+As a matter of fact our modern astronomical computations prove that a
+Comet appeared in that year so as to be visible to the naked eye over
+Arabia, Syria, and the Holy Land.
+
+When this Comet appeared Herod was King of Judea. On the appearance of
+the Comet, Herod consulted the oracle of the Sibyl in Rome. She told
+him that the Comet shone in token of a boy destined to be far greater
+than he.
+
+Herod grew so afraid at this that he caused to be murdered his own
+two infant sons, Aristobolus and Alexander, and after that his eldest
+son, the boy Antipater. Herod further ordered the massacre of all
+male infants born in Judea under this Comet, as told in the Gospel of
+Matthew (Chap. II., Verse 1). As the Comet kept on blazing in the sky,
+Herod, becoming desperate, tried to kill himself. Five days after this
+he died of a loathsome disease.
+
+Christian painters and writers from olden times until now, accordingly
+have pictured the Star of Bethlehem as a Comet.
+
+Take for instance this description of “The Light in the Sky” as given
+by Lew Wallace in his “Ben Hur: A Tale of the Christ”:
+
+    “About midnight some one on the roof cried out:
+    ‘What light is that in the sky? Awake, brethren,
+     awake and see!’
+
+     The people, half asleep, sat up and looked; then
+     they became wide awake, though wonder struck....
+     Soon the entire tenantry of the house and court and
+     enclosure were out gazing at the sky.
+
+     And this is what they saw: A ray of light, beginning
+     at a height immeasurably beyond the nearest stars,
+     and dropping obliquely to the earth; at its top, a
+     diminishing point; at its base, many furlongs in
+     width; its sides blending softly with the darkness
+     of night; its core a roseate electrical splendour.
+     The apparition seemed to rest on the nearest mountain
+     southeast of the town, making a pale corona along the
+     line of the summit. The khan was touched luminously
+     so that those upon the roof saw each others’ faces
+     all filled with wonder.
+
+     Steadily the ray lingered....
+
+    ‘Saw you ever the like?’ asked one.
+
+    ‘Can it be that a star has burst and fallen?’ asked
+     another, his tongue faltering.
+
+    ‘When a star falls its light goes out.’
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+     After that there was silence on the housetop, broken
+     but once again while the mystery continued.
+
+    ‘Brethren!’ exclaimed a Jew of venerable mien, ‘what
+     we see is the ladder our father Jacob saw in his
+     dream. Blessed be the Lord God of Our Fathers!’”
+
+Meanwhile the Wise Men from the East, as described in the same story,
+were travelling over the desert, on the alert for the apparition of the
+star, whose coming had been revealed to them.
+
+    “Suddenly, in the air before them, not farther up
+     than a low hill-top,” writes Lew Wallace, “flared a
+     lambent flame; as they looked at it, the apparition
+     contracted into a focus of dazzling lustre. Their
+     hearts beat fast; their souls thrilled; and they
+     shouted as with one voice: ‘The Star! the Star! God
+     is with us!’”
+
+
+
+
+GREAT EVENTS LINKED WITH COMETS SINCE CHRIST
+
+
+Since the time of Christ, thanks to the spread of Christianity and
+learning, with the growing zeal for keeping records and studying the
+stars, a far greater number of Comets and events connected therewith
+have been recorded.
+
+A number of learned writers have made a special study of the history of
+Comets and their effect upon man. Long before Lubienitius’ ponderous
+work on the subject there were other histories written in Latin and
+Arabic, with references to which his book abounds.
+
+Since then others have followed in the same direction, notably Pingré,
+Hind, Lalande, Messier, Chambers and latterly Messrs. Crommelin and
+Cowell, of the Greenwich Observatory.
+
+The number of known Comets has grown immeasurably since Galileo’s
+invention of the telescope, 300 years ago, and our later perfections
+of this instrument, together with latter-day devices for photographing
+Comets invisible to the naked eye.
+
+It would carry us too far to trace the possible connection between
+modern events and Comets that were seen only by astronomers. Since
+our record of Comets is already too full, we shall limit our story of
+the Comets and their influence upon man to a bare recital of the most
+important events connected with the more memorable and conspicuous
+Comets from the time of Christ until now.
+
+
+
+
+DATES OF COMETS FOLLOWED BY IMPORTANT EVENTS
+
+
+    =A. D.=
+
+        14—A Comet preceded the death of Augustus, the first
+           Emperor of Rome. Earthquake in Italy.
+
+        55—Suicide of Pontius Pilate, the judge who condemned
+           Christ.
+
+        68—Halley’s Comet. Suicide of Nero, persecutor of
+           Christians. Siege of Jerusalem.
+
+        73—A Comet shone 180 days over Cyprus. Earthquake in
+           Cypress in which 10,000 persons perished.
+
+        79—Death of Emperor Vespasian, who began the siege of
+           Jerusalem. The Roman historians Dion Cassius and
+           Suetonius relate that Vespasian, when taken sick,
+           heard his astrologers discussing in a low tone
+           of voice the Comet which was then visible, which
+           they said predicted his death. The Emperor roused
+           angrily and said: “This hairy star is not meant for
+           me. It must be meant for my enemy, the King of the
+           Parthians, for he is hairy, while I am bald.”
+
+           On the following night Vespasian died in great pain,
+           and the Comet was seen no more.
+
+           Shortly after Vespasian’s death followed the fierce
+           eruption of Mt. Vesuvius, Nov. 1, which destroyed the
+           two flourishing cities of Herculaneum and Pompeii.
+
+       130—A Comet shone over Holy Land for 39 nights,
+           followed by destructive earthquake in Holy Land.
+
+       145—One week’s Comet over Island of Rhodus. Earthquake
+           in Rhodus, followed by famine and pestilence.
+
+       217—From a Comet which shone for eighteen nights
+           soothsayers predicted the death of the Roman
+           Emperor, Caracalla. The Emperor was murdered
+           immediately afterwards by his rival Macrinus.
+
+       312—A Comet in the sign of a cross seen by Constantine
+           the Great during battle of Saxa Rubra under the
+           walls of Rome. Constantine was victorious and
+           afterward turned to Christian faith.
+
+       337—A Comet seen just before death of Constantine the
+           Great.
+
+       373—Halley’s Comet. Beginning of tremendous migration
+           of peoples which overran all Central Asia and
+           Europe.
+
+       399—This Comet was described by Nicephorus as “of
+           prodigious magnitude and horrible aspect, with a
+           point like a sword and fiery hair reaching nearly
+           to the ground, from which a great peril to the
+           people was predicted.” Its appearance was followed
+           by the conquest and capture of Rome by Gainas.
+
+       410—A sword-shaped Comet shone over Italy for four
+           months until the third week in August. On Aug. 24
+           Rome was taken and plundered by Alaric, King of
+           the Visigoths. This marks the end of the old Roman
+           Empire.
+
+       442—First appearance in Europe of Attila, “The Scourge
+           of God,” and his Hunnic hordes.
+
+     449-50—Two Comets (now believed to be coming and going
+            of Halley’s Comet) were observed over England and
+            France. First invasion of England by the
+            Anglo-Saxons under Hengist and Horsa. Attila
+            overthrown in the great battle on the Catalaunian
+            Fields, at which a hundred and eighty thousand
+            warriors fell, among them Theoderic, the King of
+            the Goths. The Roman historian Callimachus recorded
+            that this battle was preceded by a brilliant Comet
+            and an earthquake.
+
+       453—Death of Attila and end of his Hunnic empire.
+
+       530—Halley’s Comet. Merlin, the British seer,
+           prophesied from this Comet. His prophesies came true.
+
+       531—Comet observed in Constantinople by the astronomers
+           of Emperor Justinian. Earthquake in Constantinople
+           followed by famine and uprising of the people in
+           which two thousand were killed. Pestilence.
+
+       538—Terrible famine throughout civilized world, so that
+           many people became cannibals.
+
+       547—A lance-shaped Comet over Italy. Ostro-Goths under
+           Totila overrun Italy. Totila storms Rome.
+
+
+_Mohamet’s Star._
+
+     570—Scimitar-shaped Comet over Arabia. Birth of Mohamet.
+
+     610—Another scimitar-shaped Comet over Arabia. Mohamet
+         begins preaching the Koran.
+
+     622—Flight of Mohamet to Medina.
+
+     624—Fourth scimitar-shaped Comet over Arabia and Holy
+         Land. Mohamet’s first battle for the new faith. His
+         massacre of 700 Jews.
+
+     632—Last appearance of Mohamet’s Comet during first
+         week of June. Death of Mohamet on June 8 at Medina.
+
+     800—A Comet seen during Coronation of Charlemagne as
+         Emperor of Rome.
+
+     814—Torch-shaped Comet seen in Germany during the first
+         three weeks of January. Death of Charlemagne on
+         Jan. 28, at Aix la Chappelle. The monk Eginard
+         relates in his chronicles that on the appearance
+         of the Comet all those at Charlemagne’s court
+         feared for the Emperor’s life. Eginard preached to
+         them from the text of Isaiah not to believe in the
+         signs of the heathens. But Charlemagne reproved
+         him, saying that he felt that he had reason to
+         thank God for having sent him a timely warning of
+         his impending death. Thereupon the Emperor made
+         his testament and divided his empire among his
+         successors. On the day following the disappearance
+         of the Comet, he died.
+
+     837—Halley’s Comet observed in France by King Louis the
+         Debonair, who died from fear of it.
+
+     876—Disastrous flood in Italy, followed by plague.
+
+     900—Another Comet over Italy. Saracens invade Italy.
+
+     944—Comet with an immense tail over Italy, followed by
+         disastrous earthquake.
+
+    1000—In January of this year a Comet was observed all
+         over Europe. Gigibertus describes it “shaped like
+         a horrible serpent and so bright that its light
+         was seen even indoors.” It was generally taken to
+         foretell the end of the world,—the millennium
+         prophesied in the Apocalypse. When it was followed
+         soon by earthquakes, floods and famine there was
+         universal panic which was not allayed until the end
+         of the “fateful year.”
+
+    1002—A Comet over England and Scandinavia. Massacre of
+         all Danes in England by King Ethelred.
+
+    1066—Halley’s Comet. It appeared in May at Easter time
+         and shone for forty nights, waxing and waning with
+         the moon. William the Conqueror haled it as an omen
+         of destruction to Harold of England just before the
+         battle of Hastings.
+
+    1077—Comet over Italy and Germany. Emperor Henry IV. of
+         Germany was excommunicated by the Pope, followed by
+         war in Italy and Germany.
+
+
+_Crusaders’ Comets._
+
+    1099—Arabic astronomers record a Comet in the shape of
+         a scimitar over Arabia and the Holy Land for six
+         weeks in Spring and early Summer. First crusade
+         and storming of Jerusalem by the crusaders on July
+         15 after a siege of five weeks. Bloody massacre of
+         Mohammedans.
+
+    1109—Emperor Henry V. of Germany enters Rome and makes
+         Pope prisoner.
+
+    1148-9—Second crusade. Utter destruction of whole army
+         of French and German crusaders.
+
+    1200—Comet recorded by Hal Ben Rodoan, an Arab
+         astronomer, over North Africa. Bloody revolt of
+         Arab warriors in Morocco.
+
+    1212—Lance-shaped Comet shining over western Europe for
+         eighteen nights. The Children’s Crusade. Thousands
+         of German and French boy crusaders perished or were
+         sold into slavery. Bloody invasion of Tartar hordes
+         into Russia and Poland.
+
+    1223—Preaching of fifth crusade. Outbreak of “Guelph and
+         Ghibelline” war between Emperor Frederick II. of
+         Germany and Pope Gregory the IX.
+
+    1264—Very bright Comet observed shining all over Europe
+         for three months. Pope Urban IV. died on the night
+         of the Comet’s disappearance. A Latin verse gained
+         great currency in which it was said that the
+         Comet portended “disasters, sickness, hunger, and
+         war.” The chronicles of that age ascribe to this
+         Comet besides the death of the Pope a famine and
+         pestilence in Italy, the ravages of the Russians
+         into Poland and of the Slavs into Prussia.
+
+
+_Comets of Bloodshed._
+
+    1282—An immense Comet over Italy. Disastrous earthquake
+         in southern Italy. On March 30, a fortnight after
+         the first appearance of the Comet followed the
+         massacre of all Frenchmen in Sicily on the evening
+         of Easter Monday, known in history as the “Sicilian
+         Vespers.”
+
+    1298—Because of the appearance of a Comet over middle
+         Germany, there were riots in Nuremberg and other
+         neighbouring cities followed by a general massacre
+         of the Jews in those cities.
+
+    1300—A brilliant Comet preceded the Jubilee of Pope
+         Boniface the VIII. The Pope interpreted the Comet
+         as a happy omen, but because of the popular dread
+         of the Comet there were riots and blood shed in
+         Rome and elsewhere in Italy. The chroniclers of the
+         times pointed out the significant fact that shortly
+         after his jubilee Pope Boniface was made a prisoner
+         by King Philip of France, causing him to die of rage.
+
+
+_Plague Comets._
+
+    1305—A Comet “of horrible aspect” burning all through
+         Passion Week preceded the outbreak of the terrible
+         black plague which swept from the Orient all over
+         Europe and Asia.
+
+    1333—Chinese and Arab astronomers record a bright
+         Comet over China, Turkestan and Persia. Birth
+         of Tamerlane, the “Scourge of the Nations” at
+         Samarkand, in Turkestan.
+
+    1347—A Comet precedes the “Black Death,” a terrible
+         pestilence followed by famine all over the world.
+         One-fourth of all the people of Europe died.
+         Fifteen million deaths in China,—twenty-five
+         million in Europe.
+
+    1363—A Comet of immense size shone for three months over
+         northern Europe. Pestilence and famine in England,
+         Poland and Russia.
+
+    1378—Halley’s Comet. Pestilence in Germany. Holy Church
+         is rent by the great schism, with rival popes at
+         Rome and Avignon.
+
+
+_Tamerlane’s Star._
+
+    1382—Arab astronomers and Chinese report a very bright
+         Comet which shone a fortnight. Tamerlane and his
+         hordes overrun Central Asia. Pestilence breaks out
+         there and spreads all over the world.
+
+    1402—Arab astronomers report another Comet seen all over
+         the East. Tamerlane carries war into Europe and
+         takes Constantinople by storm. Sultan Bayezid is
+         taken prisoner by Tamerlane and is carried to Asia
+         in a cage.
+
+    1405—Chinese astronomers record a spear-shaped Comet
+         over China. Tamerlane dies while invading China.
+
+    1456—Halley’s Comet. Bloody war between the Christians
+         and the Turks. Battle of Belgrade.
+
+    1492—Arab astronomers record a Comet over northern
+         Africa and Spain. Final conquest of Granada from
+         the Moors by Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain.
+         Discovery of the New World.
+
+    1500—Sword-shaped Comet over northern Europe, followed
+         by Tartar invasion into Russia and Poland.
+
+    1528—A Comet noted by Ambroise Paré, who recorded that
+         many people fell sick and died of fright. War
+         between Emperor Charles V. of Germany and Francis
+         I. of France, with fighting in France, Germany and
+         Italy.
+
+    1531—Halley’s Comet. Plague in Italy. Great schism in
+         the Church. Defection of German Protestants from
+         Rome. Henry VIII. of England declares English
+         Church independent of Rome. Sultan Soleyman ravaged
+         Hungary. Disastrous floods in Holland, where
+         400,000 people were drowned.
+
+    1556—Emperor Charles V. of Germany and Spain, on account
+         of his fear of the Comet that appeared in that
+         year, abdicated his throne and became a monk.
+         Wide-spread wars all over Europe. The Turks ravaged
+         Hungary. Persecutions of English Protestants under
+         “Bloody Mary.” Many Protestants burned at the
+         stake, beheaded or broken on the rack.
+
+    1572—St. Bartholomew’s Comet. Massacre of St.
+         Bartholomew, when 30,000 Huguenots were slaughtered
+         in France.
+
+    1577—General persecution of Huguenots in France,
+         followed by Civil War in France.
+
+    1607—A Comet seen over Constantinople for several weeks.
+         Wide-spread war on the part of the Turks against
+         the Persians on one side, the Poles on another, and
+         against Venice on the third.
+
+    1618—A blood-coloured Comet observed just before the
+         execution of Sir Walter Raleigh in England. A
+         bloody rising of the Protestants in Bohemia,
+         followed by the outbreak of the terrible Thirty
+         Years’ War in Germany and the Netherlands. This
+         was the Comet which gave rise to the German school
+         rhyme:
+
+              “Eight things a Comet always brings,
+               Wind, Famine, Plague and Death to Kings,
+               War, Earthquake, Floods and Dire Things.”
+
+
+_Louis XIV.’s Star._
+
+    1661—Inspired by the appearance of a Comet, a horde
+         of fanatics under Venner, a cooper, preached the
+         coming of the “Fifth Monarchy” in England, and
+         proclaimed Jesus Christ as their only King. The
+         fanatics were routed and put to death. Death of
+         Mazarin, the “Master of France.” Rise of Louis
+         XIV., the most powerful ruler of France. French war
+         against the Pope.
+
+    1680—This Comet was studied by Halley, in Paris, and
+         by Newton, in England. It was called “Heaven’s
+         Chariot.” Plague in Europe. The French overrun
+         Alsace and carried war into Germany. War between
+         Venice and the Turks.
+
+    1682—Halley’s Comet. War in Italy. War in Hungary
+         against the Turks.
+
+    1689—A remarkable Comet observed all over Europe,
+         followed by war all over Europe. Wars between
+         France, Germany, England, Spain and Italy. The
+         Rhine lands were harried by the French with fire
+         and sword, rendering 4,000,000 people homeless.
+         Burning of the castle of Heidelberg by the French.
+         Religious war in Ireland and Scotland. Siege of
+         Londonderry and Dundee. Battle of Newton Butler
+         in Ireland.
+
+    1729—War between France, England and Spain.
+
+
+_Frederick the Great’s Star._
+
+    1744—A six-tailed Comet observed in Germany just before
+         the death of Emperor Charles VII. His death
+         followed by war between Frederick the Great and
+         Maria Teresa of Austria. War spreads to England,
+         Holland, France, Spain and Italy. A British fleet
+         beaten by French and Spaniards off Toulon.
+
+    1755—A Comet precedes earthquake of Lisbon, by which
+         40,000 people lost their lives.
+
+    1759—Halley’s Comet. Seven Years’ War in Germany.
+         Frederick the Great overthrown in four bloody
+         battles. French lose Canada by their disastrous
+         defeat of the plains of Abraham, and lose India by
+         the loss of their fleet through three successive
+         defeats on the sea.
+
+
+_Napoleon’s Star._
+
+    1769—“Napoleon’s Comet.” A Comet of unusual red lustre
+         was observed over Italy and France. French overrun
+         Corsica. Bloody massacre of Corsicans. Birth of
+         Napoleon on August 15 in Corsica, just after the
+         Comet was seen no more.
+
+    1811-12—This huge Comet was one of the most famous
+         Comets of modern times. It was first seen in France
+         on March 26, 1811, and was last observed over
+         southern Russia on August 17, 1812—an appearance
+         of seventeen months, the longest on record. For
+         a while it had two tails, then only one. The
+         length of this tail was estimated as 100,000,000
+         miles. It was called “Napoleon’s Comet.” Under its
+         lustre Napoleon gathered his “grand armée,” the
+         greatest army assembled in Europe since Xerxes, and
+         invaded Russia. Wars were fought at the same time
+         in Portugal and Spain, where the British stormed
+         Ciudad Rodrigo and Badajos; and in America, where
+         Harrison’s victory over the Indians under Tecumseh
+         at Tippecanoe, and the seafight between the
+         “President” and “Little Belt” ushered in the War of
+         1812. In Egypt the Comet was taken as an omen of the
+         bloody massacre of the Mamelukes perpetrated at Cairo.
+
+[Illustration: THE GREAT COMET OF 1811.]
+
+    1821—“Napoleon’s Comet.” Seen one night only over France
+         and over St. Helena the night before the death of
+         Napoleon at St. Helena.
+
+    1823—A Comet much mentioned by Spanish writers.
+         While it shone over Spain, South America and
+         the Mediterranean, the French overran Spain and
+         reinstated the Spanish king. Revival of the
+         Spanish Inquisition and bloody persecutions of the
+         revolutionists. War of Independence in Central and
+         South America. Bloody war of Greek Independence.
+
+    1835-6—Halley’s Comet. New York City all but destroyed
+         by fire. Zulu massacre of Boers at Weenen. Mexican
+         massacre of Americans at the Alamo. Wars throughout
+         South America.
+
+    1843—Another famous Comet seen all over the world during
+         the Spring of that year. Especially brilliant in
+         the Southern Hemisphere and in India. War in India
+         on the part of the British against Afghanistan,
+         Beluchistan, Scinde and against the Sikhs.
+
+    1848—Encke’s famous periodic Comet. Bloody revolutionary
+         risings and civil wars in France, Hungary, Bohemia,
+         Austria, Germany, Italy and Poland.
+
+    1858-9—Donati’s Comet. This Comet, which appeared to be
+         charging straight down from the zenith, and had a
+         curved tail, was observed from June 1858 to April
+         1859. It was seen at its brightest in the South, in
+         Italy, Mexico and in the Far East. While it shone
+         over the Far East there were bloody wars between
+         the British and the risen people of India; between
+         the British and the Chinese, who objected to
+         having opium thrust upon them; while Japan was in
+         the throes of revolution and civil war. In Mexico
+         the standard of revolt against the clericals was
+         raised by Juarez, thus plunging Mexico into civil
+         war and war with France. Immediately after the
+         disappearance of the Comet war broke out in Italy
+         between the French and Italians on one side and the
+         Austrians on the other, ending in the bloody Battle
+         of Solferino.
+
+
+_Civil War Comets._
+
+    1861—“First Civil War Comet.” The brightest Comet of
+         the nineteenth century. Sir John Herschel, the
+         great English astronomer, said of this Comet: “It
+         far exceeded in brightness any Comet I have before
+         observed, those of 1811 and the recent splendid one
+         of 1858 not excepted.” The Comet was first seen
+         by a layman, and appeared at its brightest during
+         the Summer months in North America. Its coming was
+         heralded as a token of the great Civil War which
+         broke out then in America.
+
+    1862—“Second Civil War Comet.” Another Comet of very
+         peculiar appearance, with jets of flame flaring
+         from its head, showed itself during the Summer
+         months in North America. The Civil War was then at
+         its height. The coming of the Comet was taken to
+         herald the bloody battles of Shiloh, Williamsburg,
+         Seven Days, Seven Pines, Cedar Mountain and
+         Antietam, all fought that year after the Comet’s
+         appearance.
+
+[Illustration: THE GREAT COMET OF 1843 AS SEEN ON MARCH 17 FROM
+BLACKHEATH, KENT.]
+
+    1874—Coggia’s Comet. This Comet was seen at its
+         brightest over Southern France and Spain during the
+         Summer months of that year. Spain was then in the
+         throes of the bloody Carlist War.
+
+
+_Garfield’s Comet._
+
+    1881—Garfield’s Comet. This Comet showed itself for a
+         few nights only in March during the week following
+         President Garfield’s inauguration. It was observed
+         also in Russia. On March 13, Emperor Alexander II.
+         of Russia, was assassinated with a bomb. Three
+         months later President Garfield was assassinated in
+         Washington.
+
+
+_War Comets._
+
+    1882—Comet of Tel-el-Kebir. A Comet with two tails was
+         seen at its brightest over Egypt during the first
+         two weeks of September. Egypt was then in the midst
+         of Arabi Pasha’s uprising against the British. On
+         September 18, when the Comet was last seen, Arabi
+         Pasha was overthrown by General Wolseley in the
+         bloody battle of Tel-el-Kebir.
+
+    1904-5—Manchurian War Comet. From the early part of
+         February, 1904, until Midsummer, 1905, Chinese
+         observers recorded the appearance of a Comet over
+         Northern China. Throughout that period Manchuria
+         was ravaged by the bloody war between the Japanese
+         and Russians.
+
+
+_Earthquake Comets._
+
+    1906—San Francisco Comet. A Comet discovered by Ross on
+         March 17, remaining visible for one month. Observed
+         from the Lick Observatory in California. On April
+         17 came the California earthquake and burning of
+         San Francisco.
+
+    1908—Morehouse’s Comet. Visible for more than a month,
+         during the autumn. In Italy it was interpreted
+         afterward as an omen foreboding the Messina
+         earthquake late in the year.
+
+
+_This Year’s Comets._
+
+    1910—Inness’ Comet, otherwise known as “1910 A”. An
+         unexpected Comet of short duration during January.
+         On the appearance of this Comet Madame de Thebes,
+         a French astrologer, predicted floods and general
+         disaster for France. The disappearance of the Comet
+         in France was followed by unprecedented rains and
+         floods which covered one-fourth of France with
+         water and inundated Paris, completely submerging
+         all the bridges over the Seine. Floods also in
+         Italy and Germany. This Comet was likewise observed
+         in China late in January, where it caused universal
+         consternation.
+
+    1910—Pidoux’s Comet. Another unexpected Comet was first
+         observed by Pidoux, in Geneva, during a few nights
+         late in February. It is recorded astronomically as
+         “1910 B”. Its fleeting observations by astronomers
+         were followed by Socialist franchise riots in
+         Germany and by the labour riots of Philadelphia,
+         with widespread bloodshed between the rioters and
+         the constabulary.
+
+    1910—Halley’s Comet of this year was first “picked
+         up” by Dr. Wolf, in Germany. Already various
+         astrologers have foretold disaster from its coming.
+         It remains to be seen whether their predictions
+         will come true.
+
+[Illustration: THE GREAT COMET OF 1882, ON OCTOBER 9, AT 4 A. M.]
+
+
+
+
+HALLEY’S BALEFUL COMET
+
+
+Among all the stars known in astronomy, the periodically returning
+Comet now known as Halley’s Comet has the most baleful record.
+
+In this Comet’s wake, after every one of its recorded appearances,
+there have always followed terrible disasters.
+
+Not only war and battles, or other deeds of bloodshed, such as
+massacres and murders, but each of the dread disasters that are held to
+go with Comets have followed along one after the other in this Comet’s
+train.
+
+Of the eight baneful after-effects of Comets mentioned in the old
+German ditty that has been sung in the Fatherland ever since the great
+Comet which ushered in the dreadful Thirty Years’ War,
+
+    “Wind, Famine, Plague and Death to Kings
+     War, Earthquakes, Floods and Dire Things.”
+
+Halley’s Comet is known to have preceded each and every form of these
+evils in turn.
+
+Directly after each return of Halley’s Comet there has always followed
+somewhere within the influence of its rays one or other of those “dire
+things,”—a flood, an earthquake, a hurricane, famine, plague, war,
+bloodshed, or the sudden death of a ruler.
+
+Thanks to the careful work of such painstaking astronomers and
+historians as Lubienitius, Pingré, Dionys de Séjour, J. Russell Hind,
+Laugier, and Messrs. Cowell and Crommelin, the records of great events
+connected with Halley’s Comet have been traced back nearly 2,000 years,
+to the days before Christ.
+
+Among the signal events following in the train of this Comet there have
+been so many bloody massacres and appalling disasters that Halley’s
+Comet now has the ominous distinction of being the bloodiest of all
+stars of ill omen.
+
+Herewith follows the story of this Comet’s periodic appearances in
+history and of the events connected therewith, as traced back from its
+last return in 1835 to its first recorded entrance into the history of
+mankind.
+
+
+1835-1836
+
+Halley’s Comet last appeared in the Summer of 1835, and was seen until
+Spring of the following year.
+
+It was first discerned by Father Dumouchel with a powerful telescope
+from the observatory of the Collegio Romano in Rome on the night of
+August 6, 1835. Father Dumouchel, who had been watching for it many
+months, picked it up close to the spot in the heavens that Rosenberger,
+a German astronomer, had predicted for its appearance on that date.
+
+The last astronomer to see the Comet was Sir John Herschel, who
+observed it from the Cape of Good Hope until the middle of May, 1836.
+
+Other noted astronomers who made observations of it were Arago, Struve,
+Bessel, Kaiser, Sir Thomas Maclear, Admiral Smyth, Baron Damoiseau and
+Count Pontécoulant.
+
+This last astronomer, many years before, had computed the exact time
+of its coming and came within four days of it. For this brilliant feat
+Count Pontécoulant received a gold medal from the French Academy of
+Sciences.
+
+[Illustration: HALLEY’S COMET OF 1835. FROM A DRAWING BY ROSENBERGER.]
+
+The German astronomer, Rosenberger, who had likewise computed the
+Comet’s return, coming within five days of its passage nearest to the
+Sun, received a similar gold medal from the Royal Astronomical Society
+of Great Britain.
+
+Professor Struve, who studied the Comet through the great telescope
+at Dorpat in Russia, described it as “glowing like a red-hot coal of
+oblong form.”
+
+Bessel, who observed it from the Koenigsberg observatory in Northern
+Germany, described the Comet’s appearance as that of “a blazing rocket,
+the flame from which was driven aside as by a strong gale, or as the
+stream of fire from the discharge of a cannon when the sparks and smoke
+are carried backwards by the wind.”
+
+Struve at Koenigsberg and Kaiser at Leyden were the first to see the
+Comet with their naked eyes in the third week of September.
+
+Immediately after the Comet became generally visible in the Old World
+the bubonic plague, known of old as the “Black Death,” broke out in
+Egypt. In the City of Alexandria alone 9,000 people died on one day.
+By the Moslems this calamity was generally attributed to the evil
+influence of the Comet.
+
+In America the Comet became visible to the naked eye only late in the
+year. Then, on its approach to the Sun, it was lost to view and passed
+over to the Southern Hemisphere where it was next observed by Sir John
+Herschel in South Africa.
+
+Shortly after its brief blaze over North America the great “New York
+Fire” laid waste the entire business section of the biggest city in the
+New World. All the commercial centre of the city, including the richest
+firms and largest commercial warehouses, were laid in ashes. The fire
+raged through days and nights. In all, 530 houses burned down and
+$18,000,000 of property was consumed. Owing to the intense cold, the
+sufferings of the homeless were pitiable.
+
+Down in Florida, at the same time, Osceola, the chieftain of the
+Seminole Indians, called upon the Comet as a signal for war against the
+whites. The Indians called the Comet “Big Knife in the Sky.”
+
+The war began with a bloody massacre of American soldiers under General
+Wiley Thompson at Fort King. All were slaughtered. Osceola scalped
+General Thompson with his own hands.
+
+On the same day, Major Dade of the American Army, who was leading a
+relief expedition into Florida from Tampa Bay, was ambushed by the
+Indians near Wahoo Swamp and was massacred with his men. Of the whole
+expedition only four men escaped death.
+
+Within forty-eight hours of this horrible massacre came another bloody
+Indian fight on the banks of the Big Withlacoochee.
+
+With the passing of the Comet to the Southern Hemisphere, bloody wars
+broke out one after another in Mexico, Cuba, Central America, Ecuador,
+Bolivia, Peru and Argentina. All those countries were in a welter of
+blood.
+
+At the same time the American settlers of Texas declared themselves
+independent and made open war on Mexico. The war began with the bloody
+battle of Gonzales, in which 500 American frontiersmen fought and
+defeated over a thousand Mexican soldiers. This was followed by other
+fierce fights at Goliad and Bexar.
+
+Next came the bloody massacre of the Alamo, when all of Jim Bowie’s and
+Davy Crockett’s American followers were killed in an all night fight.
+Out of 200 Americans every man fell at his post. This was the deed of
+blood on which Joaquin Miller wrote his stirring Ballad of the Alamo.
+
+    “Santa Ana came storming as a storm might come,—
+     There was rumble of cannon; there was rattle of blade;
+     There was cavalry, infantry, bugle and drum,—
+     Full seven thousand, in pomp and parade,
+     The chivalry, flower of Mexico,
+     And a gaunt two hundred in the Alamo.”
+
+One month before the final disappearance of the Comet, the Texas War
+came to an end with the bloody battle of San Jacinto, when Sam Houston,
+with 800 American frontiersmen, defeated 1,500 Mexicans, and made a
+prisoner of President Santa Ana of Mexico.
+
+When the Comet had passed to the Southern Hemisphere, it was seen at
+its brightest in South Africa.
+
+The pious Boers of Cape Colony understood it to be a sign from heaven
+and forthwith set out on their great trek across the Orange and Vaal
+rivers, where they founded the Orange Free State and Transvaal Republic.
+
+Thus the Comet was the signal for the first blood drawn in the long
+fight between the British and Boers.
+
+A little later, though, the Boers found another, more woeful
+significance for the blazing of the Comet.
+
+Under the leadership of Piet Relief, a thousand Boer families had
+trekked across the Drakensberg Mountains into Natal. A solemn treaty
+of peace with the Zulu warriors was entered into with Dingaan, the
+chief of the Zulus at Dingaan’s Kraal. Suddenly the Zulus pounced upon
+the unsuspecting Piet Relief and his sixty-five Boer followers and
+massacred them to a man.
+
+Then the Zulus, numbering some 10,000 warriors, swept out into the
+veldt and made for the Boer wagon trains. Near Colenso, at a spot
+called Weenen (weeping), in remembrance of the dreadful tragedy there
+perpetrated, the Zulus overwhelmed the Boer laager and slaughtered all
+its inmates—41 men, 56 women, 185 children and 250 Kaffir slaves.
+
+After this bloody massacre, equalling in horror the Massacre of the
+Alamo on the other side of the world, the Comet of 1835-36 was seen no
+more.
+
+
+1758-1759
+
+This was the first return of the Comet predicted by Halley. Hence it
+must be reckoned as the first appearance of “Halley’s Comet” under his
+name.
+
+It was first seen on Christmas night, 1758, by John Palitsch, a Saxon
+farmer, near Dresden, who was looking for it with a self-constructed
+telescope of eight-foot focus. The Comet did not become visible to the
+naked eye until well into 1759. It passed around the sun on March 12,
+1759. After that it was seen throughout Europe during April and May,
+appearing at its brightest during the first week in May. Later it was
+seen to advantage in the Southern Hemisphere.
+
+In Germany, where it was seen at its fiercest, the Comet was taken as
+a token of the bloody Seven Years’ War, which was then being fought
+between Frederick the Great and his enemies on all sides.
+
+The ominous Comet had scarcely vanished from view when all Germany was
+overrun by marching armies from France, from Austria, from Russia.
+
+The French, under the Duke of Broglie, overthrew the Germans, under
+the Duke of Brunswick, at Bergen, and seized the city of Frankfurt.
+Then came the bloody battle of Minden, in which two large French armies
+were beaten. Meanwhile the Russians were marching into Prussia, and
+another bloody battle was fought at Kay in midsummer.
+
+Within a fortnight King Frederick the Great and his whole army were
+overthrown by the Austrians and Russians in the disastrous battle of
+Kunersdorf.
+
+Another Prussian army was overcome at Maxen, where 13,000 Prussians
+were taken.
+
+Altogether, during this year’s campaigns, several hundred thousand
+soldiers lost their lives.
+
+It was the worst year of the Seven Years’ War for Frederick the Great
+and his soldiers, who attributed their bloody defeats to the ill omen
+of the Comet.
+
+In other parts of the world, likewise, the coming of the Comet was
+followed by widespread war and bloody fighting.
+
+For the French, the Comet signalled disaster after disaster. After
+their armies had been beaten in Germany, their navy was defeated on
+August 17 in a great sea fight in the Bay of Lagos, on the coast of
+Portugal. Six weeks later there was another bloody sea fight between
+the British and French, when Admiral Pocock inflicted a telling defeat
+on the French fleet.
+
+Then came the final French naval disaster off Quiberon, in the Bay of
+Biscay, when Admiral Hawke destroyed French naval power by sinking
+or blowing up over a score of the French fighting ships. This bloody
+defeat was a disaster of untold consequences to the French, since it
+meant the loss of India.
+
+But this was not all that this Comet of ill omen had brought to the
+French.
+
+On September 13th of that year the French lost their strongest hold on
+America in the disastrous defeat inflicted upon them by General Wolfe
+in the bloody battle on the Plains of Abraham, where Wolfe himself fell
+fighting. On the French side, General Montcalm, the Commander-in-Chief,
+was mortally wounded. This meant the loss of Quebec and of all Canada
+to the French, an event of far-reaching importance that has changed the
+destiny of all America and of the modern world.
+
+
+1682
+
+The Comet which put Halley on the right track in his theories of
+Comets, first came into view on the night of August 15, 1682. It was
+first detected by Flamsteed’s assistant at the Greenwich Observatory,
+while searching the northern heavens with a telescope.
+
+Flamsteed, the first Astronomer Royal, and Halley, his successor, kept
+a close watch upon the Comet every night, and followed its course over
+the sky. Others who watched it were Sir Isaac Newton, Cassini, Picard
+and La Hire in Paris, Baert at Toulon, Kirch and Zimmermann in Germany,
+Montanari at Padua, and Hevelius in Dantsic. They observed that the
+tail lengthened considerably as the Comet came nearer the sun. Later
+a jet of luminous matter was seen shooting out toward the sun, which
+afterward fell back into the tail. Hevelius has left us a drawing of
+this phenomenon.
+
+On November 11th, Halley found that the Comet had come within a
+semi-diameter of the path of our earth. This startling discovery
+caused Halley to reflect what might happen if the earth and the Comet
+had arrived at the same time at the spot in space where their two
+orbits intersect. Assuming as he did that the mass of the Comet was
+considerably larger than our earth, he declared: “If so large a body
+with so rapid a motion were to strike the earth—a thing by no means
+impossible—the shock might reduce this beautiful world to its original
+chaos.”
+
+[Illustration: HALLEY’S COMET, JANUARY 9, 1683, AS DRAWN BY HEVELIUS.]
+
+[Illustration: THE COMET OF 1682, AS REPRESENTED IN THE NUREMBURG
+CHRONICLE.]
+
+[Illustration: MEDAL STRUCK IN GERMANY TO ALLAY THE TERROR CAUSED BY
+THE COMET OF 1680-81.
+
+TRANSLATION OF INSCRIPTION:
+
+    “THE STAR THREATENS EVIL THINGS—ONLY TRUST!
+     GOD WILL MAKE IT TURN OUT WELL.”]
+
+Others beside Halley took alarm at the Comet. They called it “The
+Chariot of Fire.”
+
+Dr. Whiston—he who succeeded Newton in the Lucasian chair of
+mathematics at Cambridge—in a moment of prophetic vision fervently
+declared that this Comet was God’s agent that would bring about the
+General Conflagration by involving the world in flames.
+
+In America, the Rev. Increase Mather, President of Harvard College, on
+the appearance of the Comet in New England, preached his great sermon
+on “Heaven’s Alarm to the World ... wherein is shown that fearful
+sights and signs in the Heavens are the presages of great calamities at
+hand.”
+
+Increase Mather’s warning was handed down as an inspired prophesy,
+in view of the fact that the English settlers in North America soon
+afterwards got into bloody warfare with the Indians. The war raged at
+its fiercest in the Carolinas, where the English settlers made war upon
+the redskins simply for the purpose of taking them captive and selling
+them into slavery in the West Indies.
+
+To the Indians the Comet appeared as a sign of ill omen, as shown by
+their frequent references to it during the parleys with the white men.
+
+The Comet was shining at its fiercest when the six greatest chiefs of
+the Susquehanna nation were enticed into a pretended council of peace
+with the white men, only to be foully murdered with all their followers.
+
+While this was going on in America, the Comet gave the signal in India
+for the first hostilities there upon the white settlers from Portugal,
+as well as for the outbreak of the bloody Mahratta War, which ravaged
+India for a generation to come.
+
+Nearer East, the Turks, under the leadership of Mohammed Bey, ravaged
+Egypt, while, on the other side, a Turkish army under Kara Mustapha
+carried war into Hungary, to the very gates of Vienna, until Emperor
+Leopold felt constrained to call for help from Sobieski, the warrior
+king of the Poles.
+
+In Europe the French overran Alsace, and suddenly seized the German
+city of Strasburg.
+
+At the same time the bubonic plague broke out in North Germany. In the
+little university town of Halle alone, within a few days, 4,397 people
+died out of a total population of ten thousand.
+
+It was then that medals were struck off in Germany with a design of
+the comet on their face, and an inscription imploring God to avert the
+evils threatened by the Comet:
+
+    “The star threatens evil things;
+      Only trust! God will make it right.”
+
+
+1607
+
+The Comet this year was seen all over Europe. The best observations of
+it were made by Kepler and Longomontanus (Langberger). It was seen at
+its brightest in England.
+
+Shortly after its appearance over England, there came freshets and
+floods which completely submerged the richest counties of England. In
+Somersetshire and Gloucestershire the water rose above the tops of the
+houses. This was followed by a visitation of the plague.
+
+In Ireland the Comet was taken as an omen of the fate of Londonderry,
+where the Irish rebels, suddenly seizing the city, massacred Sir George
+Powlett and all his English garrison.
+
+In Germany the Comet was taken as a token of the war then brewing
+between the Emperor and the German Protestant Princes—the so-called
+Protestant League—which ushered in the dreadful Thirty Years’ War in
+Germany.
+
+Off Gibraltar, a Dutch fleet completely destroyed a fleet of Spanish
+war galleons, thereby crippling Spanish sea power for a generation to
+come.
+
+Meanwhile, in America, the early settlers in Virginia, led by John
+Smith, found themselves beset by the redskins, who were incited to
+war by the appearance of the Comet. They called it “Red Knife in the
+Sky.” During the war, John Smith was taken prisoner, and escaped with
+his life only through the intercession of Pocahontas, the daughter of
+Powhattan.
+
+
+1531
+
+The Comet was first sighted by the German astronomer Bienewitz
+(“Apianus”) in midsummer of this year. Zwingli preached about it as an
+omen of disaster.
+
+German astrologers regarded it as a herald of the wars between Spain
+and France, which broke out in that year, and of the bloody war carried
+into Hungary by the Turks under Soleyman, who ravaged the Danube
+country to the very walls of Vienna. These wars were followed by a
+visitation of the black plague.
+
+In the Netherlands the breaking of the ocean dykes caused terrific
+floods, in which over 400,000 people were drowned.
+
+Toward the close of the year the Comet passed over to the Southern
+Hemisphere.
+
+To the aborigines of South America it proved a star of dreadful omen.
+During this year the most cruel of Spanish conquerors did their
+bloodiest work in the New World—Cortez in Mexico, Alvarado at the
+Equator, and Pizarro in Peru. Before the Comet disappeared from view,
+several hundred thousand wretched Incas and Aztecs had been slaughtered
+by the Spaniards, while many more hundred thousands were worked to
+death as slaves.
+
+
+1456
+
+The Comet this year was observed throughout Europe and also in China.
+It came into view over Europe on the 29th of May, and was seen gliding
+over the sky towards the moon.
+
+Writers of that period say that it shone with exceeding brightness and
+spread out a fan-shaped train of fire. The Arab astronomers describe
+its shape as that of a Turkish scimitar, which, blazing against the
+dark sky, was regarded as a sign from heaven of the war then raging
+against the Christian infidels.
+
+A clear story of the Comet’s appearance has been left by the Bavarian
+Jesuit, Brueckner (Pontanus). He based his story on the record of
+Georgos Phranza, Grandmaster of the Wardrobes to the Emperor of
+Constantinople. There the Comet is described as “rising in the West;
+moving towards the East, and approaching the Moon.”
+
+By the Chinese this Comet was described as having a tail sixty degrees
+long, and a head “which at one time was round, and the size of a bull’s
+eye, the tail being like a peacock’s.”
+
+    Halley wrote of this Comet in 1686: “In the summer
+    of the year 1456 a Comet was seen, which passed in a
+    retrograde direction between the earth and the sun.
+    From its period and path, I infer that it was the
+    same Comet as that of the years 1531, 1607 and 1682.
+    I may therefore with confidence predict its return in
+    the year 1758.”
+
+The appearance of the Comet in 1456 was so well remembered even 225
+years later, because this was the scimitar-shaped Comet hailed by the
+conquering Turks as their guiding star, against the evil influence of
+which Pope Calixtus III. exhorted all Christians to pray to God.
+
+This story has been denied by certain latter-day sceptics, but the
+medieval historian Platina, who was living in Rome at the time, and who
+knew whereof he spoke, wrote in his “Lives of the Popes” in 1470:
+
+    “A hairy and fiery star having then made its
+     appearance for several days, the mathematicians
+     declared that there would follow grievous pestilence,
+     dearth and some great calamity. Calixtus, to avert
+     the wrath of God, ordered supplications that if evils
+     were impending for the human race He would turn all
+     upon the Turks, the enemies of the Christian name. He
+     likewise ordered, to move God by continual entreaty,
+     that notice should be given by the bells to call the
+     faithful at midday to aid by their prayers those
+     engaged in battle with the Turk.”
+
+In truth, all Christendom appeared indeed to have fallen under the
+“wrath of God,” for the Turks; having wrested Constantinople away from
+the Christians, now came ravaging up the Danube countries and laid
+siege to the Christian city of Belgrade. Bloody battles were fought
+between the Magyars and Turks on the Danube, until Hunyadi, the great
+Magyar leader, at last overthrew the Turks under Mahomet II., under
+the walls of Belgrade, in a great battle, in which no less than 24,000
+Turks were slain. This was on July 21st, on the eve of which day the
+Comet had been seen to blaze at its fiercest.
+
+
+1378
+
+The Comet appeared late in the year, and was seen at its brightest over
+Northern Europe, in Scotland, Scandinavia, Russia and Poland.
+
+All these countries, during the same period and immediately afterwards,
+were cursed by the terrible pestilence called the “Black Death,” now
+known to have been the worst visitation of the bubonic plague known in
+history. Wherever the dread sickness appeared, the people “died like
+rats.” So many succumbed to the disease, and so many others fled aghast
+from the pestilence, that whole cities and towns were left empty, and
+no labourers could be found to till the fields.
+
+
+1301
+
+The Comet this year was first observed by German and Flemish
+astrologers during the late Summer and Autumn. It was interpreted as an
+ill omen of the wars which then ravaged Europe. Immediately after the
+appearance of the Comet, Emperor Albrecht of Germany ravaged the Rhine
+lands with fire and sword. Afterwards the German astrologers explained
+the Comet as a warning omen of the death of the Emperor’s son Rudolf,
+who died within a twelvemonth of his coronation as King of Bohemia.
+
+In Flanders the Comet was taken as a heavenly token of the fierce war
+which followed the bloodstained massacre of 3,000 French soldiers by
+the enraged people of Flanders.
+
+Soon after this came Robert of Artois’ bloody defeat at Coutrai, the
+famous “Battle of the Spurs,” so called from the thousands of gilt
+spurs that were taken afterwards from the feet of the slain French
+cavaliers.
+
+
+1222
+
+The Comet during this year is recorded by the Chinese astronomers
+in the months of September and October. During these months, and
+immediately afterwards, Jenghis Khan, the bloody Mongol conqueror, with
+his fierce Mongol hordes, was ravaging all China, Persia, India and the
+Caucasus country as far as the River Don.
+
+The Comet was taken as a special omen of the terrible fate of the City
+of Herat and its surrounding country, where the bloodthirsty conqueror
+caused to be slaughtered over a million of people. Jenghis Khan, who
+believed in stars and omens, having been born with bloodstained hands,
+hailed the Comet as his special Star. Under its rays he extended his
+immense Empire to its outermost boundaries from the China seas to the
+banks of the Dniepr in Russia. After the Comet’s disappearance, Jenghis
+Khan regarded the planets that had crossed its orbit as stars of ill
+omen, betokening his death, so he set his face backward from his march
+of conquest, and soon afterwards died in Mongolia.
+
+
+1145
+
+The Comet appeared over Europe early in Spring. It was seen at Rome in
+March and April.
+
+Inspired by the appearance of the Comet, Pope Eugenius III. called for
+a crusade against the Moslems. St. Bernard in France took up the cry,
+and preached a holy war all over France. On Easter Sunday, King Louis
+VII. of France, his Queen and all his nobles, received the Cross from
+St. Bernard at Vizelay.
+
+In Rome, however, the Comet was taken as a token of the Pope’s
+downfall. Arnold of Brescia preached against the Pope and aroused the
+Roman populace against him. The Holy Father had to flee.
+
+On the disappearance of the Comet, the Pope returned and excommunicated
+the Patricians of Rome. Arnold of Brescia was taken and strangled in
+his cell. Later historians, like Lubienitius, accordingly interpreted
+the Comet as a sign of warning rather than as an ill omen.
+
+
+1066
+
+This is the most famous appearance of the Comet now known as Halley’s
+Comet. Under its seven rays, that year, William the Conqueror felt
+inspired to fall upon England, while Harold, the Saxon, on the other
+hand, saw in the Comet a star of dread foreboding and of doom.
+
+The medieval chronicles of this year all make special mention of the
+Comet. A picture of the Comet, as it appeared to the doomed Harold, was
+embroidered by Matilde of France, on the famous coloured tapestry of
+the Norman Conquest, which is still preserved at Bayeux in Normandy.
+
+Zonares, the Greek historian, in his account of the death of Emperor
+Constantinus Ducas (who died in May, 1067), writes of the Comet as
+“large as the full moon, and at first without a tail, on the appearance
+of which the star dwindled in size.”
+
+The Chinese astronomers have recorded that this Comet had seven tails,
+and was seen for sixty-seven days, after which “the star, the blaze,
+and the star’s tails all drew away.”
+
+[Illustration: HALLEY’S COMET, 1066. (_From the Bayeux Tapestry._)]
+
+
+The Christian chroniclers record that this Comet, “in size and
+brightness equalled the full moon, while its tail, slowly lengthening
+as it came near the Sun, spread out into seven rays and arched over the
+heavens in the shape of a dragon’s tail.”
+
+Sigebert of Brabant, the Belgian chronicler of that time, wrote of it:
+“Over the island of Britain was seen a star of a wonderful bigness, to
+the train of which hung a fiery sword not unlike a dragon’s tail; and
+out of the dragon’s mouth issued two vast rays, whereof one reached as
+far as France, and the other, divided into seven lesser rays, stretched
+away towards Ireland.”
+
+William of Malmesbury wrote how the apparition affected the mind of
+a fellow monk of his monastery in England. His words were: “Soon
+after the death of Henry, King of France, by poison, a wonderful star
+appeared trailing its long tail over the sky. Wherefore, a certain monk
+of our monastery, by name Elmir, bowed down with terror at the sight of
+the strange star, wisely exclaimed, ‘Thou art come back at last, thou
+that will cause so many mothers to weep; many years have I seen thee
+shine, but thou seemest to me more terrible now that thou foretellest
+the ruin of my country.’”
+
+Another old Norman chronicler, by way of defending the divine right
+of William of Normandy to invade England, wrote: “How a Starre with
+seven long Tayles appeared in the Skye. How the Learned sayd that newe
+Starres only shewed themselves when a Kingdom wanted a King, and how
+the sayd Starre was yclept a Comette.”
+
+William himself appealed to the Comet as his guiding star. It shone
+at its brightest during the Summer months while William was preparing
+his expedition at St. Valery. When the spirits of his followers failed
+them, William pointed to the blazing Comet and bid monks and priests
+who accompanied his expedition to preach stirring sermons on the
+“wonderful Sign from Heaven.”
+
+The trip across the English Channel, late in September, was lighted up
+by the Comet, and under its lustre the Norman invaders first pitched
+their camp at Pevensey.
+
+Once more, when William’s Norman followers quailed at the fierce work
+before them, William pointed to the Comet as a token of coming victory.
+
+A fortnight later, directly after the disappearance of the Comet, the
+Battle of Hastings was fought, in which King Harold and his Saxon
+thanes lost their lives and their country.
+
+Afterwards, when Queen Matilda and her court ladies embroidered the
+pictorial story of her husband’s Conquest of England in the huge
+tapestry of Bayeux, they did not forget the Comet. They represented
+Harold cowering in alarm on his throne, whilst his people are huddled
+together, pointing with their fingers at the fearful omen in the sky,
+the birds even being upset at the sight. The Latin legend over the
+picture “Isti Mirant Stella” (they marvel at the star), makes it all
+plain.
+
+As I. C. Bruce, the editor of “The Bayeux Tapestry Elucidated,” has
+said: “This embroidery is remarkable for furnishing us with the
+earliest human representation we have of a Comet.”
+
+The Comet of 1066 will ever be famous for ushering in a new era for
+England. Even to-day Halley’s Comet is remembered as “The Comet of the
+Conquest.”
+
+[Illustration: WILLIAM THE CONQUEROR. (An English Dream.)
+
+Halley’s Comet appeared in 1066—When William the Conqueror took
+England. Halley’s Comet is here to-day.—Kladderadatsch (Berlin).]
+
+
+989
+
+The appearance of the Comet this year was marked by bloody wars all
+over Europe. The Lombards under Otho were harrying the ancient Roman
+Empire, while the heathen Danes and Wends ravaged Germany.
+
+
+912
+
+The Comet appeared early in the year and was seen over Germany, as
+noted in the chronicles of the monks of St. Gallus in Switzerland.
+Immediately after the appearance of the Comet, Germany was ravaged by
+war, both inside and outside, the Empire being invaded on all sides by
+the Danes in the North, the Slavs in the Northeast, and the Magyars
+from Hungary.
+
+
+837
+
+The Chinese Astronomers record two Comets for this year, one in
+February, and the other in April. But the modern view is that this was
+the same Comet, as seen going to the Sun, and afterward, when it was
+coming away from the Sun.
+
+Immediately after the appearance of the Comet there followed a
+widespread rebellion in China with much bloodshed and fierce reprisals.
+
+The only Christian record of the Comet we have is that of Eginard, an
+astrologer employed at the Court of Louis the Debonair, in France. This
+is Eginard’s account of the Comet: “In the midst of the holy festival
+of Easter there shone forth in our sky a sign always ominous and of
+sad foreboding. As soon as the Emperor—who was in the habit of gazing
+up into the sky at night—first saw the Comet, he had me called before
+him, together with another learned star gazer. As soon as I came
+before him he asked me what I thought of the sign in heaven.”
+
+“‘Let me have but a little time,’ I asked of him, ‘that I may study
+this sign and see the exact constellation of the other stars around
+it, thus to gather from the stars the true meaning of this portent,’
+promising him that I would tell him on the morrow of the results of my
+studies.
+
+“But the Emperor, guessing that I was trying to gain time—as was
+indeed the truth, lest I be driven to tell him something unlucky and
+fatal to him—he said to me:
+
+“‘Go up on the terrace of the palace and look. Then come back at once
+and tell me what thou hast seen! For I did not see this star last
+night; nor didst thou point it out to me; but I know that sign in
+heaven is a Comet. Thou must tell me true what it forebodes to me!’
+
+“Then, before I could say anything, he said: ‘There is another thing
+thou art hiding from me. It is that changes in Kingdoms and the deaths
+of rulers are foretold by this sign.’
+
+“To soothe him I reminded the Emperor of the words of the Prophet
+Isaiah, who said: ‘Fear not signs in the Heaven, like unto the Heathen.’
+
+“But the Emperor smiled sadly and said: ‘We should believe only in God
+on High, who has created us and also all Stars in Heaven. Since He has
+sent this Star, and since this unlooked for Sign may be meant for us,
+let us look upon it as a warning from Heaven.’”
+
+Thereupon Louis the Debonair betook himself to fasting, prayers, and
+the building of churches and shrines, he and all his Court. Shortly
+thereafter he died.
+
+The French chronicler, Raoul Glaber, afterward wrote in his chronicle:
+“Comets never show themselves to man without foreboding surely some
+coming event, marvellous or terrible.”
+
+
+760
+
+A Comet appeared in the Spring of this year, which without any doubt
+whatever was Halley’s. It was recorded in detail both by European and
+Chinese annalists, and its orbit has been calculated and identified by
+Laugier.
+
+A Greek record of Constantinople tells how “a Comet like a great beam”
+and very brilliant was observed in the twentieth year of Emperor
+Constantine V., surnamed Copronymus, first in the East and then in the
+West, for about thirty days. Its appearance was followed next Winter
+by a biting frost throughout the Orient, which endured 150 days, from
+October until February, blighting all crops in Egypt and elsewhere in
+the Eastern Empire.
+
+
+684
+
+Chinese annals record a Comet observed in the West in September and
+October. This accords with the computed time for the course of Halley’s
+Comet that year. Immediately after the Comet’s appearance, China and
+the Far East were ravaged by the black plague. Millions died of it.
+Baeda the Venerable, in his “Chronicle of the English People,” records
+that the plague also reached England.
+
+
+607
+
+All Europe and the former Roman Empire were in such dire confusion
+during this period that no records of this year, either astronomic
+or historical, have come down to us. Messrs. Cowell and Crommelin,
+however, have computed astronomically that the Comet must have appeared
+during this year. All we know is that Italy and the Latin World were
+overrun by ravaging Slavonian hordes from Hungary, who made all the
+country run with blood.
+
+
+530
+
+Of the Comet this year, likewise, there is no astronomic record. All we
+know is that the appearance of a Comet is noted in European chronicles.
+It was followed by a virulent outbreak of the black plague.
+
+In the legendary history of Merlin, the ancient British seer, it is
+stated that on the appearance of a Comet this year he prophesied that
+Uter, brother of Ambrosius, on the death of the latter, should rule the
+kingdom; that a ray from the Comet which pointed toward Gaul presaged
+a son who should be born to him and who should be great in power; and
+that the ray “that goes toward Ireland represents a daughter, of whom
+thou shalt be the father, and her sons and grandsons shall reign over
+all the Britons.” These prophecies all came true.
+
+
+451
+
+The Comet which appeared over Europe this year has been proven by
+Laugier to have been Halley’s Comet.
+
+It was seen in France just before the monster battle on the Catalaunian
+Fields (Châlons-sur-Marne), when Aetius, the last of the Romans,
+together with King Theoderic and his Goths, stemmed the tide of Hunnish
+invasion led by Attila, the “Scourge of God.”
+
+Theoderic, together with 148,000 warriors on both sides, were slain in
+this tremendous fight, which alone saved Europe from Tartar savagery.
+
+
+373
+
+Chinese annals of this year record a Comet seen in the northern
+constellation of Ophiuchus in October. This year marks the beginning
+of the tremendous migration of peoples, which started in Mongolia and
+Tartary, and crossing the Volga gradually overflowed all the known
+world, like a huge human deluge.
+
+
+295
+
+The appearance of a Comet this year (identified by Hind with Halley’s)
+was followed by a bloody rebellion of the ancient Britons against the
+Romans, and by another rebellion against Rome by the Egyptians. These
+patriotic uprisings of the people were suppressed with fire and sword
+and both countries ran with blood.
+
+
+218
+
+The Chinese catalogue of Ma-tuan-lin records a Comet with a path
+exactly analogous with the orbit of Halley’s Comet computed for that
+year by Hind. In the Chinese record the Comet is described as “pointed
+and bright.” Its coming was connected with the death of Emperor Ween-te
+directly afterward, and the Civil Wars between various claimants to the
+throne of the Celestial Empire, which then rent China asunder.
+
+Dion Cassius, the Roman historian, describes the Comet of this year as
+“a very fearful star with a tail stretching from the West towards the
+East.”
+
+The Roman augurs explained the Comet as a portent of the bloody death
+of Emperor Macrinus of Rome, who was murdered by his own soldiers on
+the night after the disappearance of the Comet.
+
+
+141
+
+In this year the Chinese astronomers recorded a Comet in March and
+April (the time computed for Halley’s Comet), which they described as
+“a star six or seven cubits long and of a bluish-white colour.” The
+coming of the Comet was followed by a virulent outbreak of the plague
+in China and the Far East, which spread all over the known world. So
+virulent was this pestilence that in the City of Naples alone 400,000
+people died of the disease.
+
+
+65-66
+
+Halley’s Comet, according to astronomic calculations, must have made
+its reappearance during the winter months of 65-66 A. D. The Chinese
+have recorded “two Comets,” one in 65, which was seen for fifty-six
+days, and “the other” in February, 66, which remained visible fifty
+days.
+
+This was the Comet which St. Peter and Josephus saw over the City of
+Jerusalem, before the fall of the Holy City. Josephus wrote of it:
+“Amongst other warnings, a Comet, of the kind called Xiphias, because
+their tails appear to represent the blade of a sword, was seen above
+the doomed city for the space of nearly a whole year.”
+
+Jerusalem was ravaged by pestilence and famine and soon afterward was
+stormed by the Roman soldiery led by Titus. The Temple was burned down
+and the streets of the Holy City ran with blood. It was the end of
+Jerusalem and of the Jews as a free city and people.
+
+
+B. C. 11
+
+This is the farthest back that the appearances of Halley’s Comet
+have been traced in history. For earlier appearances there are no
+sufficiently trustworthy computations or records.
+
+Dion Cassius in his “History of Rome” has recorded “a Comet which hung
+suspended over the City of Rome just before the death of Agrippa,” who
+ruled over the Roman Empire during the absence of Augustus in Greece
+and Asia. Agrippa was so universally beloved, and his death was held to
+be such a loss to Rome that he was buried with imperial honours in the
+tomb intended for Augustus.
+
+The death of Agrippa occurred in the year 12, shortly after the
+disappearance of the Comet which Hind has identified with Halley’s.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+This completes the record of all the known appearances of Halley’s
+Comet. The record fully justifies Chambers’ dictum, that the “Comet
+known as Halley’s is by far the most interesting of all the Comets
+recorded in history.”
+
+This historic record also appears to justify in no small measure the
+popular beliefs of the last two thousand years concerning Comets, as
+expressed by Leonard Digges in his book on Prognostics, published 350
+years ago:
+
+    “Cometes signifie corruption of the ayre. They are
+     signs of earthquakes, of warres, of changying of
+     Kyngdomes, great dearth of food, yea a common death
+     of man and beast from pestilence.”
+
+
+
+
+THE STORY OF EDMUND HALLEY
+
+
+The great French astronomer Lalande considered Halley the greatest
+astronomer of his time. This opinion is still held. Halley’s “time”
+means the age of Kepler, Sir Isaac Newton, Flamsteed, Hevelius, and
+Leibnitz, all of whom achieved first rank in Astronomy.
+
+Halley’s greatest achievement in Astronomy was the discovery that our
+solar system was but an atom in immeasurable space whence wandering
+stars could be caught within the influence of our Sun, our Earth and
+the other Planets swinging around our Sun.
+
+Halley was the first to discover and to prove that the Comets that come
+within the vision of man have fixed periods of return. He made this
+discovery during the appearance of the great Comet of 1682, which has
+since been known by his name.
+
+In his studies of the motions of Comets, of which Halley computed the
+orbits of twenty-four, he observed that a Comet of similar phenomena,
+recorded by Appian in 1531 and by Kepler in 1607, had swung through the
+same orbit as the Comet under his observation in 1682. Halley surmised
+from this that these Comets might be one and the same, whose intervals
+of return appeared to cover a period of seventy-five or seventy-six
+years. Halley’s surmise seemed to be confirmed by the recorded
+appearance of similar bright Comets in the years 1456, 1378, and 1301,
+the intervals again being seventy-five or seventy-six years.
+
+Halley was deeply imbued with Newton’s new discovery of gravitation,
+for the publication of which Halley paid the expenses, so he brought
+the principles of Newton’s theory of gravitation to bear on his own new
+theory of the motions of Comets. He rightly conjectured that Comets
+were drawn to our Sun across the disturbing orbits of our planetary
+system, and that the comparatively small differences of one or two
+years in the recorded intervals of this one Comet (Halley’s Comet) were
+due to the attraction of the larger planets.
+
+During the previous year, 1681, Halley computed that the Comet had
+passed near the planet Jupiter, the attraction of which must have had a
+considerable influence on the Comet’s motion. Making due allowance for
+this disturbing influence of Jupiter, he computed that the Comet would
+return to the vicinity of our Sun about the end of 1758 or beginning of
+1759.
+
+Halley did not live to see his prediction fulfilled (he died in 1742),
+but he wrote shortly before he died: “If this Comet should return
+according to our predictions about the year 1758, impartial posterity
+will not refuse to acknowledge that this was first discovered by an
+Englishman.”
+
+All through the year 1758 the most noted astronomers of Europe were
+on the lookout for the return of the predicted Comet. One of these
+astronomers, Messier, looked for it through his telescope at the Paris
+Observatory every night from sunset to sunrise throughout that whole
+year. On Christmas night, 1758, the Comet was first seen by a German
+peasant near Dresden, who had heard about the Comet and was looking
+for it. He was a man of unusually good eyesight, yet his discovery was
+doubted until Messier, nearly a month afterward, at Paris, “picked up”
+the Comet with his telescope.
+
+From that time forth this Comet, which returned in 1835, and is
+reappearing in this year (1910), has been known as Halley’s Comet.
+
+[Illustration: EDMUND HALLEY.]
+
+Besides this achievement, Halley accomplished many other noteworthy
+feats in astronomy, such as his discovery of the proper motions of the
+fixed stars; his detection of the “long inequality” of Jupiter and
+Saturn, and of the acceleration of the moon’s mean motion; his theory
+of variation, including the hypothesis of various magnetic poles, with
+his suggestion of the magnetic origin of the aurora borealis; and his
+indication of a method still used for determining the solar parallax by
+means of the transits of Venus.
+
+On the strength of these achievements, Halley for many years was
+elected to serve as secretary to the Royal Society. Commissioned as a
+Captain in the Royal Navy, he also commanded a vessel on a long cruise
+of exploration, and late in life he was made Astronomer Royal.
+
+Although in his sixty-fourth year, he then undertook to observe the
+moon through an entire revolution of her nodes (eighteen years), and
+actually carried out his purpose. To appreciate the full significance
+of so painstaking an achievement it should be borne in mind that
+astronomical observations must be made in a temperature equal to that
+of the open air. Observatories cannot be heated because the heat would
+impair the accuracy of the instruments.
+
+Great astronomers, like poets, are born, not made. Edmund Halley was
+one of these. At the age of seventeen he had already observed the
+change in the variations of the compass. At nineteen he was recognized
+as an astronomer of reputation, having supplied a new and improved
+method of determining the elements of the planetary orbits. His
+detection of considerable errors in the tables then in use led him to
+the conclusion that a more accurate determination of the places of the
+fixed Stars was indispensable to the progress of astronomy. With this
+end in view he set out on a voyage to the other side of the globe, St.
+Helena, where he undertook the task of making complete new observations
+of the entire Southern Hemisphere. Though the Heavens proved clouded
+he succeeded within two years in registering three hundred and sixty
+stars, a colossal achievement which won for him the title of the
+“Southern Tycho.” This was when Halley was barely of age.
+
+(The famous astronomer Tycho Brahe, long before this had won his fame
+by mapping the stars of the Northern Heavens.)
+
+No one could well have begun with prospects more remote from so high a
+career, for Edmund Halley was born in 1656, the son of a soap boiler
+in a shabby London suburb. From the refuse of rancid fat and lye the
+boy was rescued by friends, who procured for him a scholarship at Saint
+Paul’s school. By his brilliant attainments in mathematics he won
+another scholarship to Oxford University.
+
+While at Oxford the youth published a treatise on the planetary orbits
+and argued the Sun’s axial rotation.
+
+On his graduation from Oxford, the young would-be astronomer conceived
+the project of turning his attention to the southern Stars, of which
+no good observations had been made. Shortly before this time a Dutch
+astronomer, named Houtman, had observed these Stars in the island of
+Sumatra; and Blaeu, the best globe maker of the age, had used these
+new observations in the correction of his celestial globes. Halley, on
+examining these corrections, came to the conclusion that he himself
+could do better. He also concluded that the Island of St. Helena might
+be a better point for southern observations. His father, unable to pay
+the expenses of so long a trip, broached the project to some friends.
+The young astronomer was recommended to King Charles II. by Williamson
+and Jones Moore, and the King in turn recommended the youth to the
+Indian Company, which then had control over the island of St. Helena.
+
+After this all was plain sailing. The India Company placed a ship
+at his disposition and promised him all the assistance he required.
+Young Halley provided himself with telescopes, and micrometers, and
+other instruments of the latest approved pattern. In November, 1666,
+at the age of twenty, he sailed for St. Helena. Among his luggage was
+a sextant of five and a half feet and a telescope twenty-four feet in
+length constructed under the supervision of Flamsteed, the Astronomer
+Royal.
+
+Halley was disappointed in the climate of St. Helena. Frequent rains
+and a constantly hazy sky scarcely permitted any observations in the
+months of August and September. Notwithstanding these difficulties, he
+succeeded in observing and cataloguing some 360 Stars.
+
+In addition to his work on the Stars, Halley made some investigations
+on the Moon’s parallax, combining his observations at St. Helena
+with those made in northern skies. He also evolved a new theory of
+the Moon’s motion, which proved of great aid in the determination of
+longitudes.
+
+On November 7, 1677, Halley observed a transit of Mercury which
+suggested to him the important idea of employing similar phenomena for
+the calculation of the Sun’s distance.
+
+Halley returned to England in November, 1678, and was hailed by his
+fellow astronomers as the “Southern Tycho.” He was elected a fellow of
+the Royal Society, and by the King’s command the degree of Master of
+Arts was conferred upon him by the University of Oxford.
+
+Six months later Halley set out for Dantsic for a personal conference
+with Hevelius, the Polish astronomer. Halley wanted to satisfy himself
+as to the accuracy of observations claimed by Hevelius without the
+aid of a telescope. Halley convinced himself that the errors of the
+observations made by Hevelius were less than had been supposed, and did
+not exceed a minute of an arc. The two became life-long friends. Halley
+proceeded to other cities of Europe where there were observatories. In
+Paris he observed with Cassini the great Comet of 1680. This was the
+beginning of Halley’s special study of Comets.
+
+Returning to England, the young astronomer married the daughter of
+Mr. Tooke, auditor of the Exchequer, with whom he lived harmoniously
+until her death, fifty-five years later. The young couple settled at
+Islington, where Halley erected an observatory of his own and engaged
+in constant lunar observations with a view toward finding a method for
+computing longitudes at sea.
+
+Halley’s mind at the same time was busy with the momentous problem of
+gravity, upon which Isaac Newton was working then. Independently of
+Newton, Halley reached the conclusion that the central force of the
+Solar System must decrease inversely as the square of the distance.
+Having applied vainly to his fellow astronomers, Hooke and Wren, Halley
+in August, 1684, made a special journey to Cambridge to consult Isaac
+Newton, who confirmed his conjectures.
+
+Halley and Newton became life-long friends. Halley had Newton elected
+to the Royal Society, and when Newton became too poor to pay his
+quarterly dues, Halley, through his influence with the leading members
+of the Society, had them remitted. It was Halley who encouraged Newton
+to put his momentous discovery and elucidation of the forces of gravity
+into permanent form in his “Principia,” the first volume of which, “De
+Motu,” was presented to the Royal Society at Halley’s suggestion.
+
+In the proceedings of the Royal Society for December, 1684, there is an
+entry that “Mr. Halley had lately seen Mr. Newton at Cambridge, who had
+told him of a curious treatise ‘De Motu,’ which at Mr. Halley’s desire
+he promised to send to the Society to be entered upon their register.
+Mr. Halley was desired to put Mr. Newton in mind of his promise for the
+securing this invention to himself, till such time as he could be at
+leisure to publish it.”
+
+Early in the following year Newton sent his treatise to the Society, to
+whom it was read aloud by Halley. This treatise “De Motu” was the germ
+of the “Principia” and was intended to be a short account of what the
+greater work was to embrace.
+
+During the next two years Newton was hard at work on his “Principia,”
+while Halley was equally hard at work on his computations of the Comet
+of 1682, and on his theory of the orbits and the periodical returns of
+Comets which grew out of his observations.
+
+On April 21, 1686, Halley read to the Royal Society his own “Discourse
+Concerning Gravity and its Properties,” in which he stated that his
+“worthy countryman, Mr. Issac Newton, has an incomparable treatise on
+Motion almost ready for the press,” and that the law of the inverse
+square “is the principle on which Mr. Newton has made out all the
+phenomena of the celestial motions so easily and naturally that its
+truth is past dispute.”
+
+Shortly afterward Newton sent in the manuscript of his great work. The
+Society voted “that a letter of thanks be written to Mr. Newton and
+that the printing of his book be referred to the consideration of the
+council and that in the meantime the book be put into the hands of Mr.
+Halley.”
+
+The truth was that the Royal Society, at that time, did not have money
+enough to print the book. The Society went through the empty form of
+“ordering” that the book be printed “forthwith,” but no printer was
+forthcoming until Halley himself undertook the publication of the great
+work at his own expense.
+
+The delicacy of Halley’s feeling is revealed by his correspondence with
+Newton, in which he informed Newton that the book had “been ordered
+to be printed at the Society’s charge.” The preliminary delay about
+printing he explained to Newton “arose from the President’s attendance
+on the King, and the absence of the vice-presidents, whom the good
+weather had drawn out of town.”
+
+Later Newton came to realize how much he owed to Halley in this matter.
+In his letters to Halley henceforth he always referred to his book
+as if it had been Halley’s book. When the great work was finished at
+last Newton wrote to Halley under the date of July 5, 1687: “I have at
+length brought your book to an end, and hope it will please you.”
+
+The finished work contained a note to this effect: “The inverse law
+of gravity holds in all the celestial motions, as was discovered also
+independently by my countrymen Wren, Hooke, and Halley.”
+
+The book was dedicated to the Royal Society, and to it was prefixed a
+set of Latin hexameters addressed by Halley to the author, ending with
+the well known line:
+
+    “Nec fac est propius mortali attingere divos.”
+
+    (“It is not given to a mortal to get in closer touch
+      with the gods.”)
+
+Halley was fifty years old when he made his famous prediction of
+the return of the Comet of 1682. This was in his “Synopsis of Comet
+Astronomy,” which ended with these words: “Hence I may venture to
+foretell that this Comet will return again in the year 1758.”
+
+Besides being an astronomer of the first class, Halley was also a good
+navigator. In 1698 he was commissioned a captain in the Royal Navy
+and was put in command of the King’s ship, “The Paramour Pink.” With
+this vessel he set out on a long cruise to the Pacific for the purpose
+of making observations on the laws which govern magnetic variations.
+This task he accomplished in a voyage which lasted two years and
+extended to the fifty-second degree of southern latitude, when the ice
+compelled him to turn back. On the return voyage his crew mutinied and
+his lieutenant sided with the mutineers. Halley quelled the mutiny by
+sheer force of personality, and returning to England got rid of his
+lieutenant. The results of his voyage were published in his “General
+Chart of the Variation of the Compass” in 1701. Immediately afterwards
+Halley set out on another King’s ship and executed by royal command
+a careful survey of the tides and coasts of the British Channel, an
+elaborate chart of which he published in 1702.
+
+Next Halley was sent by the King to Dalmatia, for the purpose of
+selecting and fortifying the port of Trieste.
+
+On Halley’s return to England, he was made Savilian professor of
+geometry at Oxford, and received an honorary doctor’s degree. He
+filled two terms of eight years each as secretary to the Royal
+Society, and early in 1720 he succeeded Flamsteed as Astronomer Royal.
+
+He died on January 14, 1742, at the age of eighty-five in the full
+possession of his faculties, the foremost astronomer of the day and a
+man universally beloved and respected. His gravestone stands at the
+Greenwich Observatory.
+
+Halley’s works fill several shelves in the library of the Royal
+Society. His fame is kept green by the periodical return of the
+wandering star known by his name.
+
+
+
+
+WHAT ARE COMETS?
+
+
+The modern answer to the question “What are Comets made of?” is this:
+
+Probably the heads are a mixture of solid and gaseous matter. The tails
+are gaseous—the result of the volatilisation of the solid matter of
+the heads.
+
+The spectroscope shows that gases appear to be a constituent of all
+Comets. The spectra of Comets are very similar to those of a Bunsen
+flame. Recent spectroscopic photographs have revealed the presence of
+hydrocarbons, nitro-carbons, of cyanogen and of the vapours of sodium,
+iron and other metals.
+
+The connection between Comets and Meteors implies the presence in
+Comets of solid matter. A modern theory, voiced by Schiaparelli, is
+that meteor showers are broken up Comets.
+
+The tails of Comets appear to be composed of luminous gases ejected
+from the head of the Comet through a solar force held to be “Light
+Pressure,” which causes these tails to shoot off and disperse into
+space at the rate of 865,000 miles an hour.
+
+The length of some Comets’ tails has been estimated at 125,000,000
+miles, while the Comets’ heads themselves are generally much larger in
+size than our Earth. Halley’s Comet is more than ten-fold the size of
+our Earth.
+
+E. W. Maunder, of the Royal Observatory of Greenwich, a modern
+astronomer, has thus summarized the latest theories of the substance of
+Comets:
+
+“Though the bulk of comets is huge, they contain extraordinarily
+little substance. Their heads must contain some solid matter, but it
+is probably in the form of a loose aggregation of stones enveloped in
+vaporous material. There is some reason to suppose that Comets are apt
+to shed some of these stones as they travel along their paths, for the
+orbits of the meteors that cause some of our greatest ‘star showers’
+are coincident with the paths of Comets that have been observed. But it
+is not only by shedding its loose stones that a Comet diminishes its
+bulk; it loses also through its tail. As the Comet gets close to the
+Sun its head becomes heated, and throws off concentric envelopes, much
+of which consists of matter in an extremely fine station of division.”
+
+The orbits of Comets visible to human eyes are all governed by the Sun.
+In the words of C. L. Poor: “The attraction of the Sun is to the Comet
+like the flame to the moth. The Comet flutters for a moment about the
+Sun, and then swings back into outward space. But not unscathed; like
+the moth, the Comet has been singed. The fierce light of the Sun has
+beaten upon it, and spread out its particles and scattered them along
+its path.”
+
+As a comet swings toward and away from the Sun, it travels at a
+tremendous rate of speed—over a million miles an hour. The distance
+covered from one end of the orbit to the other is 3,370,000,000 miles.
+
+The great majority of Comets appear to travel in parabolas, open curves
+leading from infinite space to and around the Sun, and thence back into
+infinite space to some other fixed star invisible to us. As a matter
+of fact, though, the parabolic curves of Comets’ orbits through the
+gravitational attraction of the planets, whose orbits are crossed by
+it, may be changed into hyperbolic curves and ellipses by planetary
+perturbations. Hence the differences in time between the returns of
+certain Comets, like Halley’s, for instance.
+
+[Illustration: RELATIVE SIZES OF THE EARTH, THE MOON’S ORBIT AND
+HALLEY’S COMET.]
+
+[Illustration: ORBIT OF HALLEY’S COMET. THE TAIL ALWAYS POINTS AWAY
+FROM THE SUN.]
+
+In a general way, it may be said that every Comet comprises a nucleus,
+an envelope (called the “coma”) surrounding the nucleus and measuring
+from 20,000 to 1,000,000 miles in diameter, and a long tail which
+streams behind the nucleus from sixty to a hundred million miles or
+more.
+
+Astronomers have decided that the nucleus is probably a heap of
+meteorites varying in size from a grain to masses weighing several
+tons each; a heap, moreover, so easily sundered that its elements are
+distributed gradually along the orbit. It follows that every Comet must
+eventually perish unless it restores its nucleus by collecting stray
+meteors. That disintegration does occur has been observed time and time
+again.
+
+For example, Biela’s Comet, which was discovered in 1826, burst into
+two fragments, which drifted apart a distance of one million miles.
+Thus it became a twin Comet. Eventually it disappeared as a Comet, and
+in its stead we see a shoal of meteors whenever we cross its track
+every six and a half years.
+
+It is possible that the Comets of 1668, 1843, 1880, 1882 and 1887, all
+travelling in approximately the same path, are fragments of a single
+large body which was broken up by the gravitational action of other
+bodies in the system, or through violent encounter with the Sun’s
+surroundings.
+
+The luminous tail which streams behind the nucleus, which Shakespeare
+described so beautifully as “crystal tresses,” is startling, to say the
+least. Despite a length which may exceed a hundred million miles, it
+is so diaphanously light and subtle that it is difficult to compare it
+with any earthly fabric. The air that we breathe is a dense blanket in
+comparison. Several hundred cubic miles of the matter composing that
+wonderful luminous plume would not outweigh a jarful of air. By reason
+of its fairy lightness, it is possible for a tail occupying a volume
+thousands of times greater than the sun to sweep through our solar
+system without causing any perturbations in planetary movements.
+
+No celestial phenomenon has caused more perplexity than the ghostly
+sheaf of light we call a Comet’s tail. In a day, in a few hours even,
+the form of that wonderful gossamer may change. Hence it is that
+periodic Comets are identified when they return, not by the length and
+arch of their tails, but by their orbits. These alone are permanent.
+
+When a Comet is first seen in the telescope, it appears as a diminutive
+filmy patch, often unadorned by any tail. As it travels on toward the
+Sun, at a speed compared with which a modern rifle bullet would seem to
+crawl, violent eruptions occur in the nucleus.
+
+The ejected matter is bent back to form the cloak called the “coma.”
+With a nearer approach to the sun, the tail begins to sprout,
+increasing in size and brightness as it proceeds. Evidently there is
+some connection between the Sun and the tail, something akin to cause
+and effect.
+
+When the Comet rushes on toward the Sun, invariably the tail drifts
+behind the nucleus like the smoke from a locomotive. But when the Comet
+swings around the Sun and travels away from it, a startling change
+takes place. The tail no longer trails behind, but projects in front as
+if some mighty solar wind were blowing it in advance of the head.
+
+This phenomenon has long been an astronomical riddle. Here was a kind
+of matter that refused to obey the laws of gravitation and yield to the
+enormous pull of the Sun.
+
+[Illustration: OCTOBER 5. OCTOBER 9. DONATI’S COMET OF 1858.]
+
+It was thought for a time that the tail was flung away from the Sun by
+stupendous repelling electrical forces. That electricity plays its part
+in the formation of the fairy plume is conceivable, and even probable;
+but recently the physicist has discovered a new source of repellent
+energy which very plausibly explains the mystery of a Comet’s tail.
+
+This new source of energy is nothing less than the pressure or push of
+the Sun’s light. Solar gravitation is a force more powerful than we can
+realize. If it were possible for us to live on the Sun, we would find
+ourselves pulled down so violently that our body would weigh two tons.
+Our clothing alone would weigh more than one hundred pounds. Running
+would be a very difficult athletic feat. Light-pressure must indeed be
+powerful if it can conquer so relentless a force.
+
+Because we have never seen objects torn from our hands by the pressure
+of light, it may be inferred that this newly discovered force affects
+only bodies that are invisibly small. With the aid of instruments that
+feel what our hands can never feel and see what our eyes can never see,
+the modern physicist has critically analyzed the radiation that beats
+upon the earth from the distant Sun.
+
+Light really does sway infinitely small particles, as was first
+experimentally proved by the Russian Lebedev. Two American astronomers,
+Nichols and Hull, improved upon his method. They cast the solar
+effulgence into mighty mathematical scales and found that the earth
+sustains a light-load of no less than 75,000 tons.
+
+Most city-bred people are familiar with the so-called “Sun
+Motors”—little mills with black and white wings, enclosed in airtight
+vessels, which spin around in “perpetual motion” under the effect of
+“Sun Pressure.”
+
+It remained for the broad mind of a Swedish physicist, Svante
+Arrhenius, to apply the principle of light-pressure cosmically. He
+explained, very simply, that because a Comet’s tail is composed of a
+very fine dust it can easily be driven away from the Sun by radiation
+pressure.
+
+To understand how it is possible for so immaterial a thing as a sunbeam
+to produce so huge an effect, we have only to take a very simple
+example.
+
+Assume that you have before you a block of wood weighing one pound. The
+block exposes a certain amount of surface to the Sun’s light. Saw the
+block in half, and you increase the amount of that surface. Divide each
+half again into half, and the exposed surface is further augmented. If
+this process of subdivision is carried on far enough, the block will be
+reduced to sawdust.
+
+The entire mass of sawdust still weighs one pound; but its surface has
+been vastly enlarged. Indeed, the particles of sawdust, individually
+considered, may be said to consist of much surface and very little
+weight. If it were possible to take each granule of visible sawdust
+and subdivide it into invisible particles, a point would be reached
+where the pressure of light would exactly counterbalance the pull of
+gravitation, so that the particles would remain suspended in space,
+perfectly balanced in the scale of opposing cosmic forces.
+
+Finally, if the subdivision be continued beyond this critical point,
+the particles will be wrenched away from the grip of gravitation and
+hurled out into space by the pressure of light.
+
+So much has been discovered about the particles that compose a Comet’s
+tail that the more progressive scientists of our day have accepted this
+ingenious theory. Thus it has been decided by them that the delicate
+tresses of a Comet are to a large extent composed of fine particles of
+dust and soot.
+
+[Illustration: June 26.]
+
+[Illustration: June 28.]
+
+[Illustration: June 30.]
+
+[Illustration: July 1.]
+
+[Illustration: July 6.]
+
+[Illustration: July 8. CHANGES IN THE COMET OF 1863.]
+
+Before we can completely accept the view that light-pressure forms
+this train of soot we must ascertain whether the pressure of light is
+capable of accounting for the flash-like rapidity with which a Comet’s
+tail changes.
+
+A Comet may throw out a tail sixty million miles long in two days. Is
+it actually possible for light-pressure to accomplish that astonishing
+feat? Arrhenius has computed that 865,000 miles an hour is the speed
+of a light-flung particle of one-half the critical diameter. Because
+they are only one-eighteenth as large as this particle of critical
+diameter, the dust grains in a Comet’s tail would be propelled over the
+same 865,000 miles in less than four minutes. It follows that the solar
+radiation is amply strong enough to toss out a tail of sixty million
+miles in two days.
+
+Photography in the hands of Prof. E. E. Barnard, of the Yerkes
+Observatory, has revealed some extraordinary changes in Comets’ tails,
+changes which are not apparent to the eye and which cannot be explained
+by light-pressure or by solar electrical forces. He has collected a
+formidable mass of photographic evidence which seems to show that
+there are other influences at work besides the Sun’s radiation, and
+that these influences manifest themselves in distorting and breaking a
+Comet’s tail. In some Comets of recent years, streams of matter have
+been shot out in large angles to the main direction of the tail without
+being at all bent by the pressure of light. In Morehouse’s Comet of
+1908, tails were repeatedly formed and discarded to drift bodily out
+into space and melt away. Sometimes the photographic plate has shown
+the tail twisted like a corkscrew and sometimes it has revealed masses
+of matter at some distance from the head, where apparently no supply
+had reached it. At one time the entire tail of Morehouse’s Comet was
+thrown violently forward, a peculiarity so utterly opposed to the laws
+of gravitation that Professor Barnard suspects some unknown force at
+work in planetary space besides a force which undoubtedly resides
+in the Comet itself. If Halley’s Comet serves no other purpose than
+to throw light upon this mystery, its return will more than repay
+astronomers for all their observatory vigils.
+
+From the fact that the matter is ejected from the head to form the
+tail, it would follow that, unless it has the means of rejuvenating
+itself, a comet must eventually be disintegrated. Instances of this
+fragmentation and, eventual disappearance of a Comet are not wanting in
+astronomical annals. It has been stated previously that when Biela’s
+Comet appeared in 1846 it became distorted and elongated, that it
+eventually split up into two separate bodies, that in 1852 it again
+appeared in its double form, and that it has since disappeared.
+
+In a way, Comets may be said to bleed to death. At each return of
+Halley’s Comet, future astronomers will find it less brilliant than it
+was seventy-six or seventy-seven years before. Some time there will
+be no Halley’s Comet left, and the most famous Comet of its kind will
+be reduced to a shoal of meteors varying in weight from a few ounces
+to several tons and faithfully pursuing the orbit which their parent
+traced and retraced century after century.
+
+[Illustration: COGGIA’S COMET, 1874: ON JULY 13.]
+
+
+
+
+THE PERIL OF THE COMET
+
+
+It was Edmund Halley who first revealed a source of danger from Comets,
+of which even medieval superstition had never dreamed.
+
+While he was patiently plotting out the orbit of the Comet of 1680,
+which had inspired no little dismay among his contemporaries, Halley
+found that the Earth’s orbit had been approached by the Comet within
+four thousand miles—half the diameter of the Earth.
+
+If the Earth had been struck by that fiery wanderer?
+
+None had ever thought of the possibility.
+
+Halley began to do some mathematical figuring, and decided that, if a
+Comet’s mass were comparable with that of the Earth, our year would
+have been changed in length because the Earth’s orbit would have been
+altered. He also speculated what would happen to the Earth, and reached
+this conclusion:
+
+    “If so large a body with so rapid a motion were to
+     strike the Earth—a thing by no means impossible—the
+     shock might reduce this beautiful world to its
+     original chaos.”
+
+Halley even thought it probable that the Earth had actually been struck
+by a Comet at some remote period, struck obliquely, moreover, so that
+the axis of rotation had been changed. Thus he was led to infer that
+possibly the North Pole had once been at a point near Hudson’s Bay, and
+that the rigour of North America’s climate might thus be accounted for.
+
+The seed which was thus sown by Halley has borne fruit. In Halley’s
+own time, learned men were brooding over the ultimate destruction of
+the Earth by collision with a Comet.
+
+Dr. Whiston, who succeeded Newton at Cambridge in the Lucasian chair of
+mathematics, was sure that a Comet caused the Deluge, and went so far
+as to prophesy that a Comet, as it passed us on its outward course from
+the Sun, would ultimately bring about a “General Conflagration,” and
+thus envelope the Earth in flames.
+
+One century after Halley, the French astronomer Laplace, whose
+mathematical attainments were surpassed only by those of Newton,
+applied his brilliant mind to the possibility of a collision with a
+Comet, and arrived at this conclusion:
+
+    “The seas would abandon their ancient beds and rush
+     towards the new equator, drowning in one universal
+     deluge the greater part of the human race.... We see,
+     then, in effect, why the ocean has receded from the
+     high lands upon which we find incontestable marks of
+     its sojourn; we see how the animals and plants of the
+     south have been able to exist in the climate of the
+     north, where their remains and imprints have been
+     discovered.”
+
+The famous French mathematician Lalande showed that if a Comet as heavy
+as the Earth were to come within six times the distance of the Moon,
+it would exert such a powerful attraction upon the waters of the globe
+as to pull up a tidal wave 13,000 feet above the ordinary sea-level
+and inundate the continents Every European mountain would be submerged
+except Mt. Blanc, and only the inhabitants of the Rockies, the Andes
+and the Himalayas would escape death.
+
+Since Lalande’s day there has been more than one Comet “scare.” One of
+these startled Europe in 1832. On October 29th of that year, Biela’s
+Comet crossed the Earth’s orbit. The announcement was received with
+stupefaction. It was only when Arago soothingly pointed out that the
+Earth would not reach the exact point where the Comet had intersected
+the Earth’s orbit until November 30, at which time the Comet would be
+50,000,000 miles away, that the popular excitement subsided. A similar
+alarm seized the world in 1857. Some prophet declared that on June 13
+the world would collide with a certain periodic Comet having a period
+of revolution of three centuries. It is related that the churches
+and confessionals were crowded for days. Still another prediction,
+made in 1872 by Plantamour, the distinguished director of the Geneva
+Observatory, set Europe in a ferment. His calculations were based on
+errors, which were pointed out by other astronomers, and the public
+mind was quieted.
+
+Although more than two centuries have passed since Halley was in his
+prime, the possibility of a collision with some vagabond star still
+haunts the mind of the astronomer.
+
+That a collision is apt to occur is an admitted astronomic fact. The
+latest estimate, made in 1909 by Prof. William H. Pickering of Harvard
+University, would seem to prove that the core of one Comet in about
+100,000,000 Comets will hit the earth squarely. An encounter with some
+part of a Comet’s head will happen once in 4,000,000 years. Since
+Comets’ orbit are more thickly distributed near the ecliptic than else
+where in the celestial sphere, the collisions will occur according to
+Pickering, perhaps more frequently than this.
+
+Because Pickering’s figures differ from those other astronomers—Arago
+and Babinet, for instance—it must not be inferred that his
+predecessors are wrong and that he is right in his calculations. The
+problem is too complex for that. Pickering, Arago and Babinet differ
+partly because they have assumed different average sizes for their
+Comets, and partly because their definitions of visible Comets are not
+in accord.
+
+That the possibility is very real, we shall all have an opportunity of
+judging on May 18, 1910. On that date the Earth will be plunged in the
+tail of Halley’s Comet, and the head will be less than 15,000,000 miles
+away—a mere hand’s breadth in the vastness of the universe.
+
+What will happen?
+
+Nobody knows for certain.
+
+By means of the wonderful instrument called the spectroscope, an
+instrument which analyzes a distant star as readily as if it were a
+stone picked up in the road, it has been discovered that a Comet’s tail
+is composed of gases called “hydrocarbons” (combinations of hydrogen
+and carbon), and that it bears a close chemical resemblance to the blue
+flame of a kitchen gas-stove.
+
+Illuminating gas, as we all know, is poisonous. If a Comet’s tail were
+dense enough, it is conceivable, therefore, that every human being on
+this planet might be asphyxiated by breathing the Comet’s poisonous
+vapour as the Earth plowed through it. There is also this possibility,
+suggested by Flammarion, that the gases of a very dense tail might so
+combine with the nitrogen which constitutes nearly 80 per cent. of
+the air we breathe, that the atmosphere would be converted into the
+“laughing gas” employed by dentists. The world would die in a delirium
+of joy. At first a delightful serenity would settle upon mankind. Then
+would follow a contagious gaiety, febrile exaltation, a paroxysm of
+delight, and then madness. Flammarion even conceives the world merrily
+dancing a joyous, hysterical sarabande in which it perishes laughing.
+
+The tail of a Comet is fraught with still other possible dangers. Our
+atmosphere contains a certain amount of hydrogen, a marvellously light
+gas to which balloons owe their buoyancy. Besides its lightness, this
+gas is characterized by an extreme inflammability. The law of the
+diffusion of gases teaches us that part of this hydrogen in the air
+is mechanically mixed with other gases, and that part of it probably
+floats in the upper air, far beyond the reach of any balloon. A Comet
+may be regarded as a huge lighted torch whirling through space, which
+may be brought dangerously near that upper layer of highly inflammable
+hydrogen. If the gas shall ever be touched off by this flying torch,
+our planet will be ignited. The whole atmosphere will become a seething
+ocean of flame, in which forests and cities will burn like straw, in
+which oceans will boil away in vast clouds of steam, and in which all
+animal life will be snuffed out of existence before it shall realize
+that the world is on fire. In a word, the globe will become a planetary
+funeral pyre. Since water results from burning hydrogen in oxygen,
+this same fierce and terrible flame must be speedily extinguished by a
+mighty deluge which will engulf the Earth.
+
+A spectroscope analysis of Halley’s Comet has furthermore revealed
+the presence of cyanogen gas in the tail. Cyanogen is a compound of
+nitrogen and carbon, one of the most poisonous compounds with which the
+chemist is familiar. Prussic acid, potassium cyanide and many other
+cyanides, all of them almost instantaneously fatal if taken into the
+human system, are compounds of cyanogen. If that gas is present in
+large enough quantities, one flick of a Comet’s tail will end all human
+and animal existence.
+
+So much is certain. A collision of the Earth with a Comet will
+undoubtedly prove disastrous—how disastrous will depend largely on the
+size of the Comet’s head and on its speed. That a violent heat will
+be developed, we have every reason to believe, from our knowledge of
+meteors. The mere movement of a meteor through the thin upper layers of
+our atmosphere produces a dazzling trail and reduces the meteor itself
+to a molten metallic mass. Arrest a body in swift motion, and you must
+dissipate its energy in some way. As a rule, the energy is converted
+into heat. A bullet discharged from a rifle is often melted when
+suddenly stopped by steel armour. A Comet travels at a pace compared
+with which a projectile, fired from the most powerful twelve-inch gun,
+seems only to crawl. What, then, must be the frightful effect when it
+strikes the Earth?
+
+A Comet rushes through space not at the bullet’s rate of thousands of
+feet an hour, but of a million miles an hour. The bigger it is, and the
+faster it moves, the greater will be the heat developed by its stoppage.
+
+“At the first contact with the upper regions of the atmosphere,” writes
+Prof. Simon Newcomb, “the whole heavens would be illuminated with a
+resplendence beyond that of a thousand Suns, the sky radiating a light
+which would blind every eye that beheld it, and a heat which would melt
+the hardest rocks.” The same conclusion was reached by Prof. Faye.
+
+When the time comes for a collision with a Comet of formidable size,
+the human race will be in the horrible predicament of knowing the exact
+hour and minute of its doom. The newspapers will print a dispatch from
+some great observatory, reading perhaps like this:
+
+“A telescopic Comet was discovered by Caxton in right ascension 7 hours
+13 minutes 1 second, and declension 17 degrees 28 minutes 31 seconds.
+Moderate motion in a northwest direction.”
+
+[Illustration: “If so large a body with so rapid a motion were to
+strike the Earth—a thing by no means impossible—the shock would
+reduce this beautiful world to its original chaos.”—EDMUND HALLEY.]
+
+At first the discovery produces not even a ripple of excitement.
+Telescopic Comets are discovered too frequently. Three days later the
+discoverer has worked out an ephemeris, which gives the date when the
+body will pass around the Sun, and which indicates the Comet’s path. He
+finds that on a certain date and at a certain hour the Earth and the
+Comet must crash together. Again and again he repeats his calculations,
+hoping that he may have erred. The utmost permissible allowance for
+accelerations and retardations caused by the outer planets of the solar
+system fails to change the result.
+
+The Earth and the Comet must meet. With some hesitation the astronomer
+sends a telegram to a central observatory, which acts as a distributor
+of astronomical news. At first his prediction is discredited and even
+laughed at. Another computation is made at the observatory. Again
+mathematics infallibly indicates the exact time and place of the
+encounter, and the last lingering hope is dispelled. Telegrams are sent
+to astronomical societies, to the leading scientific periodicals and to
+the newspapers.
+
+At first the prediction of the Earth’s doom is received with popular
+incredulity, engendered by years of newspaper misrepresentation. The
+world’s end has been too frequently and too frightfully foretold
+on flamboyant double-page Sunday editions. When the truth is at
+last accepted, after days of insistent repetition of the original
+announcement, a wave of terror runs through the world.
+
+There is no escape. International committees of astronomers meet
+daily to mark the approach of the Comet. Bulletins are published
+announcing the steadily dwindling distance between the world and the
+huge projectile in the sky. The great tail, arching the Heavens as the
+Comet approaches, seems like a mighty, fiery sword held in an unseen
+Titanic hand and relentlessly sweeping down. The temples, churches and
+synagogues are thronged with supplicating multitudes on bended knees,
+in a catalepsy of terror. The stock exchanges, banks, shops and public
+institutions are deserted. Business is at a standstill. The roar of the
+street is hushed. No wagons rattle over the pavement; no hucksters call
+out their wares.
+
+As the Comet draws nearer and nearer, night changes into an awful,
+nocturnal day. Even at noon the Comet outshines the Sun. There is no
+twilight. The Sun sets; but the Comet glows in the sky, another more
+brilliant luminary, marvellously yet fearfully arrayed in a fiery plume
+that overspreads the sky. The Moon is completely lost, and the Stars
+are drowned out in this dazzling glare. Warned by the astronomers,
+mankind takes refuge in subterranean retreats to await its fate.
+
+Long before the actual collision—long before the Earth is reduced
+to a maelstrom of lava, gas, steam and planetary debris—mankind is
+annihilated with merciful swiftness by heat and suffocation. A candle
+flame blown out by a gust of wind is not more quickly extinguished.
+
+When the Comet encounters the upper layers of the atmosphere, there is
+a blinding flash, due to friction between the air and the Comet. A few
+seconds later the crash comes. From within, molten rock and flame, pent
+up for geologic ages, burst forth, geyser-like. The Earth is converted
+into a gigantic volcano, in the eruption of which oceans are spilled
+and continents are torn asunder, to vanish like wax in a furnace.
+
+When it is all over, the Earth swims through space, a blackened
+planetary cinder,—desolate and dead.
+
+
+
+
+THE END OF THE WORLD
+
+
+Camille Flammarion, the French astronomer, in his story, “The End
+of the World,” gives this graphic description of the results of a
+collision between a Comet and our Earth:
+
+In Paris, London, Rome, Berlin, St. Petersburg, Constantinople, New
+York and Chicago—in all the great capitals of the world, in all the
+cities, in all the villages—the frightened people wandered out of
+doors, as one sees ants run about when their ant-hills are disturbed.
+All the affairs of every-day life were forgotten.
+
+All human projects were at a standstill. People seemed to have
+lost interest in all their affairs. They were in a state of
+demoralization—a dejection more abject even than that which is
+produced by sea-sickness.
+
+All places of worship had been crowded on that memorable day when it
+was seen that a collision with a Comet had become inevitable.
+
+In Paris the crowds in the churches were so great that people could
+no longer get near Notre Dame, the Madeleine and the other churches.
+Within the churches, vast congregations of worshippers were on their
+knees praying to God on High. The churches rang with the sounds of
+supplication, but no other sound was heard. The great church organs and
+the bells in the steeples were hushed.
+
+In the streets, on the avenues, in the public squares, there was the
+same dread silence. Nothing was bought or sold. No newspapers were
+hawked about.
+
+The only vehicles seen on the streets were funeral hearses carrying to
+the cemeteries the bodies of the first victims of the Comet. Of these
+there were already many. They were people who had died from fright and
+from heart disease.
+
+With what anxiety everyone waited for the night!
+
+Never, perhaps, was there a more beautiful sunset. Never a clearer sky.
+The sun seemed to dip into a sea of red and gold.
+
+The huge red ball of the sun sank majestically to the horizon. But the
+stars did not appear. Night did not come.
+
+To the solar day succeeded a new day, the daylight of the Comet. Its
+intense light resembled that of an Aurora Borealis, but more vivid,
+coming from a great incandescent spot, which had not been visible
+during the day because it was below the horizon, but which would
+certainly have rivalled the splendour of the Sun.
+
+This luminous spot rose in the East almost at the same time as the full
+Moon. The two luminous bodies rose together, side by side. As they
+rose, the light of the Moon seemed to pale, but the head of the Comet
+increased in splendour with the disappearance of the Sun below the
+western horizon.
+
+Now, after nightfall, the Comet dominated the world—a scarlet-red ball
+with jets of yellow and green flame which seemed to flutter like fiery
+wings.
+
+To the terrified people it seemed like a giant of fire taking
+possession of all Heaven and Earth.
+
+Already the outermost jets of flame had reached the Moon. From one
+instant to the next the flaming rays would descend upon the Earth.
+
+All eyes were distended with horror when it was seen that the horizon
+was lighting up with tiny violet flames as from a vast fire.
+
+An instant afterward, the Comet diminished in brilliancy. This was
+apparently because the Comet, upon touching the atmosphere of our
+Earth, had come within the penumbra of our planet and had lost part of
+its reflected light coming from the Sun. But in reality this apparent
+extinction was the effect of contrast. When the less dazzled eyes of
+the awestruck, human spectators had grown used to this new light, it
+appeared almost as intense as at first, but paler, more sinister and
+sepulchral.
+
+Never before had the Earth been lit up with so sickly a light.
+
+The drouth of the air became intolerable. Heat, as from a huge burning
+oven, came from above. A horrible stench of burning sulphur—due, no
+doubt, to electrified ozone—poisoned the atmosphere.
+
+All the people then saw that their time had come. Many-thousand-throated
+cries rent the air. “The World is burning. We are on fire!” they cried.
+
+All the horizon, in fact, was now lit up with flame, forming a crown
+of blue light. It was, indeed, as had been foreseen by scientists, the
+oxide of carbon igniting in the air and producing anhydrid of carbon.
+Clearly, too, hydrogen from the Comet combined with it.
+
+On a sudden, as the people were gazing terrified, motionless, mute,
+holding their breath, and scared out of their wits, the vault of Heaven
+seemed to be rent asunder from the zenith to the horizon. Through the
+gaping breach there seemed to appear the huge red mouth of a dragon,
+belching forth sheaves of sputtering green flames.
+
+The glare of the atmosphere was so fierce that those who had not
+already hidden themselves in the cellars of their houses, now all
+rushed helter-skelter to the nearest underground openings, be they
+subway steps, cellar doors or sewer manholes. Thousands were crushed or
+maimed during this mad stampede, while many others, frantic from fright
+and stricken with the heat, fell dead from apoplexy.
+
+All reasoning powers seemed to have ceased. Among those cowering in
+dark cellars and subterranean passages below, there was nothing but
+silence, begot by dull resignation and stupor.
+
+Of all this panic-stricken multitude, only the astronomers had remained
+at their posts in the Observatories, making unceasing observations of
+this great astronomic phenomenon. They were the only eye-witnesses of
+the impending collision.
+
+Their calculations had been that the terrestrial globe would penetrate
+into the core of the Comet, as a cannon ball might into a cloud. From
+the first contact of the extreme atmospheric zones of the Earth and of
+the Comet, they had figured, the transit would last four hours and a
+half.
+
+It was easy to compute, since the Comet, being about fifty times as
+large as the Earth, was to be pierced, not in its centre, but at
+one-quarter of the distance from the centre, with a velocity of 173,000
+kilometers an hour.
+
+It was about forty minutes after the first atmospheric impact with the
+Comet, that the heat and horrible stench of burning sulphur became so
+suffocating that a few more moments of this torment would put an end
+to all life. Even the most intrepid of astronomers withdrew into the
+interior of their glass-domed observatories, which they could close
+hermetically as they descended into the deep subterranean vaults.
+
+The longest to stay above was a young assistant astronomer, a girl
+student from California, whose nerves had been steeled during the
+ordeal of the San Francisco earthquake. She remained long enough to
+witness the apparition of a huge, white-hot meteorite, precipitating
+itself southward with the velocity of lightning.
+
+But it was beyond human endurance to remain longer above. It was no
+longer possible to breathe. To the intense heat and atmospheric drouth,
+destroying all vital functions, was added the poisoning of our air by
+the oxide of carbon.
+
+The ears rang as from the tolling of funeral bells, and all hearts were
+in a flutter of feverish palpitation. And always, everywhere, there was
+that suffocating stench of sulphur.
+
+Now a shower of fire fell from the glowing sky. It was raining
+shooting-stars and white-hot meteorites, most of which burst like
+bombs. The fragments of these, like flying shrapnel, crashed through
+the roofs and set fire to the buildings.
+
+To the conflagration of the sky were added the flames of fire
+everywhere on earth.
+
+Claps of ear-splitting thunder followed each other incessantly,
+produced partly by the explosions of the meteors, and partly by a
+tremendous electric thunderstorm. Rifts of lightning zig-zagged hither
+and thither.
+
+A continuous rumbling, like that of distant drums, filled the ears of
+the cowering people below, awaiting their fate. This low rumble was
+interspersed with the deafening detonations of exploding meteors and
+the high shriek of hurtling aerial fragments.
+
+Then followed unearthly noises, like the seething of some immense
+boiling cauldron, the wild wailing of winds, and the quaking of the
+soil where the earth’s crust was giving way.
+
+This unearthly tempest became so frightful, so fraught with agony and
+mad terror, that the multitudes grovelling below were overcome with
+paralysis, and lay prone. Laid low like dumb brutes, they met their
+doom.
+
+The end of all had come.
+
+
+
+
+_COLOPHON_
+
+
+                 _POST HOC, NON PROPTER HOC:
+           Sic veteres de multis rebus opinabantur,
+             Eodemque dicto eas jugiter absolvisse
+                     Recte sibi visi sunt,
+              Vt puta quaecumque et qualiacumque
+            Cometarum saeculares reditus sequuntur.
+               CVR TV ITAQVE, forsitan quaeras,
+          Haec auditu minime jucunda nobis narrasti,
+    Terrae motus, fluminum inundationes, annonae defectus,
+              Pestes mortiferas, incendia, bella,
+                  regumque magnorum excidia?
+                      Si tibi cordi est,
+                   LECTOR BENEVOLENTISSIME,
+                  rationem nostram didicisse,
+                      eia, veram accipe:
+                     MVNDVS VVLT DECIPI._
+
+
+_FINIS._
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK COMET LORE ***
+
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+<div style='text-align:center; font-size:1.2em; font-weight:bold'>The Project Gutenberg eBook of Comet Lore, by Edwin Emerson</div>
+
+<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
+most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
+whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
+of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online
+at <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a>. If you
+are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the
+country where you are located before using this eBook.
+</div>
+
+<p style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Title: Comet Lore</p>
+
+<div style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Author: Edwin Emerson</div>
+
+<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>Release Date: November 26, 2021 [eBook #66824]</div>
+
+<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>Language: English</div>
+
+<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>Character set encoding: UTF-8</div>
+
+<div style='display:block; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Produced by: deaurider and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive)</div>
+
+<div style='margin-top:2em; margin-bottom:4em'>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK COMET LORE ***</div>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" />
+
+<div id="FRONTIS" class="figcenter">
+  <img  src="images/frontispiece.jpg" alt="" width="400" height="637" />
+  <p class="center">HALLEY’S COMET OF 1910, AS SEEN IN NEW YORK,<br />
+              LOOKING WESTWARD, DURING THE LATTER PART OF MAY.</p>
+</div>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" />
+<h1>COMET LORE<br /><span class="h_subtitle"><br />Halley’s Comet
+in History<br /> and Astronomy</span></h1>
+
+<p class="center space-above3">By</p>
+<p class="f150">EDWIN EMERSON</p>
+<p class="f90"><i>Author of “A History of the Nineteenth Century,” Etc.</i></p>
+
+<p class="center space-above3">PRINTED BY<br />
+THE SCHILLING PRESS<br />137-139 EAST 25th STREET<br />
+NEW YORK</p>
+
+<p class="center space-above2">Copyrighted, 1910, by <span class="smcap">Edwin Emerson</span><br />
+Entered at Stationers’ Hall, London<br />All rights reserved under Berne Convention</p>
+
+<p class="center space-above2">Printed in the United States of America by<br />
+the Schilling Press in New York<br />from the electrotyped plates</p>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" />
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<h2 class="nobreak">CONTENTS</h2>
+</div>
+
+<table border="0" cellspacing="0" summary="TOC" cellpadding="0" >
+  <tbody><tr>
+      <td class="tdr" colspan="2"><small>PAGE</small></td>
+   </tr><tr>
+      <td class="tdl">Halley’s Comet</td>
+      <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_7">&nbsp;7</a></td>
+   </tr><tr>
+      <td class="tdl">The Terror of the Comet</td>
+      <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_10">10</a></td>
+   </tr><tr>
+      <td class="tdl">Famous Comets of Olden Times</td>
+      <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_30">30</a></td>
+   </tr><tr>
+      <td class="tdl">The Star of Bethlehem</td>
+      <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_39">39</a></td>
+   </tr><tr>
+      <td class="tdl">Great Events and Disasters Linked with Comets<span class="ws2">&nbsp;</span></td>
+      <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_42">42</a></td>
+   </tr><tr>
+      <td class="tdl">Halley’s Comet the Bloodiest of All</td>
+      <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_60">60</a></td>
+   </tr><tr>
+      <td class="tdl">The Story of Edmund Halley</td>
+      <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_90">90</a></td>
+   </tr><tr>
+      <td class="tdl">What Are Comets?</td>
+      <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_101">101</a></td>
+   </tr><tr>
+      <td class="tdl">Our Peril from Collision with the Comet</td>
+      <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_113">113</a></td>
+   </tr><tr>
+      <td class="tdl">The End of the World</td>
+      <td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_122">122</a></td>
+   </tr>
+ </tbody>
+</table>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" />
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<h2 class="nobreak">ILLUSTRATIONS</h2>
+</div>
+
+<table border="0" cellspacing="0" summary="LOI" cellpadding="0" >
+  <tbody><tr>
+      <td class="tdr" colspan="2"><small>PAGE</small></td>
+   </tr><tr>
+      <td class="tdl">Cover Designs by William Stevens</td>
+      <td class="tdr">&nbsp;</td>
+   </tr><tr>
+      <td class="tdl">Halley’s Comet of 1910</td>
+      <td class="tdr"><a href="#FRONTIS">Frontispiece</a></td>
+   </tr><tr>
+      <td class="tdl">The Terror of the Comet in Antiquity</td>
+      <td class="tdr"><a href="#I013">13</a></td>
+   </tr><tr>
+      <td class="tdl">The Terror of the Comet in Mediæval Times</td>
+      <td class="tdr"><a href="#I020">20</a></td>
+   </tr><tr>
+      <td class="tdl">The Terror of the Comet at the Present Day</td>
+      <td class="tdr"><a href="#I025">25</a></td>
+   </tr><tr>
+      <td class="tdl">The Latest Photograph of the Comet of 1910</td>
+      <td class="tdr"><a href="#I028">28</a></td>
+   </tr><tr>
+      <td class="tdl">Napoleon’s Comet of 1811</td>
+      <td class="tdr"><a href="#I053">53</a></td>
+   </tr><tr>
+      <td class="tdl">The Great Comet of 1843</td>
+      <td class="tdr"><a href="#I056">56</a></td>
+   </tr><tr>
+      <td class="tdl">Comet of Tel-el-Kebir, 1882</td>
+      <td class="tdr"><a href="#I059">59</a></td>
+   </tr><tr>
+      <td class="tdl">Halley’s Comet of 1835</td>
+      <td class="tdr"><a href="#I062">62</a></td>
+   </tr><tr>
+      <td class="tdl">Halley’s Comet of 1682</td>
+      <td class="tdr"><a href="#I069">69</a></td>
+   </tr><tr>
+      <td class="tdl">Halley’s Comet of 1066 in the Bayeux Tapestry</td>
+      <td class="tdr"><a href="#I078">78</a></td>
+   </tr><tr>
+      <td class="tdl">William the Conqueror, an English Dream</td>
+      <td class="tdr"><a href="#I081">81</a></td>
+   </tr><tr>
+      <td class="tdl">Portrait of Edmund Halley</td>
+      <td class="tdr"><a href="#I092">92</a></td>
+   </tr><tr>
+      <td class="tdl">The Orbit of Halley’s Comet</td>
+      <td class="tdr"><a href="#I103A">103</a></td>
+   </tr><tr>
+      <td class="tdl">Relative Sizes of the Earth, the Moon and Halley’s Comet</td>
+      <td class="tdr"><a href="#I103B">103</a></td>
+   </tr><tr>
+      <td class="tdl">Donati’s Comet of 1858</td>
+      <td class="tdr"><a href="#I106">106</a></td>
+   </tr><tr>
+      <td class="tdl">The Civil War Comet of 1863</td>
+      <td class="tdr"><a href="#I109">109</a></td>
+   </tr><tr>
+      <td class="tdl">Coggia’s Comet of 1874</td>
+      <td class="tdr"><a href="#I112">112</a></td>
+   </tr><tr>
+      <td class="tdl">Halley’s Conception of a Collision with the Comet</td>
+      <td class="tdr"><a href="#I119">119</a></td>
+   </tr>
+ </tbody>
+</table>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" />
+
+<p class="f150"><b>TO THE COMET</b></p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0">“Thereby Hangs a Tail.”&mdash;<i>Shakespeare.</i></div>
+  </div>
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0">Lone wanderer of the trackless sky!</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">Companionless! Say, dost thou fly</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">Along thy solitary path,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">A flaming messenger of wrath&mdash;</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">Warning with thy portentous train</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">Of earthquake, plague and battle-plain?</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">Some say that thou dost never fail</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">To bring some evil in thy tail.</div>
+    <div class="verse indent28"><span class="smcap">W. Lattey.</span></div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" />
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_7">[Pg 7]</span></p>
+<h2 class="nobreak">THE COMING OF THE COMET</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class="drop-cap"><span class="smcap">The</span> Sun will surely rise and set to-morrow.</p>
+
+<p>Just so surely must a Comet flare forth in our Heavens this Spring.</p>
+
+<p>Star gazers, astronomers and learned men have been waiting for this
+Comet all over the earth&mdash;in America, in Europe, in far China.</p>
+
+<p>They have known for certain that this Comet would come; and they knew
+just when and where in the Heavens the Comet would first show itself to
+the naked eye&mdash;down to the very night.</p>
+
+<p>All this has been known so surely because this same Comet has been seen
+by the people of this earth before.</p>
+
+<p>It came and went seventy-four years ago. Seventy-six years before that,
+it came and went. And seventy-six years before that, the Comet had come
+and gone.</p>
+
+<p>As long as human beings have lived on this earth&mdash;for thousands and
+thousands of years&mdash;human eyes have beheld this same Comet every
+seventy-six years or so.</p>
+
+<p>The longest time between the Comet’s coming has been seventy-nine
+years. The shortest interval of all&mdash;74½ years&mdash;was this time.</p>
+
+<p>For thousands of years in the past, wise men have written down records
+of this Comet.</p>
+
+<p>Long, long ago, when white men were still savages who dwelt in caves,
+patient star gazers in China and Chaldea studied the motions of this Comet.
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_8">[Pg 8]</span></p>
+
+<p>Farther back than that, in the hoary days before the art of writing
+was known, ancient bards sang of this Star and its hairy tail. Some of
+their words are still remembered.</p>
+
+<p>Artists have drawn pictures of this Comet. Their pictures are still
+shown.</p>
+
+<p>Women have stitched images of this Comet into their handiwork. Some of
+this handiwork can still be seen.</p>
+
+<p>Coiners have stamped designs of this comet on their coins and medals.
+Those coins are still shown in museums.</p>
+
+<p>Priests, Popes and great Divines have preached about this Comet. Their
+sermons are still preserved in the records of the Church.</p>
+
+<p>Learned men have written in their books what happened when the Comet
+came. Those books are read to-day.</p>
+
+<p>The coming of this Comet in olden times has been fixed in lasting
+records, which he who runs may read.</p>
+
+<p>Nothing in all History is more certain than the story of this Comet.</p>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" />
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_9">[Pg 9]</span></p>
+<h2 class="nobreak">WHY HALLEY’S COMET?</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class="drop-cap"><span class="smcap">Two</span> hundred and
+twenty-eight years ago, when this Comet was seen shining over the City
+of London, the great astronomer, Edmund Halley, made a special study of it.</p>
+
+<p>Halley was the first to say that this Comet had come before and would
+surely come again. He wrote down the time when the Comet would come
+again, long after he should be dead.</p>
+
+<p>“If it should return,” he wrote, “according to our predictions, about
+the year 1758, impartial posterity will not refuse to acknowledge that
+this was first discovered by an Englishman.”</p>
+
+<p>The Comet returned, as he had foretold, seventeen years after Halley’s
+death, when it was first seen in 1758, on Christmas night, by a man in
+Saxony, named Palitsch, who was looking for the Comet.</p>
+
+<p>From that day this Comet has been called after Halley.</p>
+
+<p>Since then many famous astronomers, such as Clairaut, Pontécoulant and
+Laplace in France, have calculated the dates for the Comet’s return.</p>
+
+<p>Last time, in 1835, Halley’s Comet returned within a few nights of
+their prediction.</p>
+
+<p>This time, so the astronomers figured seventy-five years ago, the Comet
+should be plainly seen after dark late this May.</p>
+
+<p>What they predicted has come true.</p>
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" />
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_10">[Pg 10]</span></p>
+<h2 class="nobreak">THE TERROR OF THE COMET</h2>
+</div>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent3">“Canst thou fearless gaze</div>
+    <div class="verse indent4">Even night by night on that prodigious Blaze,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent4">That hairy Comet, that long streaming Star,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent4">Which threatens Earth with Famine, Plague and War?”</div>
+    <div class="verse indent36">&mdash;<i>Sylvester.</i></div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p class="drop-cap"><span class="smcap">So long</span> as the memory
+of man goes back, the appearance of a Comet has always been taken as a
+just cause for dread.</p>
+
+<p>In the train of Comets, it has ever been held, come wars, bloodshed,
+fires, floods, plagues, famine and the fall of mighty rulers.</p>
+
+<p>Our Holy Bible confirms this time-honoured belief.</p>
+
+<p>The Saviour Himself said, according to the Gospel of St. Luke, Chap.
+XXI., Verse 10-11:</p>
+
+<p class="blockquot">“Nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom
+against kingdom; and great earthquakes shall be in divers places, and
+famines and pestilences; and fearful sights and great signs shall there
+be from Heaven.”</p>
+
+<p>In the Revelation of St. John the Divine (Chap. VIII., Verse 10) we read:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+<p>“There fell from Heaven a great star burning as a torch,” and again
+(Chap. XII., Verse 3):</p>
+
+<p>“There was seen another sign in Heaven, and behold a great red dragon
+... and his tail draweth a third part of the stars in Heaven. And
+behold the third woe cometh quickly.” (Chap. XII., Verse 14.)</p>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_11">[Pg 11]</span>
+The “flaming sword” in the hands of the angel of the Lord, when Adam
+and Eve were driven from the Garden of Eden, many sacred writers hold,
+can only be interpreted as a Comet.</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent1">“For the Almighty set before the door</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">Of th’ holy park a seraphim that bore</div>
+    <div class="verse indent2">A warning sword, whose body shined bright</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">A flaming Comet in the midst of night.”</div>
+    <div class="verse indent30">&mdash;<i>Todd.</i></div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>So, too, when Jerusalem was to be wasted by a plague, David beheld a
+Comet in the shape of a flaming sword:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+<p>“And David lifted up his eyes and saw the angel of the Lord stand
+between the earth and the Heaven, having a drawn sword in his hand
+stretched out over Jerusalem.”</p>
+
+<p class="author space-below2">&mdash;<i>I. Chron. XXI. 16.</i></p>
+</div>
+
+<p>The fall of Satan, some sacred writers hold, was marked by the
+appearance of a Comet. In Isaiah (XIV. 12) we find:</p>
+
+<p class="blockquot">“How art thou fallen from Heaven, O flaming one, son
+of the morning!”</p>
+
+<p>John Milton, in his “Paradise Lost,” has fixed this image in immortal
+verse:</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent3">“Satan stood</div>
+    <div class="verse indent4">Unterrified, and as a Comet burned</div>
+    <div class="verse indent4">That fired the length of Ophiuchus huge</div>
+    <div class="verse indent4">In th’ arctic sky, and from its horrid hair,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent4">Shakes pestilence and war.”</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>The Great Deluge, described in Holy Writ, came after the appearance
+of a mighty Comet (Halley’s Comet), so Dr. William Whiston, Sir Isaac
+Newton’s successor in the Lucasian chair of Mathematics at Cambridge,
+set forth in a special treatise. The great French astronomer, Laplace,
+also reached the same conclusion.
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_12">[Pg 12]</span></p>
+
+<p>This same Comet (Halley’s Comet) likewise foretold the final fall of
+the Holy City, Jerusalem, in the year 70 after Christ. This Comet was
+seen by St. Peter. Josephus in his History of the Jewish Wars recorded
+the nightly appearance of this Comet over the City of Jerusalem just
+before the war which ended with the destruction of the Holy City.</p>
+
+<p class="blockquot">“Amongst other warnings,” writes Josephus, who saw
+this Comet with his own eyes, “a Comet of the kind called sword-shaped,
+because their tails appear to represent the blade of a sword, was seen
+above the city for the space of a whole year.”</p>
+
+<p>Josephus at the time rebuked his Jewish countrymen for listening to
+false prophets while so clear a sign from Heaven was before their very
+eyes.</p>
+
+<p>This same Comet (Halley’s Comet) reappeared at a critical period of the
+rule of Constantine the Great, the first Christian Emperor of Rome. He
+first beheld his sign from Heaven in the midst of battle as it blazed
+overhead in the sign of a Cross. With the help of his mother, the
+sainted Helen, Constantine was moved thereby to turn Christian.</p>
+
+<p>Constantinople, the great capital of the Orient, which owes its name
+to this same Emperor Constantine, was lost to Christendom in the year
+1453, when the Turks overran the great city with fire and sword. This
+event, it is recorded, was heralded by another appearance of a Comet.
+Three years later, when the Turks were about to descend upon Belgrade,
+another Comet (Halley’s Comet) spread consternation throughout Europe.</p>
+
+<p>At that time Pope Calixtus III., on the appearance of this Comet,
+seeing that evils were impending for the human race, called for prayers
+that the Almighty would turn these evils upon the Turks, the enemies of
+the Christian faith.
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_13">[Pg 13]</span></p>
+
+<div id="I013" class="figcenter">
+  <img  src="images/i_013.jpg" alt="" width="400" height="610" />
+  <p class="center">“A SWORD-SHAPED COMET BLAZED<br /> OVER THE DOOMED HOLY CITY.”<br />
+            &mdash;Josephus’ “<i>History of Judea</i>.”</p>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_14">[Pg 14]</span>
+At the same time the Holy Father gave orders for all Church bells to be
+tolled at noon to remind faithful Christians to pray for those battling
+against the Turk.</p>
+
+<p>Into the Ave Maria were put the words: “From the Devil, the Turk and
+the Comet, Good Lord, deliver us!”</p>
+
+<p>Since that time in most Catholic countries the Angelus is still
+regularly rung at noon. In Italy, even to-day, the cakes sold before
+the church doors at noon go by the name of <i>Comete</i>.</p>
+
+<p>All the great Fathers of the Church have taught that Comets are to be
+taken as signs from Heaven.</p>
+
+<p>Baeda, the Venerable, declared in the seventh century in England, that
+“Comets portend revolutions of kingdoms, pestilence, war, winds, or heat.”</p>
+
+<p>John of Damascus, preaching in the same century in the Orient, laid
+down the same belief.</p>
+
+<p>St. Thomas Aquinas, the great Light of the Church in the thirteenth
+century, accepted and handed down the same opinion.</p>
+
+<p>The sainted Albert the Great, the most noted thinker of the Church in
+the Middle Ages, received and taught the same doctrine.</p>
+
+<p>The teachings of these Church Fathers as to Comets have been commended
+in our own day by Pope Pius IX.</p>
+
+<p>The great teachers of other religions, likewise, have laid down
+identical beliefs as to the meaning of Comets.</p>
+
+<p>The sacred books of India are full of awed references to the baleful
+influence of Comets.</p>
+
+<p>The ancient year books of China, written centuries before white men
+kept any records, tell of the appearance of Comets and of the disasters
+they foretold.
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_15">[Pg 15]</span></p>
+
+<p>The Mohametans and their wise Arab star gazers, when they saw a Comet
+in the Heavens, knew that it meant war.</p>
+
+<p>The woe of one Comet (Halley’s Comet of 1456), which had the shape of
+a Turkish scimitar, so the Arab soothsayers foretold, would be turned
+against their enemies. This was the same Comet which brought such fear
+to the hearts of Pope Calixtus III. and all his Christian followers.</p>
+
+<p>Thus it can be seen that Comets have been held to foretell disaster on
+one side, and victory on the other.</p>
+
+<p>The Comets which conquerors hailed as their guiding stars, have meant
+war and bloodshed and disaster to those whom they came to conquer.</p>
+
+<p>The same Comets which shone upon the birth of mighty rulers, have
+blazed in warning of their death.</p>
+
+<p>Julius Caesar, who was born under a Comet, saw his bloody end foretold
+by another Comet.</p>
+
+<p>Therefore, Shakespeare in his play “Julius Caesar,” makes Calpurnia
+say to Caesar:</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent3">“When beggars die, there are no Comets seen;</div>
+    <div class="verse indent4">The Heavens themselves blaze forth the death of princes.”</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>On the night of Caesar’s assassination, when the Comet was seen blazing
+at its brightest, the Romans said that it had come to bear away the
+great soul of the murdered Caesar.</p>
+
+<p>At the death of Nero, the Roman Emperor, who persecuted the Christians,
+a Comet blazed forth again. The Roman historian Suetonius, who wrote
+the Life of Emperor Nero, thus described this Comet:</p>
+
+<p class="blockquot">“A blazing star, which was commonly held to
+portend destruction to Kings and Princes, reappeared above the horizon
+several nights in succession.”</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_16">[Pg 16]</span>
+Another great Comet (Halley’s again) reappeared when Attila, the King
+of the Huns, the “Scourge of God,” was overthrown in the greatest
+battle of Christendom on the Catalaunian fields.</p>
+
+<p>Claudius, a Roman writer of that period, then stated that “a Comet was
+never seen in the Heavens without implying some dreadful event.”</p>
+
+<p>This has ever been the belief of all the great poets of olden time.</p>
+
+<p>Homer, the greatest poet of Ancient Greece, a thousand years before the
+birth of Christ, sang of:</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent3">“The red star, that from his flaming hair</div>
+    <div class="verse indent4">Shakes down diseases, pestilence and war.”</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>Let it be explained here that the word Comet in Greek means
+“long-haired,” from <i>kome</i>,&mdash;hair.</p>
+
+<p>Virgil, the greatest Roman poet, sang of “the baleful glare of bloody
+Comets,” and again, of “dreadful Comets blazing in the sky.”</p>
+
+<p>Tasso, the greatest of Italian poets after Dante, sang thus of Comets
+in his “Jerusalem Delivered”:</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent3">“Qual con le chiome sanguinose horrende</div>
+    <div class="verse indent4">Splender Cometa suol per l’aria adusta,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent4">Che i regni muta, e i feri morbi adduce,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent4">Ai purpurei tiranni infausta luce.”</div>
+    <div class="verse indent12">&mdash;<i>Gerusalemme Liberata,</i></div>
+    <div class="verse indent14"><i>Canto VII., Stanza 52.</i></div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>Rendered thus by Wiffen into English:</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent3">“As with its bloody locks let loose in air</div>
+    <div class="verse indent4">Horribly bright, the Comet shows whose shine</div>
+    <div class="verse indent4">Plagues the parched World, whose looks the Nations scare,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent4">Before whose face States change, and Powers decline,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent4">To purple Tyrants all, an inauspicious sign.”</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_17">[Pg 17]</span></p>
+<p>The great English poets, on their part, have lifted up their voices
+to sing of the dire effects of Comets.</p>
+
+<p>Shakespeare, the greatest of them all, abounds in allusions to these
+dread wandering stars.</p>
+
+<p>Thus he makes Horatio in the first scene of “Hamlet” speak with awe of:</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent3">“Stars with trains of fire and dews of blood;</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<hr class="tb" />
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0">And even the like precurse of fierce events,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">As harbingers preceding still the fates</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">And prologue to the omen coming on.”</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>More briefly Shakespeare in his “Henry VI.” refers to:</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent3">“A Comet of revenge</div>
+    <div class="verse indent4">A prophet to the fall of all our foes”;</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>and again, in “The Taming of the Shrew” to:</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent3">“Some Comet or unusual prodigy.”</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>Spenser in his “Faerie Queene” sings of a woman’s hair loosely
+dispersed in the wind:</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent3">“All as a blazing starre doth farre outcast</div>
+    <div class="verse indent4">His heavy beames, and flaming lockes dispredd,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent4">At sight whereof the people stand aghast;</div>
+    <div class="verse indent4">But the sage Wizzard telles, as he has redd,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent4">That it importunes death and doleful drearyhedd.”</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>John Milton, besides likening Satan to a Comet, as before quoted, also
+showed that he shared in the belief that the flaming swords mentioned
+in Holy Writ were Comets:</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent3">“High in front advanced</div>
+    <div class="verse indent4">The brandish’d sword of God before them blazed</div>
+    <div class="verse indent4">Fierce as a Comet.”</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_18">[Pg 18]</span>
+The poet Young, in his “Night Thoughts,” aptly writes of the Comet:</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent3">“Hast thou ne’er seen the Comet’s flaming light?</div>
+    <div class="verse indent4">Th’ illustrious stranger passing, terror sheds</div>
+    <div class="verse indent4">On gazing Nations, from his fiery train.”</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>The poets of other nations have written of Comets in like vein.
+There is an old German rhyme, sung by German school children even
+to-day, which has been put into English by Dr. Andrew D. White in his
+“History of the Doctrine of Comets”:</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent3">“Eight things there be a Comet brings,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent4">When it on high doth horrid range;</div>
+    <div class="verse indent4">Wind, Famine, Plague, and Death to Kings,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent4">War, Earthquake, Floods and Direful Change.”</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>This little rhyme was originally put forth for German school children
+by two Protestant preachers of Basle, Switzerland, at the time of the
+great Comet of 1618, which heralded the outbreak of the great “Thirty
+Years’ War.”</p>
+
+<p>These Protestant ministers got their belief in Comets and their evil
+influence upon mankind not from the Church of Rome, but from the
+Bible teachings of such great Protestant reformers as Martin Luther,
+Melanchthon, Zwingli, Calvin, John Knox of Scotland, Bishop Jeremy
+Taylor and John Howe, the great Nonconformist divine.</p>
+
+<p>Martin Luther preached in one of his Advent sermons:</p>
+
+<p class="blockquot">“The heathen write that the Comet may arise from
+natural causes; but God creates not one that does not foretoken a sure
+calamity.”</p>
+
+<p>Luther’s friend, Melanchthon, in a letter, declared Comets to be
+“heralds of Heaven’s wrath.”
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_19">[Pg 19]</span></p>
+
+<p>Zwingli, in 1531, declared that the great Comet of that year (Halley’s
+Comet) was sent by God to betoken calamity.</p>
+
+<p>John Knox, preaching in his Scottish kirk at Edinboro, declared that he
+saw in Comets tokens of the wrath of Heaven.</p>
+
+<p>The great divines of the Church of England,&mdash;from Cranmer, Bishop
+Latimer, Archbishops Spottiswoode and Bramhall, Bishop Jeremy Taylor,
+down to our own times, clearly preached the doctrine that Comets must
+be taken as tokens from Heaven.</p>
+
+<p>Thus the Comet of 1572 was pointed out from the pulpits of England
+and Scotland as a token of Heaven’s wrath and warning at the St.
+Bartholomew Massacre on the night of August 24, 1572, when thirty
+thousand Huguenots were murdered in the streets of Paris and elsewhere
+in France.</p>
+
+<p>Across the sea, in the new Commonwealth of Massachusetts, the great
+New England divine and President of Harvard College, Increase Mather,
+on the apparition of the great Comet now known as Halley’s, in 1682,
+preached on “Heaven’s Wrath Alarm to the World&mdash;wherein is shown that
+fearful sights and signs in the Heavens are the presages of great
+calamities at hand.”</p>
+
+<p>Increase Mather preached on the text taken from the Book of Revelation:
+“And the third Angel sounded, and there fell a great Star burning as a
+Torch, ... and behold the Third Woe cometh quickly.”</p>
+
+<p>In this sermon the great preacher told of the Roman Emperor Vespasian,
+who, when warned of the omen of a Comet, made fun of it, and then died
+miserably.</p>
+
+<p>So Mather preached: “For the Lord hath fired his beacon in the Heavens
+among the stars of God there. The fearful sign is not yet out of
+sight.... Do we not see the sword blazing over us?... Doth God threaten
+our very Heavens? O pray unto Him, that he would not take away stars
+and send Comets to succeed them!”
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_20">[Pg 20]</span></p>
+
+<div id="I020" class="figcenter">
+  <img  src="images/i_020.jpg" alt="" width="400" height="627" />
+  <p class="center">THE TERROR OF THE COMET OF 1531.<br />
+                      FROM AN OLD NUREMBERG WOOD-CUT.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_21">[Pg 21]</span>
+The profound Russian thinker Tolstoy, in his great book “War and
+Peace,” has written of the flaming Comet of 1811. This was the famous
+“Comet of Napoleon,” which blazed over Western Europe when Napoleon was
+gathering his grand army for its disastrous march into Russia and to
+Moscow.</p>
+
+<p>At Moscow, the ancient capital of Russia, this Comet was observed by
+anxious thousands. One night there was this talk between a novice nun
+and the Abbess of her Convent. On their way to vesper service one
+evening in Moscow the nun suddenly beheld the Comet for the first time
+and asked: “What is that star?”</p>
+
+<p>The Abbess answered: “It is not a star. It is a Comet.”</p>
+
+<p>“But what is a Comet?” asked the young nun. “I have never
+heard that word.”</p>
+
+<p>The Abbess then answered: “Comets are signs in Heaven, which God sends
+before misfortunes.”</p>
+
+<p>Shortly after this the bloody battle of Borodino was fought, and
+Napoleon, with his army, appeared before the gates of Moscow. The
+hundred-towered city was abandoned by the Russians and was given over
+to the flames.</p>
+
+<p>Years afterward this same nun thus told her story, as printed in the
+“Revue des Deux Mondes”:</p>
+
+<p class="blockquot">“Every night the Comet blazed in the Heavens, and
+we all asked ourselves: What misfortune does it bring? Then the enemy
+came, and our sacred city was put to the torch. Our convent, together
+with all other cloisters, monasteries and churches, was burned to the
+ground.”</p>
+
+<p>Many other writers of the time who saw the great Comets that blazoned
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_22">[Pg 22]</span>
+Napoleon’s destructive wars have recorded how they were universally
+taken as omens of the great conqueror’s bloody trail.</p>
+
+<p>Napoleon himself gloried in this dread omen and hailed the Comet as his
+“guiding star.”</p>
+
+<p>All this has been fully set forth by the famous French astronomer
+Messier, a latter-day observer of Halley’s Comet, who wrote a special
+book on “The Wonderful Comet which appeared at the Birth of Napoleon
+the Great.”</p>
+
+<p>As for the many Comets that have blazed down upon other great
+conquerors and other bloody wars, before the comparatively recent
+Comets of the American Civil War and the Napoleonic Wars, they are all
+set down in a special History of Comets.</p>
+
+<p>In this great work, entitled “A History of All Comets,” the Latin
+scholar Lubienitius has pointed out all the calamities and dire events
+which attended the appearance of each and every Comet recorded in history.</p>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" />
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_23">[Pg 23]</span></p>
+<h2 class="nobreak">THE EFFECTS OF COMETS ON MAN</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class="drop-cap"><span class="smcap">Some</span> thinkers have
+pointed out that there has often been a direct connection between
+the feelings produced in the human soul by the appearance of a Comet
+and the human deeds of violence or the human epidemics and excessive
+mortality following the widespread terror produced by Comets.</p>
+
+<p>Only this year (1910) the appearance of Inness’ Comet over Mexico
+caused a panic-stricken holy pilgrimage to the Shrine of Talpa. In
+China, too, it caused terror, resulting in Christian massacres.</p>
+
+<p>Hence, also, several Jewish massacres inspired by Comets in the past
+and hence also so many terrifying plagues connected with Comets.</p>
+
+<p>Thus Ambroise Paré, the “Father of French Surgery,” who flourished
+in the sixteenth century, has recorded the effect produced upon his
+contemporaries by the Comet of 1528.</p>
+
+<p>“This Comet was so horrible,” wrote Dr. Paré, “so frightful, and it
+produced such great terror among the common people, that many died of
+fear and many others fell sick.”</p>
+
+<p>Dr. Paré himself appears to have come under the influence of this fear,
+judging from his awestruck description of the appearance of this Comet:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+<p>“It appeared to be of excessive length; and was of the colour of
+blood. At the summit of it was seen the figure of a bent arm, holding
+in its hand a great sword as if about to strike.</p>
+
+<p>“At the end of the point there were three stars. On both sides of
+the rays of this Comet were seen a great number of axes, knives, and
+blood-coloured swords, among which were a great number of hideous human
+faces with beards and bristling hair.”</p>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_24">[Pg 24]</span>
+Hannibal committed suicide on account of a Comet. So did Mithridates.
+So did one Toma, in Hungary, only this year.</p>
+
+<p>King Louis “the Debonair” of France, died from fear of a Comet
+(Halley’s Comet) in 837 A. D.</p>
+
+<p>Emperor Charles V., of Germany and Spain, the monarch who boasted that
+“the sun never set on his dominions,” was so moved by the appearance of
+a Comet in 1556, that he gave up his crown and became a monk.</p>
+
+<p>Certain metaphysicians have held that there is a substance in a Comet,
+or in its tail, which has a weird effect on man’s brain, as moonshine
+is believed to have on some men, making them lunatics. As a matter
+of fact, as Arago pointed out, Comets have caused tremendous spring
+tides just like the moon. The same irresistible pull of gravity or
+electricity or light-pressure must perforce affect other substances
+besides water, such as human brains.</p>
+
+<p>According to this metaphysical theory, the close approach of a Comet
+to the earth affects and disturbs men’s brains, so that men are inwardly
+stirred with warlike impulses. Hence the great wars almost invariably
+following the appearance of Comets.</p>
+
+<p>Hence, too, the appeal to Comets made by so many conquerors, from
+William the Conqueror down to Napoleon. In the homely phrase of one
+writer, “the inner eye of man, under the weird effect of a Comet, sees
+red and makes him thirst for blood.”</p>
+
+<p class="space-below2">Those rare beings who have lying latent within
+them the gift of Second Sight or divination, according to this same
+metaphysical theory, upon the near approach of Comets find themselves
+stirred to prophesy. Hence, so many marvellous prophesies inspired by
+Comets since the ancient days of Merlin, the seer.
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_25">[Pg 25]</span></p>
+
+<div id="I025" class="figcenter">
+  <img  src="images/i_025.jpg" alt="" width="400" height="598" />
+  <p class="center">“THE COMET OF 1910 SO ALARMED THE PEOPLE OF MEXICO<br />
+        THAT MANY THOUSANDS WENT ON A HOLY PILGRIMAGE TO<br />
+        THE SHRINE OF TALPA IN XALISCO.”&mdash;<i>Mexican Herald.</i></p>
+</div>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" />
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_26">[Pg 26]</span></p>
+<h2 class="nobreak">THIS YEAR’S PROPHECIES</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class="drop-cap"><span class="smcap">The</span> return of Halley’s Comet
+in this Year of Our Lord 1910 has already called forth several memorable
+prophesies.</p>
+
+<p>On January 20th the French astrologer and prophetess Madame de Thebes,
+who predicted the disastrous French floods of this year, as well as the
+coming of Inness’ unexpected Comet, uttered the following prophesies:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+<p>“This year, 1910, will be one to look back to with trembling.</p>
+
+<p>“The earth is under a terrific strain from Comets and planetary
+revolutions. Human destiny is red. That means blood. Political events
+are black. Terrible changes are imminent.</p>
+
+<p>“This winter, France will be swept by terrible floods. Paris will
+be under water. The influence of form changes in other planets and the
+coming of a Comet will affect us for the worse.</p>
+
+<p>“The strain of the stars will be most severely felt in America.
+The people of America will have to pay dearly for all their riches
+and sudden prosperity. With the coming of another Comet disaster will
+descend upon America.</p>
+
+<p>“A financial crash is impending, to be followed by a long string of
+suicides. Black ruling us, men will commit all manner of crimes and
+knaveries for money.</p>
+
+<p>“The times are swaying toward degeneration. We are swinging within
+the evil influence of a strange orbit. Our souls are jarred from their
+proper bearings. I dare not say all that is revealed to me. It would be
+too terrible.”</p>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_27">[Pg 27]</span>
+Soon after this prophesy was uttered came the first of such suicides.
+Adam Toma, a wealthy landowner of Szozona, Hungary, cut his throat
+because of the Comet. He left a note saying that the Comet was the
+cause of his death.</p>
+
+<p>Cardinal Gibbons later expressed his profound belief that the Paris
+floods of this year were sent by God as a punishment to the Parisians
+for their frivolities and sins, of which the Comet was a fiery warning.</p>
+
+<p>Commenting on Madame de Thebes’ predictions and her connection of the
+Comet of 1910 with this year’s spring-floods in France, Italy and
+Germany, the French astronomer Henri Deslandres, late Director of the
+Astronomical Observatory of Meudon and member of the French Academy of
+Sciences, said:</p>
+
+<p class="blockquot">“However distant Comets may be, it is not at
+all impossible that their enormous tails, measuring 75,000,000 to
+125,000,000 miles in length, may come in contact with our atmosphere.
+The theory that a Comet may disturb the atmosphere of the earth,
+causing rains of great duration, and consequently inundations and the
+sudden overflow of rivers, is not at all absurd. It can be sustained by
+scientific reasoning.”</p>
+
+<p>It should be remembered here that Laplace, one of the greatest of all
+astronomers, credited the deluge to a Comet.</p>
+
+<p>Before Madame de Thebes’ ominous prophesy concerning Halley’s Comet and
+its effects upon America were cabled over to this country, another,
+no less dire prediction of financial disaster in the United States,
+coincident with the appearance of Halley’s Comet, was made by W. E.
+Corey, the President of the American Steel Trust.
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_28">[Pg 28]</span></p>
+
+<div id="I028" class="figcenter">
+  <img  src="images/i_028.jpg" alt="" width="400" height="618" />
+  <p class="center">THE COMET OF 1910,<br /> FROM A TELESCOPIC PHOTOGRAPH TAKEN AT GREENWICH.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_29">[Pg 29]</span>
+Mr. Corey then warned his friends to “call in their money and get from
+under” because a calamitous financial crash and general business ruin
+would surely come during the Spring of 1910.</p>
+
+<p>The most ominous of all prophesies connected with the coming of
+Halley’s Comet this year was made by the venerable General Ballington
+Booth, the head of the Salvation Army. Speaking in London, immediately
+after Halley’s Comet had been located, early this year, General Booth
+said:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+<p>“We are, this year, rapidly approaching the end of all things, with
+similar results, but far surpassing in horrors any disaster that has
+gone before.</p>
+
+<p>“All things will be wound up. Besides a deluge of water sweeping
+parts of the world and its inhabitants there will be fierce destruction
+by fire.”</p>
+</div>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" />
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_30">[Pg 30]</span></p>
+<h2 class="nobreak">FAMOUS COMETS OF OLDEN TIMES</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class="drop-cap"><span class="smcap">Bacon</span>, the great English thinker,
+has said: “Comets have some action and effect on the universality of things.”</p>
+
+<p>All Comets recorded in history, so Lubienitius has shown in his
+“Universal History of All Comets,” appeared in connection with some
+great event or catastrophe in the History of Man.</p>
+
+<p>George F. Chambers, one of the most up-to-date writers on Astronomy
+and Comets, on the second page of his “Story of the Comets” (1909),
+declares:</p>
+
+<p class="blockquot">“It is the general testimony of History during
+many hundreds of years, one might even say during fully 2,000 years,
+that Comets were always considered to be peculiarly ‘ominous of
+the wrath of Heaven and as harbingers of wars and famines, of the
+dethronement of Monarchs and the dissolution of Empires.’”</p>
+
+<p>Reaching back into remotest history, the sacred books of India show
+that the births of Krishna and of Buddha were foretold by moving lights
+in the Heavens.</p>
+
+<p>The ancient records of China tell of the appearance of a moving beacon
+in Heaven at the birth of Yu, the first ruler of the Celestial Empire,
+and again at the birth of the great Chinese prophet, Lao-Tse.</p>
+
+<p>The ancient Greeks have recorded similar appearances of Comets.
+Aesculapius, the divine healer and first physician, was born under a Comet.</p>
+
+<p>The oldest traditions of the Jews tell us that when Abraham was born a
+moving star was seen in the East.
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_31">[Pg 31]</span></p>
+
+<p>Another moving star with long radiant gleams of light streaming behind
+it shone forth at the birth of Moses. This Comet was seen by the Magi
+of Egypt, who pointed it out to the King as an omen meant for him.
+Hence Pharaoh’s order, as recorded in the Old Testament, for the
+slaughter of all male Jewish infants then born in Egypt.</p>
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" />
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_32">[Pg 32]</span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak">GREAT EVENTS CONNECTED WITH<br /> HISTORIC COMETS IN ANTIQUITY</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class="drop-cap"><span class="smcap">The</span> earliest Comet of
+which there is any historic record was a Comet mentioned in the oldest
+cuneiform inscriptions of Babylonia several thousand years before our
+Christian era, recently found on the north bank of Nahr-al-Kalb, near
+Beyrut in Syria. This Comet is recorded to have been visible to the
+naked eye for 29 nights.</p>
+
+<p>At the time Lubienitius wrote his big “History of all the Comets” the
+exact date of this Comet had not been fixed. Lubienitius, though, had
+a record of this same Comet, the date of which he fixes at the year
+2312 before Christ, the date computed by him and other writers for the
+beginning of the deluge.</p>
+
+<p>In modern times the great French astronomer Laplace credited a Comet
+with causing huge floods at the time of the great Deluge.</p>
+
+<p>Two hundred and eighty-eight years after the great Deluge, according to
+the records of the Chaldean star gazers, there appeared another Comet.
+This is the date, computed by Lubienitius, for the building of the
+Tower of Babel and the confusion of tongues.</p>
+
+<p>Two thousand and sixty-four years before Christ, another Comet
+appeared, as recorded by the Chaldeans. This is the date given for the
+birth of Abraham.</p>
+
+<p>When Abraham was seventy years old, in the year 1949 B. C., a Comet was
+seen shining over the Valley of Siddim for twenty-two nights. This is
+the date given by Bible historians for the destruction of Sodom and
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_33">[Pg 33]</span>
+Gomorrah, the two cities of iniquity which lay in the Vale of Siddim.</p>
+
+<p>Jewish annalists record a Comet in Egypt in the year corresponding to
+B. C. 1841. This Comet shone at the time of the bitter persecution of
+the Jews by the Egyptians.</p>
+
+<p>Arabian star gazers have recorded a Comet shining over Arabia 1732 B.
+C. In that year there was a terrible famine, of which mention is made
+in the Old Testament.</p>
+
+<p>The ancient Chinese year books record the appearance of a Comet over
+northern China and Manchuria in the year corresponding to 1537 B.
+C. The appearance of the Comet, so the Chinese chronicles tell, was
+followed by a great flood and disastrous famine.</p>
+
+<p>The next Comet of which we have any record, appeared 1515 B. C. This
+was at the time of the expulsion of the Jews from Egypt.</p>
+
+<p>In the year B. C. 1194, we are told by Hyginus that “On the fall of
+Troy, one of the Pleiades group of stars rushed along the Heavens
+toward the Arctic pole, where the star remained visible with
+dishevelled hair, to which the name of Comet is applied.”</p>
+
+<p>We are informed by Pliny, the Roman historian, that in B. C. 975, the
+“Egyptians and Ethiopians suffered from a terrible famine, the dire
+effects of a Comet. It appeared all on fire, and was twisted in the
+form of a wreath, and had a hideous aspect. It seemed not to be a star,
+but rather a knot of fire.”</p>
+
+<p>Babylonian cuneiform inscriptions tell us that about 575 B. C., when
+Nebuchadnezzar overran Elam, “a star arose whose head was bright as day,
+while from its luminous body a tail extended like the sting of a scorpion.”
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_34">[Pg 34]</span></p>
+
+<p>According to Pliny, again, a Comet in the form of a horn was seen in
+the year B. C. 480, just before the great invasion of Greece by Xerxes
+ending in the bloody sea fight of Salamis.</p>
+
+<p>The next Comet mentioned by Lubienitius appeared in B. C. 466, when it
+was seen for 75 nights all over Greece. In that year Greece was ravaged
+by war between the Spartans and Athenians, and the city of Sparta was
+all but destroyed by an earthquake.</p>
+
+<p>The next Comet appeared one generation later in 431 B. C., and was seen
+through 60 nights all over the ancient world. This Comet was followed
+by a terrible pestilence which swept over Aethiopia, Egypt, Athens, and
+Rome. War broke out all over Greece. It was the beginning of the great
+Peloponnesian War, which devastated Greece for a generation to follow.</p>
+
+<p>In the year 394 B. C., there was another Comet seen in Greece, followed
+by the great Corinthian War with the bloody battles of Knidus and Koronea.</p>
+
+<p>Aristotle records a Comet seen by him in his fifteenth year, 371 B. C.
+The sight of it inspired the youth to a special study of astronomy.
+The Comet was visible until the end of the first week of July. On July
+eighth was fought the great battle between the Thebans and Spartans,
+when Epaminondas, one of the greatest generals of antiquity, overthrew
+the Spartans.</p>
+
+<p>The next Comet, that of 338 B. C., which was likewise observed by
+Aristotle, who had then become the teacher of Alexander the Great,
+marked Alexander’s first public entry into the history of the world.
+The Comet blazed its brightest on the eve of the bloody battle of
+Chaeronea, Alexander’s first victory and achievement in war.</p>
+
+<p>In the year 344 B. C., there was another Comet, followed by another war
+in Greece and Sicily. Diodorus of Sicily wrote of this Comet: “On the
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_35">[Pg 35]</span>
+departure of the expedition of Timoleon from Corinth for Sicily with
+all his war ships, the Gods foretold success by an extraordinary
+prodigy: A burning torch appeared in the Heavens for an entire night
+and went before the fleet into Sicily.”</p>
+
+<h3><i>The Comets of Carthage.</i></h3>
+
+<p>Nearly a hundred years passed before the appearance of another Comet
+in 240 B. C. This is the first recorded appearance of Halley’s Comet.
+By the light of this Comet, Hamilcar, the great Carthaginian general, made
+his young son Hannibal swear eternal enmity to the Romans. Hamilcar was
+then in the midst of preparations for the war against Rome, which broke
+out soon afterward.</p>
+
+<p>Comets appear to have been stars of special omen to Hannibal and to his
+native city, Carthage. Twenty years later, appeared another Comet which
+shone over Carthage for 22 nights. Its appearance was followed by the
+outbreak of the great war between Hannibal and the Romans, and by a
+terrible earthquake in Greece.</p>
+
+<p>The next Comet shone in 204 B. C., when Hannibal suffered his first
+bloody defeat by Sempronius, while Scipio, Hannibal’s arch enemy, was
+crossing over to Africa, for the first attack upon Carthage.</p>
+
+<p>The appearance of the next Comet, twenty years later, 184 B. C., which
+shone through 88 nights over Asia Minor “with a horrible lustre” was
+followed by the death of Hannibal. Soothsayers at the court of King
+Prusias of Bithynia, in Asia Minor, whither Hannibal had fled from the
+Romans, told the King that the Comet betokened Hannibal’s early death.
+This so wrought on Hannibal’s spirit that he ended his life with poison.
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_36">[Pg 36]</span></p>
+
+<p>In the year 150 B. C., appeared another Comet “of horrible size.” It
+was seen for many nights running all over the Mediterranean Sea. Its
+appearance was followed by the outbreak of the third great Punic War
+between Rome and Carthage.</p>
+
+<p>Within four years another Comet, blazing over northern Africa in 146 B.
+C., was followed by the fall of Carthage, which was stormed and utterly
+destroyed by the Romans.</p>
+
+<h3><i>Mithridates’ Star.</i></h3>
+
+<p>Mithridates, King of Pontus, and conqueror of Asia Minor, another arch
+foe of the Romans, having been born under a Comet, seems to have fallen
+under the bane of Comets.</p>
+
+<p>During the Winter of 134-135 B. C., preceding Mithridates’ birth, a
+Comet of unusual lustre flared over Asia Minor through 72 days. This
+Comet was so bright that its long, flaming tail was plainly visible
+even in day time. The ancient historian Justinus thus described it:</p>
+
+<p>“Its splendour eclipsed that of the midday sun and occupied the fourth
+part of Heaven.”</p>
+
+<p>The next Comet, burning through 72 nights again, preceded Mithridates’
+accession to the throne of Pontus, 119 B. C.</p>
+
+<p>Mithridates’ fourth Comet, now identified as Halley’s Comet, was seen
+over Asia Minor through the Winter months of 87-88 B. C., just before
+the horrible massacre of 150,000 Italians ordered by Mithridates.</p>
+
+<p>Twenty-five years later, 63 B. C., Mithridates saw his Comet for the
+last time when his own son rose up in arms against him. The omen of the
+Comet so wrought on Mithridates that he first poisoned himself and then
+had one of his own soldiers despatch him with his sword.
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_37">[Pg 37]</span></p>
+
+<p>No other Comet is recorded in ancient history during this century,
+except the one which was seen shining over Italy preceding the birth
+(July 11, 100 B. C.) of Julius Caesar, destined to become “The foremost
+man of all this world,” as Shakespeare calls him.</p>
+
+<p>“Caesar’s Comet” as it came to be known (now identified as Halley’s
+Comet) appeared again over Italy during the great Civil War between
+Marius and Sylla, when Caesar was first entering into public affairs
+and earned his spurs as a warrior.</p>
+
+<p>“Caesar’s Comet” shone again over Rome in the year 60 B. C., when
+Julius Caesar, together with Pompey and Crassus, took charge of the
+government of Rome and presently seized supreme power as Consul of Rome.</p>
+
+<p>Ten years later “Caesar’s Comet” was seen once more in Italy in the
+Winter months of 49-50 B. C., when Caesar, returning from his conquest
+of Gaul, crossed the Rubicon and began the great Civil War against his
+rival for power, Pompey.</p>
+
+<p>The last appearance of “Caesar’s Comet,” was in 44 B. C., on the
+death of Caesar. Its coming was foreseen in a dream by Caesar’s wife
+Calpurnia, who warned him of the omen, as immortalized in Shakespeare’s
+lines, put into the mouth of Caesar’s wife:</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent3">“When beggars die, there are no Comets seen,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent4">The Heavens themselves blaze forth the death of Princes”;</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>followed by Caesar’s famous answer, as culled from Plutarch by Shakespeare:</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent3">“What can be avoided,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent4">Whose end is purposed by the mighty gods?</div>
+    <div class="verse indent4">Yet Caesar shall go forth; for these predictions</div>
+    <div class="verse indent4">Are to the world in general as to Caesar.”</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_38">[Pg 38]</span>
+On the following morning Caesar was murdered at the foot of Pompey’s
+statue in the Curia.</p>
+
+<p>Immediately after Caesar’s death, records the Roman historian Suetonius
+in his “Life of Caesar”: “A Comet blazed for seven nights together,
+rising always about eleven o’clock, visible to all in Rome. It was
+taken by all to be the soul of Caesar, now received into Heaven; for
+which reason, accordingly, Caesar is represented in his statue with a
+star on his brow.”</p>
+
+<p>Only one more Comet is recorded in ancient history before the birth of
+Christ. This was the Comet, now identified as Halley’s Comet, which
+shone over the dense forests of Germany, eleven years before the birth
+of Christ, when Drusus, the brother of Tiberius, was warring against
+the ancient Germans and robbing them of their last vestige of liberty.
+At the same time fell the death of Agrippa, who ruled over the Roman
+Empire in the absence of Augustus.</p>
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" />
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_39">[Pg 39]</span></p>
+<h3><i>THE STAR OF BETHLEHEM</i></h3>
+</div>
+
+<p class="drop-cap"><span class="smcap">The</span> coming of the Messia,
+according to the sacred legends of the Jews, was to be foretold
+by a flaming star.</p>
+
+<p>Many sacred writers have held, and many still hold, as did the
+distinguished American astronomer R. A. Proctor, that the “Star of
+Bethlehem,” whose shining trail guided the Wise Men from The East, was
+a Comet. Lubienitius in his “History of Comets” expressly mentions the
+Star of Bethlehem as the most important Comet of history.</p>
+
+<p>As a matter of fact our modern astronomical computations prove that a
+Comet appeared in that year so as to be visible to the naked eye over
+Arabia, Syria, and the Holy Land.</p>
+
+<p>When this Comet appeared Herod was King of Judea. On the appearance of
+the Comet, Herod consulted the oracle of the Sibyl in Rome. She told him
+that the Comet shone in token of a boy destined to be far greater than he.</p>
+
+<p>Herod grew so afraid at this that he caused to be murdered his own
+two infant sons, Aristobolus and Alexander, and after that his eldest
+son, the boy Antipater. Herod further ordered the massacre of all
+male infants born in Judea under this Comet, as told in the Gospel of
+Matthew (Chap. II., Verse 1). As the Comet kept on blazing in the sky,
+Herod, becoming desperate, tried to kill himself. Five days after this
+he died of a loathsome disease.
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_40">[Pg 40]</span></p>
+
+<p>Christian painters and writers from olden times until now, accordingly
+have pictured the Star of Bethlehem as a Comet.</p>
+
+<p>Take for instance this description of “The Light in the Sky” as given
+by Lew Wallace in his “Ben Hur: A Tale of the Christ”:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+<p>“About midnight some one on the roof cried out: ‘What light is that
+in the sky? Awake, brethren, awake and see!’</p>
+
+<p>The people, half asleep, sat up and looked; then they became wide
+awake, though wonder struck.... Soon the entire tenantry of the house
+and court and enclosure were out gazing at the sky.</p>
+
+<p>And this is what they saw: A ray of light, beginning at a height
+immeasurably beyond the nearest stars, and dropping obliquely to the
+earth; at its top, a diminishing point; at its base, many furlongs in
+width; its sides blending softly with the darkness of night; its core
+a roseate electrical splendour. The apparition seemed to rest on the
+nearest mountain southeast of the town, making a pale corona along the
+line of the summit. The khan was touched luminously so that those upon
+the roof saw each others’ faces all filled with wonder.</p>
+
+<p class="no-indent">Steadily the ray lingered....</p>
+
+<p>‘Saw you ever the like?’ asked one.</p>
+
+<p>‘Can it be that a star has burst and fallen?’ asked another, his
+tongue faltering.</p>
+
+<p>‘When a star falls its light goes out.’</p>
+</div>
+
+<hr class="tb" />
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+<p class="no-indent">After that there was silence on the housetop,
+broken but once again while the mystery continued.</p>
+
+<p>‘Brethren!’ exclaimed a Jew of venerable mien, ‘what we see is the
+ladder our father Jacob saw in his dream. Blessed be the Lord God of
+Our Fathers!’”</p>
+</div>
+
+<p class="space-above2"><span class="pagenum" id="Page_41">[Pg 41]</span>
+Meanwhile the Wise Men from the East, as described in the same story,
+were travelling over the desert, on the alert for the apparition of the
+star, whose coming had been revealed to them.</p>
+
+<p class="blockquot">“Suddenly, in the air before them, not farther up
+than a low hill-top,” writes Lew Wallace, “flared a lambent flame; as
+they looked at it, the apparition contracted into a focus of dazzling
+lustre. Their hearts beat fast; their souls thrilled; and they shouted
+as with one voice: ‘The Star! the Star! God is with us!’”</p>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" />
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_42">[Pg 42]</span></p>
+<h2 class="nobreak">GREAT EVENTS LINKED WITH<br /> COMETS SINCE CHRIST</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class="drop-cap"><span class="smcap">Since</span> the time of
+Christ, thanks to the spread of Christianity and learning, with the
+growing zeal for keeping records and studying the stars, a far greater
+number of Comets and events connected therewith have been recorded.</p>
+
+<p>A number of learned writers have made a special study of the history of
+Comets and their effect upon man. Long before Lubienitius’ ponderous
+work on the subject there were other histories written in Latin and
+Arabic, with references to which his book abounds.</p>
+
+<p>Since then others have followed in the same direction, notably Pingré,
+Hind, Lalande, Messier, Chambers and latterly Messrs. Crommelin and
+Cowell, of the Greenwich Observatory.</p>
+
+<p>The number of known Comets has grown immeasurably since Galileo’s
+invention of the telescope, 300 years ago, and our later perfections
+of this instrument, together with latter-day devices for photographing
+Comets invisible to the naked eye.</p>
+
+<p>It would carry us too far to trace the possible connection between
+modern events and Comets that were seen only by astronomers. Since
+our record of Comets is already too full, we shall limit our story of
+the Comets and their influence upon man to a bare recital of the most
+important events connected with the more memorable and conspicuous
+Comets from the time of Christ until now.</p>
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" />
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_43">[Pg 43]</span></p>
+
+<p class="f120"><b>DATES OF COMETS FOLLOWED<br /> BY IMPORTANT EVENTS</b></p>
+</div>
+
+<table border="0" cellspacing="0" summary="Comet Dates" cellpadding="0" >
+  <tbody><tr>
+      <td class="tdl" colspan="2"><b>A. D.</b></td>
+   </tr><tr>
+      <td class="tdr_top">14&mdash;</td>
+      <td class="tdl"><p class="no-indent">A Comet preceded the death of Augustus,
+                        the first Emperor of Rome. Earthquake in Italy.</p></td>
+   </tr><tr>
+      <td class="tdr_top">55&mdash;</td>
+      <td class="tdl"><p class="no-indent">Suicide of Pontius Pilate,
+                          the judge who condemned Christ.</p></td>
+   </tr><tr>
+      <td class="tdr_top">68&mdash;</td>
+      <td class="tdl"><p class="no-indent">Halley’s Comet. Suicide of Nero,
+             persecutor of Christians. Siege of Jerusalem.</p></td>
+   </tr><tr>
+      <td class="tdr_top">73&mdash;</td>
+      <td class="tdl"><p class="no-indent">A Comet shone 180 days over Cyprus.
+               Earthquake in Cypress in which 10,000 persons perished.</p></td>
+   </tr><tr>
+      <td class="tdr_top"></td>
+      <td class="tdl"><p class="no-indent"></p></td>
+   </tr><tr>
+      <td class="tdr_top"></td>
+      <td class="tdl"><p class="no-indent"></p></td>
+   </tr><tr>
+      <td class="tdr_top">79&mdash;</td>
+      <td class="tdl"><p class="no-indent">Death of Emperor Vespasian, who began the siege of
+                 Jerusalem. The Roman historians Dion Cassius and
+                 Suetonius relate that Vespasian, when taken sick,
+                 heard his astrologers discussing in a low tone
+                 of voice the Comet which was then visible, which
+                 they said predicted his death. The Emperor roused
+                 angrily and said: “This hairy star is not meant for
+                 me. It must be meant for my enemy, the King of the
+                 Parthians, for he is hairy, while I am bald.”</p></td>
+   </tr><tr>
+      <td class="tdr_top">&nbsp;</td>
+      <td class="tdl"><p class="no-indent">On the following night Vespasian died in great pain,
+         and the Comet was seen no more.</p></td>
+   </tr><tr>
+      <td class="tdr_top"><span class="pagenum" id="Page_44">[Pg 44]</span></td>
+      <td class="tdl"><p class="no-indent">Shortly after Vespasian’s death followed the fierce
+                eruption of Mt. Vesuvius, Nov. 1, which destroyed the
+                two flourishing cities of Herculaneum and Pompeii.</p></td>
+   </tr><tr>
+      <td class="tdr_top">130&mdash;</td>
+      <td class="tdl"><p class="no-indent">A Comet shone over Holy Land for 39 nights,
+                followed by destructive earthquake in Holy Land.</p></td>
+   </tr><tr>
+      <td class="tdr_top">145&mdash;</td>
+      <td class="tdl"><p class="no-indent">One week’s Comet over Island of Rhodus.
+                 Earthquake in Rhodus, followed by famine and pestilence.</p></td>
+   </tr><tr>
+      <td class="tdr_top">217&mdash;</td>
+      <td class="tdl"><p class="no-indent">From a Comet which shone for eighteen nights
+                   soothsayers predicted the death of the Roman
+                   Emperor, Caracalla. The Emperor was murdered
+                   immediately afterwards by his rival Macrinus.</p></td>
+   </tr><tr>
+      <td class="tdr_top">312&mdash;</td>
+      <td class="tdl"><p class="no-indent">A Comet in the sign of a cross seen by Constantine
+              the Great during battle of Saxa Rubra under the
+              walls of Rome. Constantine was victorious and
+              afterward turned to Christian faith.</p></td>
+   </tr><tr>
+      <td class="tdr_top">337&mdash;</td>
+      <td class="tdl"><p class="no-indent">A Comet seen just before death of Constantine the Great.</p></td>
+   </tr><tr>
+      <td class="tdr_top">373&mdash;</td>
+      <td class="tdl"><p class="no-indent">Halley’s Comet. Beginning of tremendous migration
+                  of peoples which overran all Central Asia and Europe.</p></td>
+   </tr><tr>
+      <td class="tdr_top">399&mdash;</td>
+      <td class="tdl"><p class="no-indent">This Comet was described by Nicephorus as “of
+                prodigious magnitude and horrible aspect, with a
+                point like a sword and fiery hair reaching nearly
+                to the ground, from which a great peril to the
+                people was predicted.” Its appearance was followed
+                by the conquest and capture of Rome by Gainas.</p></td>
+   </tr><tr>
+      <td class="tdr_top">410&mdash;</td>
+      <td class="tdl"><p class="no-indent">A sword-shaped Comet shone over Italy for four
+               months until the third week in August. On Aug. 24
+               Rome was taken and plundered by Alaric, King of
+               the Visigoths. This marks the end of the old Roman Empire.</p></td>
+   </tr><tr>
+      <td class="tdr_top">442&mdash;</td>
+      <td class="tdl"><p class="no-indent">First appearance in Europe of Attila,
+              “The Scourge of God,” and his Hunnic hordes.</p></td>
+   </tr><tr>
+      <td class="tdr_top">449-50&mdash;<span class="pagenum" id="Page_45">[Pg 45]</span></td>
+      <td class="tdl"><p class="no-indent">Two Comets (now believed to be coming and going
+                 of Halley’s Comet) were observed over England and
+                 France. First invasion of England by the
+                 Anglo-Saxons under Hengist and Horsa. Attila
+                 overthrown in the great battle on the Catalaunian
+                 Fields, at which a hundred and eighty thousand
+                 warriors fell, among them Theoderic, the King of
+                 the Goths. The Roman historian Callimachus recorded
+                 that this battle was preceded by a brilliant Comet
+                 and an earthquake.</p></td>
+   </tr><tr>
+      <td class="tdr_top">453&mdash;</td>
+      <td class="tdl"><p class="no-indent">Death of Attila and end of his Hunnic empire.</p></td>
+   </tr><tr>
+      <td class="tdr_top">530&mdash;</td>
+      <td class="tdl"><p class="no-indent">Halley’s Comet. Merlin, the British seer,
+                  prophesied from this Comet. His prophesies came true.</p></td>
+   </tr><tr>
+      <td class="tdr_top">531&mdash;</td>
+      <td class="tdl"><p class="no-indent">Comet observed in Constantinople by the astronomers
+             of Emperor Justinian. Earthquake in Constantinople
+             followed by famine and uprising of the people in
+             which two thousand were killed. Pestilence.</p></td>
+   </tr><tr>
+      <td class="tdr_top">538&mdash;</td>
+      <td class="tdl"><p class="no-indent">Terrible famine throughout civilized world,
+              so that many people became cannibals.</p></td>
+   </tr><tr>
+      <td class="tdr_top">547&mdash;</td>
+      <td class="tdl"><p class="no-indent">A lance-shaped Comet over Italy. Ostro-Goths under
+              Totila overrun Italy. Totila storms Rome.</p></td>
+   </tr><tr>
+      <td class="tdc" colspan="2"><big><i>Mohamet’s Star.</i></big></td>
+   </tr><tr>
+      <td class="tdr_top">570&mdash;</td>
+      <td class="tdl"><p class="no-indent">Scimitar-shaped Comet over Arabia.
+              Birth of Mohamet.</p></td>
+   </tr><tr>
+      <td class="tdr_top">610&mdash;</td>
+      <td class="tdl"><p class="no-indent">Another scimitar-shaped Comet over Arabia.
+              Mohamet begins preaching the Koran.</p></td>
+   </tr><tr>
+      <td class="tdr_top">622&mdash;</td>
+      <td class="tdl"><p class="no-indent">Flight of Mohamet to Medina.</p></td>
+   </tr><tr>
+      <td class="tdr_top">624&mdash;</td>
+      <td class="tdl"><p class="no-indent">Fourth scimitar-shaped Comet over Arabia and Holy
+              Land. Mohamet’s first battle for the new faith. His
+              massacre of 700 Jews.</p></td>
+   </tr><tr>
+      <td class="tdr_top">632&mdash;<span class="pagenum" id="Page_46">[Pg 46]</span></td>
+      <td class="tdl"><p class="no-indent">Last appearance of Mohamet’s Comet during first
+              week of June. Death of Mohamet on June 8 at Medina.</p></td>
+   </tr><tr>
+      <td class="tdr_top">800&mdash;</td>
+      <td class="tdl"><p class="no-indent">A Comet seen during Coronation of Charlemagne as
+              Emperor of Rome.</p></td>
+   </tr><tr>
+      <td class="tdr_top">814&mdash;</td>
+      <td class="tdl"><p class="no-indent">Torch-shaped Comet seen in Germany during the first
+             three weeks of January. Death of Charlemagne on
+             Jan. 28, at Aix la Chappelle. The monk Eginard
+             relates in his chronicles that on the appearance
+             of the Comet all those at Charlemagne’s court
+             feared for the Emperor’s life. Eginard preached to
+             them from the text of Isaiah not to believe in the
+             signs of the heathens. But Charlemagne reproved
+             him, saying that he felt that he had reason to
+             thank God for having sent him a timely warning of
+             his impending death. Thereupon the Emperor made
+             his testament and divided his empire among his
+             successors. On the day following the disappearance
+             of the Comet, he died.</p></td>
+   </tr><tr>
+      <td class="tdr_top">837&mdash;</td>
+      <td class="tdl"><p class="no-indent">Halley’s Comet observed in France
+             by King Louis the Debonair, who died from fear of it.</p></td>
+   </tr><tr>
+      <td class="tdr_top">876&mdash;</td>
+      <td class="tdl"><p class="no-indent">Disastrous flood in Italy, followed by plague.</p></td>
+   </tr><tr>
+      <td class="tdr_top">900&mdash;</td>
+      <td class="tdl"><p class="no-indent">Another Comet over Italy. Saracens invade Italy.</p></td>
+   </tr><tr>
+      <td class="tdr_top">944&mdash;</td>
+      <td class="tdl"><p class="no-indent">Comet with an immense tail over Italy, followed by
+              disastrous earthquake.</p></td>
+   </tr><tr>
+      <td class="tdr_top">1000&mdash;<span class="pagenum" id="Page_47">[Pg 47]</span></td>
+      <td class="tdl"><p class="no-indent">In January of this year a Comet was observed all
+             over Europe. Gigibertus describes it “shaped like
+             a horrible serpent and so bright that its light
+             was seen even indoors.” It was generally taken to
+             foretell the end of the world,&mdash;the millennium
+             prophesied in the Apocalypse. When it was followed
+             soon by earthquakes, floods and famine there was
+             universal panic which was not allayed until the end
+             of the “fateful year.”</p></td>
+   </tr><tr>
+      <td class="tdr_top">1002&mdash;</td>
+      <td class="tdl"><p class="no-indent">A Comet over England and Scandinavia.
+             Massacre of all Danes in England by King Ethelred.</p></td>
+   </tr><tr>
+      <td class="tdr_top">1066&mdash;</td>
+      <td class="tdl"><p class="no-indent">Halley’s Comet. It appeared in May at Easter time
+             and shone for forty nights, waxing and waning with
+             the moon. William the Conqueror haled it as an omen
+             of destruction to Harold of England just before the
+             battle of Hastings.</p></td>
+   </tr><tr>
+      <td class="tdr_top">1077&mdash;</td>
+      <td class="tdl"><p class="no-indent">Comet over Italy and Germany. Emperor Henry IV. of
+            Germany was excommunicated by the Pope, followed by
+            war in Italy and Germany.</p></td>
+   </tr><tr>
+      <td class="tdc" colspan="2"><big><i>Crusaders’ Comets.</i></big></td>
+   </tr><tr>
+      <td class="tdr_top">1099&mdash;</td>
+      <td class="tdl"><p class="no-indent">Arabic astronomers record a Comet in the shape of
+           a scimitar over Arabia and the Holy Land for six
+           weeks in Spring and early Summer. First crusade
+           and storming of Jerusalem by the crusaders on July
+           15 after a siege of five weeks. Bloody massacre of Mohammedans.</p></td>
+   </tr><tr>
+      <td class="tdr_top">1109&mdash;</td>
+      <td class="tdl"><p class="no-indent">Emperor Henry V. of Germany enters Rome and makes
+           Pope prisoner.</p></td>
+   </tr><tr>
+      <td class="tdr_top">1148-9&mdash;</td>
+      <td class="tdl"><p class="no-indent">Second crusade. Utter destruction of whole army
+           of French and German crusaders.</p></td>
+   </tr><tr>
+      <td class="tdr_top">1200&mdash;</td>
+      <td class="tdl"><p class="no-indent">Comet recorded by Hal Ben Rodoan, an Arab
+            astronomer, over North Africa. Bloody revolt of
+            Arab warriors in Morocco.</p></td>
+   </tr><tr>
+      <td class="tdr_top">1212&mdash;</td>
+      <td class="tdl"><p class="no-indent">Lance-shaped Comet shining over western Europe for
+            eighteen nights. The Children’s Crusade. Thousands
+            of German and French boy crusaders perished or were
+            sold into slavery. Bloody invasion of Tartar hordes
+            into Russia and Poland.</p></td>
+   </tr><tr>
+      <td class="tdr_top">1223&mdash;<span class="pagenum" id="Page_48">[Pg 48]</span></td>
+      <td class="tdl"><p class="no-indent">Preaching of fifth crusade. Outbreak of “Guelph and
+           Ghibelline” war between Emperor Frederick II. of
+           Germany and Pope Gregory the IX.</p></td>
+   </tr><tr>
+      <td class="tdr_top">1264&mdash;</td>
+      <td class="tdl"><p class="no-indent">Very bright Comet observed shining all over Europe
+           for three months. Pope Urban IV. died on the night
+           of the Comet’s disappearance. A Latin verse gained
+           great currency in which it was said that the
+           Comet portended “disasters, sickness, hunger, and
+           war.” The chronicles of that age ascribe to this
+           Comet besides the death of the Pope a famine and
+           pestilence in Italy, the ravages of the Russians
+           into Poland and of the Slavs into Prussia.</p></td>
+   </tr><tr>
+      <td class="tdc" colspan="2"><big><i>Comets of Bloodshed.</i></big></td>
+   </tr><tr>
+      <td class="tdr_top">1282&mdash;</td>
+      <td class="tdl"><p class="no-indent">An immense Comet over Italy. Disastrous earthquake
+           in southern Italy. On March 30, a fortnight after
+           the first appearance of the Comet followed the
+           massacre of all Frenchmen in Sicily on the evening
+           of Easter Monday, known in history as the “Sicilian Vespers.”</p></td>
+   </tr><tr>
+      <td class="tdr_top">1298&mdash;</td>
+      <td class="tdl"><p class="no-indent">Because of the appearance of a Comet over middle
+           Germany, there were riots in Nuremberg and other
+           neighbouring cities followed by a general massacre
+           of the Jews in those cities.</p></td>
+   </tr><tr>
+      <td class="tdr_top">1300&mdash;</td>
+      <td class="tdl"><p class="no-indent">A brilliant Comet preceded the Jubilee of Pope
+           Boniface the VIII. The Pope interpreted the Comet
+           as a happy omen, but because of the popular dread
+           of the Comet there were riots and blood shed in
+           Rome and elsewhere in Italy. The chroniclers of the
+           times pointed out the significant fact that shortly
+           after his jubilee Pope Boniface was made a prisoner
+           by King Philip of France, causing him to die of rage.</p></td>
+   </tr><tr>
+      <td class="tdc" colspan="2"><big><i>Plague Comets.</i></big></td>
+   </tr><tr>
+      <td class="tdr_top">1305&mdash;<span class="pagenum" id="Page_49">[Pg 49]</span></td>
+      <td class="tdl"><p class="no-indent">A Comet “of horrible aspect” burning all through
+              Passion Week preceded the outbreak of the terrible
+              black plague which swept from the Orient all over
+              Europe and Asia.</p></td>
+   </tr><tr>
+      <td class="tdr_top">1333&mdash;</td>
+      <td class="tdl"><p class="no-indent">Chinese and Arab astronomers record a bright
+            Comet over China, Turkestan and Persia. Birth
+            of Tamerlane, the “Scourge of the Nations” at
+            Samarkand, in Turkestan.</p></td>
+   </tr><tr>
+      <td class="tdr_top">1347&mdash;</td>
+      <td class="tdl"><p class="no-indent">A Comet precedes the “Black Death,” a terrible
+            pestilence followed by famine all over the world.
+            One-fourth of all the people of Europe died.
+            Fifteen million deaths in China,&mdash;twenty-five
+            million in Europe.</p></td>
+   </tr><tr>
+      <td class="tdr_top">1363&mdash;</td>
+      <td class="tdl"><p class="no-indent">A Comet of immense size shone for three months over
+            northern Europe. Pestilence and famine in England,
+            Poland and Russia.</p></td>
+   </tr><tr>
+      <td class="tdr_top">1378&mdash;</td>
+      <td class="tdl"><p class="no-indent">Halley’s Comet. Pestilence in Germany.
+             Holy Church is rent by the great schism, with rival popes at
+             Rome and Avignon.</p></td>
+   </tr><tr>
+      <td class="tdc" colspan="2"><big><i>Tamerlane’s Star.</i></big></td>
+   </tr><tr>
+      <td class="tdr_top">1382&mdash;</td>
+      <td class="tdl"><p class="no-indent">Arab astronomers and Chinese report a very bright
+            Comet which shone a fortnight. Tamerlane and his
+            hordes overrun Central Asia. Pestilence breaks out
+            there and spreads all over the world.</p></td>
+   </tr><tr>
+      <td class="tdr_top">1402&mdash;</td>
+      <td class="tdl"><p class="no-indent">Arab astronomers report another Comet seen all over
+            the East. Tamerlane carries war into Europe and
+            takes Constantinople by storm. Sultan Bayezid is
+            taken prisoner by Tamerlane and is carried to Asia
+            in a cage.</p></td>
+   </tr><tr>
+      <td class="tdr_top">1405&mdash;</td>
+      <td class="tdl"><p class="no-indent">Chinese astronomers record a spear-shaped Comet
+            over China. Tamerlane dies while invading China.</p></td>
+   </tr><tr>
+      <td class="tdr_top">1456&mdash;<span class="pagenum" id="Page_50">[Pg 50]</span></td>
+      <td class="tdl"><p class="no-indent">Halley’s Comet. Bloody war between the Christians
+            and the Turks. Battle of Belgrade.</p></td>
+   </tr><tr>
+      <td class="tdr_top">1492&mdash;</td>
+      <td class="tdl"><p class="no-indent">Arab astronomers record a Comet over northern
+            Africa and Spain. Final conquest of Granada from
+            the Moors by Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain.
+            Discovery of the New World.</p></td>
+   </tr><tr>
+      <td class="tdr_top">1500&mdash;</td>
+      <td class="tdl"><p class="no-indent">Sword-shaped Comet over northern Europe, followed
+            by Tartar invasion into Russia and Poland.</p></td>
+   </tr><tr>
+      <td class="tdr_top">1528&mdash;</td>
+      <td class="tdl"><p class="no-indent">A Comet noted by Ambroise Paré, who recorded that
+            many people fell sick and died of fright. War
+            between Emperor Charles V. of Germany and Francis I.
+            of France, with fighting in France, Germany and Italy.</p></td>
+   </tr><tr>
+      <td class="tdr_top">1531&mdash;</td>
+      <td class="tdl"><p class="no-indent">Halley’s Comet. Plague in Italy. Great schism in
+            the Church. Defection of German Protestants from
+            Rome. Henry VIII. of England declares English
+            Church independent of Rome. Sultan Soleyman ravaged
+            Hungary. Disastrous floods in Holland, where
+            400,000 people were drowned.</p></td>
+   </tr><tr>
+      <td class="tdr_top">1556&mdash;</td>
+      <td class="tdl"><p class="no-indent">Emperor Charles V. of Germany and Spain, on account
+            of his fear of the Comet that appeared in that
+            year, abdicated his throne and became a monk.
+            Wide-spread wars all over Europe. The Turks ravaged
+            Hungary. Persecutions of English Protestants under
+            “Bloody Mary.” Many Protestants burned at the
+            stake, beheaded or broken on the rack.</p></td>
+   </tr><tr>
+      <td class="tdr_top">1572&mdash;</td>
+      <td class="tdl"><p class="no-indent">St. Bartholomew’s Comet. Massacre of St.
+            Bartholomew, when 30,000 Huguenots were slaughtered in France.</p></td>
+   </tr><tr>
+      <td class="tdr_top">1577&mdash;</td>
+      <td class="tdl"><p class="no-indent">General persecution of Huguenots in France,
+            followed by Civil War in France.</p></td>
+   </tr><tr>
+      <td class="tdr_top">1607&mdash;<span class="pagenum" id="Page_51">[Pg 51]</span></td>
+      <td class="tdl"><p class="no-indent">A Comet seen over Constantinople for several weeks.
+            Wide-spread war on the part of the Turks against
+            the Persians on one side, the Poles on another, and
+            against Venice on the third.</p></td>
+   </tr><tr>
+      <td class="tdr_top">1618&mdash;</td>
+      <td class="tdl"><p class="no-indent">A blood-coloured Comet observed just before the
+            execution of Sir Walter Raleigh in England. A
+            bloody rising of the Protestants in Bohemia,
+            followed by the outbreak of the terrible Thirty
+            Years’ War in Germany and the Netherlands. This
+            was the Comet which gave rise to the German school rhyme:</p></td>
+   </tr><tr>
+      <td class="tdr_top">&nbsp;</td>
+      <td class="tdl"><div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0">“Eight things a Comet always brings,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent1">Wind, Famine, Plague and Death to Kings,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent1">War, Earthquake, Floods and Dire Things.”</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+</div></td>
+   </tr><tr>
+      <td class="tdc" colspan="2"><big><i>Louis XIV.’s Star.</i></big></td>
+   </tr><tr>
+      <td class="tdr_top">1661&mdash;</td>
+      <td class="tdl"><p class="no-indent">Inspired by the appearance of a Comet, a horde
+            of fanatics under Venner, a cooper, preached the
+            coming of the “Fifth Monarchy” in England, and
+            proclaimed Jesus Christ as their only King. The
+            fanatics were routed and put to death. Death of
+            Mazarin, the “Master of France.” Rise of Louis XIV.,
+            the most powerful ruler of France. French war
+            against the Pope.</p></td>
+   </tr><tr>
+      <td class="tdr_top">1680&mdash;</td>
+      <td class="tdl"><p class="no-indent">This Comet was studied by Halley, in Paris, and
+            by Newton, in England. It was called “Heaven’s
+            Chariot.” Plague in Europe. The French overrun
+            Alsace and carried war into Germany. War between
+            Venice and the Turks.</p></td>
+   </tr><tr>
+      <td class="tdr_top">1682&mdash;</td>
+      <td class="tdl"><p class="no-indent">Halley’s Comet. War in Italy. War in Hungary
+            against the Turks.</p></td>
+   </tr><tr>
+      <td class="tdr_top">1689&mdash;<span class="pagenum" id="Page_52">[Pg 52]</span></td>
+      <td class="tdl"><p class="no-indent">A remarkable Comet observed all over Europe,
+            followed by war all over Europe. Wars between
+            France, Germany, England, Spain and Italy. The
+            Rhine lands were harried by the French with fire
+            and sword, rendering 4,000,000 people homeless.
+            Burning of the castle of Heidelberg by the French.
+            Religious war in Ireland and Scotland. Siege of
+            Londonderry and Dundee. Battle of Newton Butler
+            in Ireland.</p></td>
+   </tr><tr>
+      <td class="tdr_top">1729&mdash;</td>
+      <td class="tdl"><p class="no-indent">War between France, England and Spain.</p></td>
+   </tr><tr>
+      <td class="tdc" colspan="2"><big><i>Frederick the Great’s Star.</i></big></td>
+   </tr><tr>
+      <td class="tdr_top">1744&mdash;</td>
+      <td class="tdl"><p class="no-indent">A six-tailed Comet observed in Germany just before
+            the death of Emperor Charles VII. His death
+            followed by war between Frederick the Great and
+            Maria Teresa of Austria. War spreads to England,
+            Holland, France, Spain and Italy. A British fleet
+            beaten by French and Spaniards off Toulon.</p></td>
+   </tr><tr>
+      <td class="tdr_top">1755&mdash;</td>
+      <td class="tdl"><p class="no-indent">A Comet precedes earthquake of Lisbon, by which
+            40,000 people lost their lives.</p></td>
+   </tr><tr>
+      <td class="tdr_top">1759&mdash;</td>
+      <td class="tdl"><p class="no-indent">Halley’s Comet. Seven Years’ War in Germany.
+            Frederick the Great overthrown in four bloody
+            battles. French lose Canada by their disastrous
+            defeat of the plains of Abraham, and lose India by
+            the loss of their fleet through three successive
+            defeats on the sea.</p></td>
+   </tr><tr>
+      <td class="tdc" colspan="2"><big><i>Napoleon’s Star.</i></big></td>
+   </tr><tr>
+      <td class="tdr_top">1769&mdash;</td>
+      <td class="tdl"><p class="no-indent">“Napoleon’s Comet.” A Comet of unusual red lustre
+            was observed over Italy and France. French overrun
+            Corsica. Bloody massacre of Corsicans. Birth of
+            Napoleon on August 15 in Corsica, just after the
+            Comet was seen no more.</p></td>
+   </tr><tr>
+      <td class="tdr_top">1811-12&mdash;</td>
+      <td class="tdl"><p class="no-indent">This huge Comet was one of the most famous
+            Comets of modern times. It was first seen in France
+            on March 26, 1811, and was last observed over
+            southern Russia on August 17, 1812&mdash;an appearance
+            of seventeen months, the longest on record. For
+            a while it had two tails, then only one. The
+            length of this tail was estimated as 100,000,000
+            miles. It was called “Napoleon’s Comet.” Under its
+            lustre Napoleon gathered his “grand armée,” the
+            greatest army assembled in Europe since Xerxes, and
+            invaded Russia. Wars were fought at the same time
+            in Portugal and Spain, where the British stormed
+            Ciudad Rodrigo and Badajos; and in America, where
+            Harrison’s victory over the Indians under Tecumseh
+            at Tippecanoe, and the seafight between the
+            “President” and “Little Belt” ushered in the War of
+            1812. In Egypt the Comet was taken as an omen of the
+            bloody massacre of the Mamelukes perpetrated at Cairo.</p></td>
+   </tr>
+ </tbody>
+</table>
+<p class="space-above2"><span class="pagenum" id="Page_53">[Pg 53]</span></p>
+
+<div id="I053" class="figcenter">
+  <img  src="images/i_053.jpg" alt="" width="400" height="644" />
+  <p class="center">THE GREAT COMET OF 1811.</p>
+</div>
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_54">[Pg 54]</span></p>
+
+<table border="0" cellspacing="0" summary="Comet Dates" cellpadding="0" >
+  <tbody><tr>
+      <td class="tdr_top">1821&mdash;</td>
+      <td class="tdl"><p class="no-indent">“Napoleon’s Comet.” Seen one night only over France
+            and over St. Helena the night before the death of
+            Napoleon at St. Helena.</p></td>
+   </tr><tr>
+      <td class="tdr_top">1823&mdash;</td>
+      <td class="tdl"><p class="no-indent">A Comet much mentioned by Spanish writers.
+            While it shone over Spain, South America and
+            the Mediterranean, the French overran Spain and
+            reinstated the Spanish king. Revival of the
+            Spanish Inquisition and bloody persecutions of the
+            revolutionists. War of Independence in Central and
+            South America. Bloody war of Greek Independence.</p></td>
+   </tr><tr>
+      <td class="tdr_top">1835-6&mdash;</td>
+      <td class="tdl"><p class="no-indent">Halley’s Comet. New York City all but destroyed
+            by fire. Zulu massacre of Boers at Weenen. Mexican
+            massacre of Americans at the Alamo. Wars throughout
+            South America.</p></td>
+   </tr><tr>
+      <td class="tdr_top">1843&mdash;</td>
+      <td class="tdl"><p class="no-indent">Another famous Comet seen all over the world during
+            the Spring of that year. Especially brilliant in
+            the Southern Hemisphere and in India. War in India
+            on the part of the British against Afghanistan,
+            Beluchistan, Scinde and against the Sikhs.</p></td>
+   </tr><tr>
+      <td class="tdr_top">1848&mdash;<span class="pagenum" id="Page_55">[Pg 55]</span></td>
+      <td class="tdl"><p class="no-indent">Encke’s famous periodic Comet. Bloody revolutionary
+            risings and civil wars in France, Hungary, Bohemia,
+            Austria, Germany, Italy and Poland.</p></td>
+   </tr><tr>
+      <td class="tdr_top">1858-9&mdash;</td>
+      <td class="tdl"><p class="no-indent">Donati’s Comet. This Comet, which appeared to be
+            charging straight down from the zenith, and had a
+            curved tail, was observed from June 1858 to April
+            1859. It was seen at its brightest in the South, in
+            Italy, Mexico and in the Far East. While it shone
+            over the Far East there were bloody wars between
+            the British and the risen people of India; between
+            the British and the Chinese, who objected to
+            having opium thrust upon them; while Japan was in
+            the throes of revolution and civil war. In Mexico
+            the standard of revolt against the clericals was
+            raised by Juarez, thus plunging Mexico into civil
+            war and war with France. Immediately after the
+            disappearance of the Comet war broke out in Italy
+            between the French and Italians on one side and the
+            Austrians on the other, ending in the bloody Battle
+            of Solferino.</p></td>
+   </tr><tr>
+      <td class="tdc" colspan="2"><big><i>Civil War Comets.</i></big></td>
+   </tr><tr>
+      <td class="tdr_top">1861&mdash;</td>
+      <td class="tdl"><p class="no-indent">“First Civil War Comet.” The brightest Comet of
+            the nineteenth century. Sir John Herschel, the
+            great English astronomer, said of this Comet: “It
+            far exceeded in brightness any Comet I have before
+            observed, those of 1811 and the recent splendid one
+            of 1858 not excepted.” The Comet was first seen
+            by a layman, and appeared at its brightest during
+            the Summer months in North America. Its coming was
+            heralded as a token of the great Civil War which
+            broke out then in America.</p></td>
+   </tr><tr>
+      <td class="tdr_top">1862&mdash;</td>
+      <td class="tdl"><p class="no-indent">“Second Civil War Comet.” Another Comet of very
+            peculiar appearance, with jets of flame flaring
+            from its head, showed itself during the Summer
+            months in North America. The Civil War was then at
+            its height. The coming of the Comet was taken to
+            herald the bloody battles of Shiloh, Williamsburg,
+            Seven Days, Seven Pines, Cedar Mountain and
+            Antietam, all fought that year after the Comet’s
+            appearance.</p></td>
+   </tr>
+ </tbody>
+</table>
+<p class="space-above2"><span class="pagenum" id="Page_56">[Pg 56]</span></p>
+
+<div id="I056" class="figcenter">
+  <img  src="images/i_056.jpg" alt="" width="600" height="381" />
+  <p class="center">THE GREAT COMET OF 1843<br />
+         AS SEEN ON MARCH 17 FROM BLACKHEATH, KENT.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_57">[Pg 57]</span></p>
+<table border="0" cellspacing="0" summary="Comet Dates" cellpadding="0" >
+  <tbody><tr>
+      <td class="tdr_top">1874&mdash;</td>
+      <td class="tdl"><p class="no-indent">Coggia’s Comet. This Comet was seen at its
+            brightest over Southern France and Spain during the
+            Summer months of that year. Spain was then in the
+            throes of the bloody Carlist War.</p></td>
+   </tr><tr>
+      <td class="tdc" colspan="2"><big><i>Garfield’s Comet.</i></big></td>
+   </tr><tr>
+      <td class="tdr_top">1881&mdash;</td>
+      <td class="tdl"><p class="no-indent">Garfield’s Comet. This Comet showed itself for a
+            few nights only in March during the week following
+            President Garfield’s inauguration. It was observed
+            also in Russia. On March 13, Emperor Alexander II.
+            of Russia, was assassinated with a bomb. Three
+            months later President Garfield was assassinated in
+            Washington.</p></td>
+   </tr><tr>
+      <td class="tdc" colspan="2"><big><i>War Comets.</i></big></td>
+   </tr><tr>
+      <td class="tdr_top">1882&mdash;</td>
+      <td class="tdl"><p class="no-indent">Comet of Tel-el-Kebir. A Comet with two tails was
+            seen at its brightest over Egypt during the first
+            two weeks of September. Egypt was then in the midst
+            of Arabi Pasha’s uprising against the British. On
+            September 18, when the Comet was last seen, Arabi
+            Pasha was overthrown by General Wolseley in the
+            bloody battle of Tel-el-Kebir.</p></td>
+   </tr><tr>
+      <td class="tdr_top">1904-5&mdash;</td>
+      <td class="tdl"><p class="no-indent">Manchurian War Comet. From the early part of
+            February, 1904, until Midsummer, 1905, Chinese
+            observers recorded the appearance of a Comet over
+            Northern China. Throughout that period Manchuria
+            was ravaged by the bloody war between the Japanese
+            and Russians.</p></td>
+   </tr><tr>
+      <td class="tdc" colspan="2"><big><i>Earthquake Comets.</i></big></td>
+   </tr><tr>
+      <td class="tdr_top">1906&mdash;<span class="pagenum" id="Page_58">[Pg 58]</span></td>
+      <td class="tdl"><p class="no-indent">San Francisco Comet. A Comet discovered by Ross on
+            March 17, remaining visible for one month. Observed
+            from the Lick Observatory in California. On April 17
+            came the California earthquake and burning of
+            San Francisco.</p></td>
+   </tr><tr>
+      <td class="tdr_top">1908&mdash;</td>
+      <td class="tdl"><p class="no-indent">Morehouse’s Comet. Visible for more than a month,
+            during the autumn. In Italy it was interpreted
+            afterward as an omen foreboding the Messina
+            earthquake late in the year.</p></td>
+   </tr><tr>
+      <td class="tdc" colspan="2"><big><i>This Year’s Comets.</i></big></td>
+   </tr><tr>
+      <td class="tdr_top">1910&mdash;</td>
+      <td class="tdl"><p class="no-indent">Inness’ Comet, otherwise known as “1910 A”. An
+            unexpected Comet of short duration during January.
+            On the appearance of this Comet Madame de Thebes,
+            a French astrologer, predicted floods and general
+            disaster for France. The disappearance of the Comet
+            in France was followed by unprecedented rains and
+            floods which covered one-fourth of France with
+            water and inundated Paris, completely submerging
+            all the bridges over the Seine. Floods also in
+            Italy and Germany. This Comet was likewise observed
+            in China late in January, where it caused universal consternation.</p></td>
+   </tr><tr>
+      <td class="tdr_top">1910&mdash;</td>
+      <td class="tdl"><p class="no-indent">Pidoux’s Comet. Another unexpected Comet was first
+            observed by Pidoux, in Geneva, during a few nights
+            late in February. It is recorded astronomically as
+            “1910 B”. Its fleeting observations by astronomers
+            were followed by Socialist franchise riots in
+            Germany and by the labour riots of Philadelphia,
+            with widespread bloodshed between the rioters and
+            the constabulary.</p></td>
+   </tr><tr>
+      <td class="tdr_top">1910&mdash;</td>
+      <td class="tdl"><p class="no-indent">Halley’s Comet of this year was first “picked
+            up” by Dr. Wolf, in Germany. Already various
+            astrologers have foretold disaster from its coming.
+            It remains to be seen whether their predictions
+            will come true.</p></td>
+   </tr>
+ </tbody>
+</table>
+
+<p class="space-below2"><span class="pagenum" id="Page_59">[Pg 59]</span></p>
+<div id="I059" class="figcenter">
+  <img  src="images/i_059.jpg" alt="" width="400" height="632" />
+  <p class="center">THE GREAT COMET OF 1882,<br /> ON OCTOBER 9, AT 4 A. M.</p>
+</div>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" />
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_60">[Pg 60]</span></p>
+<h2 class="nobreak">HALLEY’S BALEFUL COMET</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class="drop-cap"><span class="smcap">Among</span> all the stars
+known in astronomy, the periodically returning Comet now known as
+Halley’s Comet has the most baleful record.</p>
+
+<p>In this Comet’s wake, after every one of its recorded appearances,
+there have always followed terrible disasters.</p>
+
+<p>Not only war and battles, or other deeds of bloodshed, such as
+massacres and murders, but each of the dread disasters that are held to
+go with Comets have followed along one after the other in this Comet’s train.</p>
+
+<p>Of the eight baneful after-effects of Comets mentioned in the old
+German ditty that has been sung in the Fatherland ever since the great
+Comet which ushered in the dreadful Thirty Years’ War,</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent3">“Wind, Famine, Plague and Death to Kings</div>
+    <div class="verse indent4">War, Earthquakes, Floods and Dire Things.”</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>Halley’s Comet is known to have preceded each and every form of these
+evils in turn.</p>
+
+<p>Directly after each return of Halley’s Comet there has always followed
+somewhere within the influence of its rays one or other of those “dire
+things,”&mdash;a flood, an earthquake, a hurricane, famine, plague, war,
+bloodshed, or the sudden death of a ruler.</p>
+
+<p>Thanks to the careful work of such painstaking astronomers and
+historians as Lubienitius, Pingré, Dionys de Séjour, J. Russell Hind,
+Laugier, and Messrs. Cowell and Crommelin, the records of great events
+connected with Halley’s Comet have been traced back nearly 2,000 years,
+to the days before Christ.
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_61">[Pg 61]</span></p>
+
+<p>Among the signal events following in the train of this Comet there have
+been so many bloody massacres and appalling disasters that Halley’s
+Comet now has the ominous distinction of being the bloodiest of all
+stars of ill omen.</p>
+
+<p>Herewith follows the story of this Comet’s periodic appearances in
+history and of the events connected therewith, as traced back from its
+last return in 1835 to its first recorded entrance into the history of
+mankind.</p>
+
+<p class="f120"><b>1835-1836</b></p>
+
+<p class="drop-cap"><span class="smcap">Halley’s</span> Comet last
+appeared in the Summer of 1835, and was seen until Spring of the
+following year.</p>
+
+<p>It was first discerned by Father Dumouchel with a powerful telescope
+from the observatory of the Collegio Romano in Rome on the night of
+August 6, 1835. Father Dumouchel, who had been watching for it many
+months, picked it up close to the spot in the heavens that Rosenberger,
+a German astronomer, had predicted for its appearance on that date.</p>
+
+<p>The last astronomer to see the Comet was Sir John Herschel, who
+observed it from the Cape of Good Hope until the middle of May, 1836.</p>
+
+<p>Other noted astronomers who made observations of it were Arago, Struve,
+Bessel, Kaiser, Sir Thomas Maclear, Admiral Smyth, Baron Damoiseau and
+Count Pontécoulant.</p>
+
+<p>This last astronomer, many years before, had computed the exact time
+of its coming and came within four days of it. For this brilliant feat
+Count Pontécoulant received a gold medal from the French Academy of Sciences.
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_62">[Pg 62]</span></p>
+
+<div id="I062" class="figcenter">
+  <img  src="images/i_062.jpg" alt="" width="400" height="656" />
+  <p class="center">HALLEY’S COMET OF 1835.<br /> FROM A DRAWING BY ROSENBERGER.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_63">[Pg 63]</span>
+The German astronomer, Rosenberger, who had likewise computed the
+Comet’s return, coming within five days of its passage nearest to the
+Sun, received a similar gold medal from the Royal Astronomical Society
+of Great Britain.</p>
+
+<p>Professor Struve, who studied the Comet through the great telescope
+at Dorpat in Russia, described it as “glowing like a red-hot coal of
+oblong form.”</p>
+
+<p>Bessel, who observed it from the Koenigsberg observatory in Northern
+Germany, described the Comet’s appearance as that of “a blazing rocket,
+the flame from which was driven aside as by a strong gale, or as the
+stream of fire from the discharge of a cannon when the sparks and smoke
+are carried backwards by the wind.”</p>
+
+<p>Struve at Koenigsberg and Kaiser at Leyden were the first to see the
+Comet with their naked eyes in the third week of September.</p>
+
+<p>Immediately after the Comet became generally visible in the Old World
+the bubonic plague, known of old as the “Black Death,” broke out in
+Egypt. In the City of Alexandria alone 9,000 people died on one day.
+By the Moslems this calamity was generally attributed to the evil
+influence of the Comet.</p>
+
+<p>In America the Comet became visible to the naked eye only late in the
+year. Then, on its approach to the Sun, it was lost to view and passed
+over to the Southern Hemisphere where it was next observed by Sir John
+Herschel in South Africa.</p>
+
+<p>Shortly after its brief blaze over North America the great “New York
+Fire” laid waste the entire business section of the biggest city in the
+New World. All the commercial centre of the city, including the richest
+firms and largest commercial warehouses, were laid in ashes. The fire
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_64">[Pg 64]</span>
+raged through days and nights. In all, 530 houses burned down and
+$18,000,000 of property was consumed. Owing to the intense cold, the
+sufferings of the homeless were pitiable.</p>
+
+<p>Down in Florida, at the same time, Osceola, the chieftain of the
+Seminole Indians, called upon the Comet as a signal for war against the
+whites. The Indians called the Comet “Big Knife in the Sky.”</p>
+
+<p>The war began with a bloody massacre of American soldiers under General
+Wiley Thompson at Fort King. All were slaughtered. Osceola scalped
+General Thompson with his own hands.</p>
+
+<p>On the same day, Major Dade of the American Army, who was leading a
+relief expedition into Florida from Tampa Bay, was ambushed by the
+Indians near Wahoo Swamp and was massacred with his men. Of the whole
+expedition only four men escaped death.</p>
+
+<p>Within forty-eight hours of this horrible massacre came another bloody
+Indian fight on the banks of the Big Withlacoochee.</p>
+
+<p>With the passing of the Comet to the Southern Hemisphere, bloody wars
+broke out one after another in Mexico, Cuba, Central America, Ecuador,
+Bolivia, Peru and Argentina. All those countries were in a welter of
+blood.</p>
+
+<p>At the same time the American settlers of Texas declared themselves
+independent and made open war on Mexico. The war began with the bloody
+battle of Gonzales, in which 500 American frontiersmen fought and
+defeated over a thousand Mexican soldiers. This was followed by other
+fierce fights at Goliad and Bexar.</p>
+
+<p>Next came the bloody massacre of the Alamo, when all of Jim Bowie’s and
+Davy Crockett’s American followers were killed in an all night fight.
+Out of 200 Americans every man fell at his post. This was the deed of
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_65">[Pg 65]</span>
+blood on which Joaquin Miller wrote his stirring Ballad of the Alamo.</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent3">“Santa Ana came storming as a storm might come,&mdash;</div>
+    <div class="verse indent4">There was rumble of cannon; there was rattle of blade;</div>
+    <div class="verse indent4">There was cavalry, infantry, bugle and drum,&mdash;</div>
+    <div class="verse indent4">Full seven thousand, in pomp and parade,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent4">The chivalry, flower of Mexico,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent4">And a gaunt two hundred in the Alamo.”</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>One month before the final disappearance of the Comet, the Texas War
+came to an end with the bloody battle of San Jacinto, when Sam Houston,
+with 800 American frontiersmen, defeated 1,500 Mexicans, and made a
+prisoner of President Santa Ana of Mexico.</p>
+
+<p>When the Comet had passed to the Southern Hemisphere, it was seen at
+its brightest in South Africa.</p>
+
+<p>The pious Boers of Cape Colony understood it to be a sign from heaven
+and forthwith set out on their great trek across the Orange and Vaal
+rivers, where they founded the Orange Free State and Transvaal Republic.</p>
+
+<p>Thus the Comet was the signal for the first blood drawn in the long
+fight between the British and Boers.</p>
+
+<p>A little later, though, the Boers found another, more woeful
+significance for the blazing of the Comet.</p>
+
+<p>Under the leadership of Piet Relief, a thousand Boer families had
+trekked across the Drakensberg Mountains into Natal. A solemn treaty
+of peace with the Zulu warriors was entered into with Dingaan, the
+chief of the Zulus at Dingaan’s Kraal. Suddenly the Zulus pounced upon
+the unsuspecting Piet Relief and his sixty-five Boer followers and
+massacred them to a man.</p>
+
+<p>Then the Zulus, numbering some 10,000 warriors, swept out into the
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_66">[Pg 66]</span>
+veldt and made for the Boer wagon trains. Near Colenso, at a spot
+called Weenen (weeping), in remembrance of the dreadful tragedy there
+perpetrated, the Zulus overwhelmed the Boer laager and slaughtered all
+its inmates&mdash;41 men, 56 women, 185 children and 250 Kaffir slaves.</p>
+
+<p>After this bloody massacre, equalling in horror the Massacre of the
+Alamo on the other side of the world, the Comet of 1835-36 was seen no
+more.</p>
+
+<p class="f120"><b>1758-1759</b></p>
+
+<p class="drop-cap"><span class="smcap">This</span> was the first
+return of the Comet predicted by Halley. Hence it must be reckoned as
+the first appearance of “Halley’s Comet” under his name.</p>
+
+<p>It was first seen on Christmas night, 1758, by John Palitsch, a Saxon
+farmer, near Dresden, who was looking for it with a self-constructed
+telescope of eight-foot focus. The Comet did not become visible to the
+naked eye until well into 1759. It passed around the sun on March 12,
+1759. After that it was seen throughout Europe during April and May,
+appearing at its brightest during the first week in May. Later it was
+seen to advantage in the Southern Hemisphere.</p>
+
+<p>In Germany, where it was seen at its fiercest, the Comet was taken as
+a token of the bloody Seven Years’ War, which was then being fought
+between Frederick the Great and his enemies on all sides.</p>
+
+<p>The ominous Comet had scarcely vanished from view when all Germany was
+overrun by marching armies from France, from Austria, from Russia.</p>
+
+<p>The French, under the Duke of Broglie, overthrew the Germans, under the
+Duke of Brunswick, at Bergen, and seized the city of Frankfurt. Then
+came the bloody battle of Minden, in which two large French armies were
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_67">[Pg 67]</span>
+beaten. Meanwhile the Russians were marching into Prussia, and another
+bloody battle was fought at Kay in midsummer.</p>
+
+<p>Within a fortnight King Frederick the Great and his whole army were
+overthrown by the Austrians and Russians in the disastrous battle of
+Kunersdorf.</p>
+
+<p>Another Prussian army was overcome at Maxen, where 13,000 Prussians
+were taken.</p>
+
+<p>Altogether, during this year’s campaigns, several hundred thousand
+soldiers lost their lives.</p>
+
+<p>It was the worst year of the Seven Years’ War for Frederick the Great
+and his soldiers, who attributed their bloody defeats to the ill omen
+of the Comet.</p>
+
+<p>In other parts of the world, likewise, the coming of the Comet was
+followed by widespread war and bloody fighting.</p>
+
+<p>For the French, the Comet signalled disaster after disaster. After
+their armies had been beaten in Germany, their navy was defeated on
+August 17 in a great sea fight in the Bay of Lagos, on the coast of
+Portugal. Six weeks later there was another bloody sea fight between
+the British and French, when Admiral Pocock inflicted a telling defeat
+on the French fleet.</p>
+
+<p>Then came the final French naval disaster off Quiberon, in the Bay of
+Biscay, when Admiral Hawke destroyed French naval power by sinking
+or blowing up over a score of the French fighting ships. This bloody
+defeat was a disaster of untold consequences to the French, since it
+meant the loss of India.</p>
+
+<p>But this was not all that this Comet of ill omen had brought to the
+French.</p>
+
+<p>On September 13th of that year the French lost their strongest hold on
+America in the disastrous defeat inflicted upon them by General Wolfe
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_68">[Pg 68]</span>
+in the bloody battle on the Plains of Abraham, where Wolfe himself fell
+fighting. On the French side, General Montcalm, the Commander-in-Chief,
+was mortally wounded. This meant the loss of Quebec and of all Canada
+to the French, an event of far-reaching importance that has changed the
+destiny of all America and of the modern world.</p>
+
+<p class="f120"><b>1682</b></p>
+
+<p class="drop-cap"><span class="smcap">The</span> Comet which put
+Halley on the right track in his theories of Comets, first came
+into view on the night of August 15, 1682. It was first detected by
+Flamsteed’s assistant at the Greenwich Observatory, while searching the
+northern heavens with a telescope.</p>
+
+<p>Flamsteed, the first Astronomer Royal, and Halley, his successor, kept
+a close watch upon the Comet every night, and followed its course over
+the sky. Others who watched it were Sir Isaac Newton, Cassini, Picard
+and La Hire in Paris, Baert at Toulon, Kirch and Zimmermann in Germany,
+Montanari at Padua, and Hevelius in Dantsic. They observed that the
+tail lengthened considerably as the Comet came nearer the sun. Later
+a jet of luminous matter was seen shooting out toward the sun, which
+afterward fell back into the tail. Hevelius has left us a drawing of
+this phenomenon.</p>
+
+<p>On November 11th, Halley found that the Comet had come within a
+semi-diameter of the path of our earth. This startling discovery
+caused Halley to reflect what might happen if the earth and the Comet
+had arrived at the same time at the spot in space where their two
+orbits intersect. Assuming as he did that the mass of the Comet was
+considerably larger than our earth, he declared: “If so large a body
+with so rapid a motion were to strike the earth&mdash;a thing by no means
+impossible&mdash;the shock might reduce this beautiful world to its original chaos.”
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_69">[Pg 69]</span></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+  <img id="I069"  src="images/i_069a.jpg" alt="" width="600" height="144" />
+  <p class="center space-below2">HALLEY’S COMET, JANUARY 9,<br />
+       1683, AS DRAWN BY HEVELIUS.</p>
+  <img  src="images/i_069b.jpg" alt="" width="600" height="480" />
+  <p class="center space-below2">THE COMET OF 1682, AS REPRESENTED<br />
+       IN THE NUREMBURG CHRONICLE.</p>
+  <img  src="images/i_069c.jpg" alt="" width="600" height="210" />
+  <p class="center space-below2">MEDAL STRUCK IN GERMANY TO ALLAY THE<br />
+       TERROR CAUSED BY THE COMET OF 1680-81.</p>
+  <p class="center">TRANSLATION OF INSCRIPTION:</p>
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent3">“THE STAR THREATENS EVIL THINGS&mdash;ONLY TRUST!</div>
+    <div class="verse indent4">GOD WILL MAKE IT TURN OUT WELL.”</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_70">[Pg 70]</span>
+Others beside Halley took alarm at the Comet. They called it
+“The Chariot of Fire.”</p>
+
+<p>Dr. Whiston&mdash;he who succeeded Newton in the Lucasian chair of
+mathematics at Cambridge&mdash;in a moment of prophetic vision fervently
+declared that this Comet was God’s agent that would bring about the
+General Conflagration by involving the world in flames.</p>
+
+<p>In America, the Rev. Increase Mather, President of Harvard College,
+on the appearance of the Comet in New England, preached his great sermon
+on “Heaven’s Alarm to the World ... wherein is shown that fearful sights
+and signs in the Heavens are the presages of great calamities at hand.”</p>
+
+<p>Increase Mather’s warning was handed down as an inspired prophesy,
+in view of the fact that the English settlers in North America soon
+afterwards got into bloody warfare with the Indians. The war raged at
+its fiercest in the Carolinas, where the English settlers made war upon
+the redskins simply for the purpose of taking them captive and selling
+them into slavery in the West Indies.</p>
+
+<p>To the Indians the Comet appeared as a sign of ill omen, as shown by
+their frequent references to it during the parleys with the white men.</p>
+
+<p>The Comet was shining at its fiercest when the six greatest chiefs of
+the Susquehanna nation were enticed into a pretended council of peace
+with the white men, only to be foully murdered with all their followers.</p>
+
+<p>While this was going on in America, the Comet gave the signal in India
+for the first hostilities there upon the white settlers from Portugal,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_71">[Pg 71]</span>
+as well as for the outbreak of the bloody Mahratta War, which ravaged
+India for a generation to come.</p>
+
+<p>Nearer East, the Turks, under the leadership of Mohammed Bey, ravaged
+Egypt, while, on the other side, a Turkish army under Kara Mustapha
+carried war into Hungary, to the very gates of Vienna, until Emperor
+Leopold felt constrained to call for help from Sobieski, the warrior
+king of the Poles.</p>
+
+<p>In Europe the French overran Alsace, and suddenly seized the German
+city of Strasburg.</p>
+
+<p>At the same time the bubonic plague broke out in North Germany. In the
+little university town of Halle alone, within a few days, 4,397 people
+died out of a total population of ten thousand.</p>
+
+<p>It was then that medals were struck off in Germany with a design of
+the comet on their face, and an inscription imploring God to avert the
+evils threatened by the Comet:</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0">“The star threatens evil things;</div>
+    <div class="verse indent2">Only trust! God will make it right.”</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p class="f120"><b>1607</b></p>
+
+<p class="drop-cap"><span class="smcap">The</span> Comet this year
+was seen all over Europe. The best observations of it were made by
+Kepler and Longomontanus (Langberger). It was seen at its brightest
+in England.</p>
+
+<p>Shortly after its appearance over England, there came freshets and
+floods which completely submerged the richest counties of England. In
+Somersetshire and Gloucestershire the water rose above the tops of the
+houses. This was followed by a visitation of the plague.</p>
+
+<p>In Ireland the Comet was taken as an omen of the fate of Londonderry,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_72">[Pg 72]</span>
+where the Irish rebels, suddenly seizing the city, massacred Sir George
+Powlett and all his English garrison.</p>
+
+<p>In Germany the Comet was taken as a token of the war then brewing
+between the Emperor and the German Protestant Princes&mdash;the so-called
+Protestant League&mdash;which ushered in the dreadful Thirty Years’ War
+in Germany.</p>
+
+<p>Off Gibraltar, a Dutch fleet completely destroyed a fleet of Spanish
+war galleons, thereby crippling Spanish sea power for a generation to come.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile, in America, the early settlers in Virginia, led by John
+Smith, found themselves beset by the redskins, who were incited to
+war by the appearance of the Comet. They called it “Red Knife in the
+Sky.” During the war, John Smith was taken prisoner, and escaped with
+his life only through the intercession of Pocahontas, the daughter of
+Powhattan.</p>
+
+<p class="f120"><b>1531</b></p>
+
+<p class="drop-cap"><span class="smcap">The</span> Comet was first
+sighted by the German astronomer Bienewitz (“Apianus”) in midsummer of
+this year. Zwingli preached about it as an omen of disaster.</p>
+
+<p>German astrologers regarded it as a herald of the wars between Spain
+and France, which broke out in that year, and of the bloody war carried
+into Hungary by the Turks under Soleyman, who ravaged the Danube
+country to the very walls of Vienna. These wars were followed by a
+visitation of the black plague.</p>
+
+<p>In the Netherlands the breaking of the ocean dykes caused terrific
+floods, in which over 400,000 people were drowned.</p>
+
+<p>Toward the close of the year the Comet passed over to the Southern Hemisphere.
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_73">[Pg 73]</span></p>
+
+<p>To the aborigines of South America it proved a star of dreadful omen.
+During this year the most cruel of Spanish conquerors did their
+bloodiest work in the New World&mdash;Cortez in Mexico, Alvarado at the
+Equator, and Pizarro in Peru. Before the Comet disappeared from view,
+several hundred thousand wretched Incas and Aztecs had been slaughtered
+by the Spaniards, while many more hundred thousands were worked to
+death as slaves.</p>
+
+<p class="f120"><b>1456</b></p>
+
+<p class="drop-cap"><span class="smcap">The</span> Comet this year was
+observed throughout Europe and also in China. It came into view over
+Europe on the 29th of May, and was seen gliding over the sky towards
+the moon.</p>
+
+<p>Writers of that period say that it shone with exceeding brightness and
+spread out a fan-shaped train of fire. The Arab astronomers describe
+its shape as that of a Turkish scimitar, which, blazing against the
+dark sky, was regarded as a sign from heaven of the war then raging
+against the Christian infidels.</p>
+
+<p>A clear story of the Comet’s appearance has been left by the Bavarian
+Jesuit, Brueckner (Pontanus). He based his story on the record of
+Georgos Phranza, Grandmaster of the Wardrobes to the Emperor of
+Constantinople. There the Comet is described as “rising in the West;
+moving towards the East, and approaching the Moon.”</p>
+
+<p>By the Chinese this Comet was described as having a tail sixty degrees
+long, and a head “which at one time was round, and the size of a bull’s
+eye, the tail being like a peacock’s.”
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_74">[Pg 74]</span></p>
+
+<p class="blockquot">Halley wrote of this Comet in 1686: “In the
+summer of the year 1456 a Comet was seen, which passed in a retrograde
+direction between the earth and the sun. From its period and path, I
+infer that it was the same Comet as that of the years 1531, 1607 and
+1682. I may therefore with confidence predict its return in the year 1758.”</p>
+
+<p>The appearance of the Comet in 1456 was so well remembered even 225
+years later, because this was the scimitar-shaped Comet hailed by the
+conquering Turks as their guiding star, against the evil influence of
+which Pope Calixtus III. exhorted all Christians to pray to God.</p>
+
+<p>This story has been denied by certain latter-day sceptics, but the
+medieval historian Platina, who was living in Rome at the time, and who
+knew whereof he spoke, wrote in his “Lives of the Popes” in 1470:</p>
+
+<p class="blockquot">“A hairy and fiery star having then made its
+appearance for several days, the mathematicians declared that there
+would follow grievous pestilence, dearth and some great calamity.
+Calixtus, to avert the wrath of God, ordered supplications that if
+evils were impending for the human race He would turn all upon the
+Turks, the enemies of the Christian name. He likewise ordered, to move
+God by continual entreaty, that notice should be given by the bells to
+call the faithful at midday to aid by their prayers those engaged in
+battle with the Turk.”</p>
+
+<p>In truth, all Christendom appeared indeed to have fallen under the
+“wrath of God,” for the Turks; having wrested Constantinople away from
+the Christians, now came ravaging up the Danube countries and laid
+siege to the Christian city of Belgrade. Bloody battles were fought
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_75">[Pg 75]</span>
+between the Magyars and Turks on the Danube, until Hunyadi, the great
+Magyar leader, at last overthrew the Turks under Mahomet II., under
+the walls of Belgrade, in a great battle, in which no less than 24,000
+Turks were slain. This was on July 21st, on the eve of which day the
+Comet had been seen to blaze at its fiercest.</p>
+
+<p class="f120"><b>1378</b></p>
+
+<p class="drop-cap"><span class="smcap">The</span> Comet appeared late
+in the year, and was seen at its brightest over Northern Europe, in
+Scotland, Scandinavia, Russia and Poland.</p>
+
+<p>All these countries, during the same period and immediately afterwards,
+were cursed by the terrible pestilence called the “Black Death,” now
+known to have been the worst visitation of the bubonic plague known in
+history. Wherever the dread sickness appeared, the people “died like
+rats.” So many succumbed to the disease, and so many others fled aghast
+from the pestilence, that whole cities and towns were left empty, and
+no labourers could be found to till the fields.</p>
+
+<p class="f120"><b>1301</b></p>
+
+<p class="drop-cap"><span class="smcap">The</span> Comet this year was
+first observed by German and Flemish astrologers during the late Summer
+and Autumn. It was interpreted as an ill omen of the wars which then
+ravaged Europe. Immediately after the appearance of the Comet, Emperor
+Albrecht of Germany ravaged the Rhine lands with fire and sword.
+Afterwards the German astrologers explained the Comet as a warning omen
+of the death of the Emperor’s son Rudolf, who died within a twelvemonth
+of his coronation as King of Bohemia.</p>
+
+<p>In Flanders the Comet was taken as a heavenly token of the fierce war
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_76">[Pg 76]</span>
+which followed the bloodstained massacre of 3,000 French soldiers by the
+enraged people of Flanders.</p>
+
+<p>Soon after this came Robert of Artois’ bloody defeat at Coutrai, the
+famous “Battle of the Spurs,” so called from the thousands of gilt
+spurs that were taken afterwards from the feet of the slain French
+cavaliers.</p>
+
+<p class="f120"><b>1222</b></p>
+
+<p class="drop-cap"><span class="smcap">The</span> Comet during this
+year is recorded by the Chinese astronomers in the months of September
+and October. During these months, and immediately afterwards, Jenghis
+Khan, the bloody Mongol conqueror, with his fierce Mongol hordes, was
+ravaging all China, Persia, India and the Caucasus country as far as
+the River Don.</p>
+
+<p>The Comet was taken as a special omen of the terrible fate of the City
+of Herat and its surrounding country, where the bloodthirsty conqueror
+caused to be slaughtered over a million of people. Jenghis Khan, who
+believed in stars and omens, having been born with bloodstained hands,
+hailed the Comet as his special Star. Under its rays he extended his
+immense Empire to its outermost boundaries from the China seas to the
+banks of the Dniepr in Russia. After the Comet’s disappearance, Jenghis
+Khan regarded the planets that had crossed its orbit as stars of ill
+omen, betokening his death, so he set his face backward from his march
+of conquest, and soon afterwards died in Mongolia.</p>
+
+<p class="f120"><b>1145</b></p>
+
+<p class="drop-cap"><span class="smcap">The</span> Comet appeared over
+Europe early in Spring. It was seen at Rome in March and April.</p>
+
+<p>Inspired by the appearance of the Comet, Pope Eugenius III. called for
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_77">[Pg 77]</span>
+a crusade against the Moslems. St. Bernard in France took up the cry,
+and preached a holy war all over France. On Easter Sunday, King Louis
+VII. of France, his Queen and all his nobles, received the Cross from
+St. Bernard at Vizelay.</p>
+
+<p>In Rome, however, the Comet was taken as a token of the Pope’s
+downfall. Arnold of Brescia preached against the Pope and aroused the
+Roman populace against him. The Holy Father had to flee.</p>
+
+<p>On the disappearance of the Comet, the Pope returned and excommunicated
+the Patricians of Rome. Arnold of Brescia was taken and strangled in
+his cell. Later historians, like Lubienitius, accordingly interpreted
+the Comet as a sign of warning rather than as an ill omen.</p>
+
+<p class="f120"><b>1066</b></p>
+
+<p class="drop-cap"><span class="smcap">This</span> is the most famous
+appearance of the Comet now known as Halley’s Comet. Under its seven
+rays, that year, William the Conqueror felt inspired to fall upon
+England, while Harold, the Saxon, on the other hand, saw in the Comet a
+star of dread foreboding and of doom.</p>
+
+<p>The medieval chronicles of this year all make special mention of the
+Comet. A picture of the Comet, as it appeared to the doomed Harold, was
+embroidered by Matilde of France, on the famous coloured tapestry of
+the Norman Conquest, which is still preserved at Bayeux in Normandy.</p>
+
+<p>Zonares, the Greek historian, in his account of the death of Emperor
+Constantinus Ducas (who died in May, 1067), writes of the Comet as
+“large as the full moon, and at first without a tail, on the appearance
+of which the star dwindled in size.”</p>
+
+<p>The Chinese astronomers have recorded that this Comet had seven tails,
+and was seen for sixty-seven days, after which “the star, the blaze,
+and the star’s tails all drew away.”
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_78">[Pg 78]</span></p>
+
+<div id="I078" class="figcenter">
+  <img  src="images/i_078.jpg" alt="" width="600" height="363" />
+  <p class="center">HALLEY’S COMET, 1066.<br /> (<i>From the Bayeux Tapestry.</i>)</p>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_79">[Pg 79]</span>
+The Christian chroniclers record that this Comet, “in size and
+brightness equalled the full moon, while its tail, slowly lengthening
+as it came near the Sun, spread out into seven rays and arched over the
+heavens in the shape of a dragon’s tail.”</p>
+
+<p>Sigebert of Brabant, the Belgian chronicler of that time, wrote of it:
+“Over the island of Britain was seen a star of a wonderful bigness, to
+the train of which hung a fiery sword not unlike a dragon’s tail; and
+out of the dragon’s mouth issued two vast rays, whereof one reached as
+far as France, and the other, divided into seven lesser rays, stretched
+away towards Ireland.”</p>
+
+<p>William of Malmesbury wrote how the apparition affected the mind of
+a fellow monk of his monastery in England. His words were: “Soon
+after the death of Henry, King of France, by poison, a wonderful star
+appeared trailing its long tail over the sky. Wherefore, a certain monk
+of our monastery, by name Elmir, bowed down with terror at the sight of
+the strange star, wisely exclaimed, ‘Thou art come back at last, thou
+that will cause so many mothers to weep; many years have I seen thee
+shine, but thou seemest to me more terrible now that thou foretellest
+the ruin of my country.’”</p>
+
+<p>Another old Norman chronicler, by way of defending the divine right
+of William of Normandy to invade England, wrote: “How a Starre with
+seven long Tayles appeared in the Skye. How the Learned sayd that newe
+Starres only shewed themselves when a Kingdom wanted a King, and how
+the sayd Starre was yclept a Comette.”</p>
+
+<p>William himself appealed to the Comet as his guiding star. It shone at
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_80">[Pg 80]</span>
+its brightest during the Summer months while William was preparing his
+expedition at St. Valery. When the spirits of his followers failed
+them, William pointed to the blazing Comet and bid monks and priests
+who accompanied his expedition to preach stirring sermons on the
+“wonderful Sign from Heaven.”</p>
+
+<p>The trip across the English Channel, late in September, was lighted up
+by the Comet, and under its lustre the Norman invaders first pitched
+their camp at Pevensey.</p>
+
+<p>Once more, when William’s Norman followers quailed at the fierce work
+before them, William pointed to the Comet as a token of coming victory.</p>
+
+<p>A fortnight later, directly after the disappearance of the Comet, the
+Battle of Hastings was fought, in which King Harold and his Saxon
+thanes lost their lives and their country.</p>
+
+<p>Afterwards, when Queen Matilda and her court ladies embroidered the
+pictorial story of her husband’s Conquest of England in the huge
+tapestry of Bayeux, they did not forget the Comet. They represented
+Harold cowering in alarm on his throne, whilst his people are huddled
+together, pointing with their fingers at the fearful omen in the sky,
+the birds even being upset at the sight. The Latin legend over the
+picture “Isti Mirant Stella” (they marvel at the star), makes it all
+plain.</p>
+
+<p>As I. C. Bruce, the editor of “The Bayeux Tapestry Elucidated,” has
+said: “This embroidery is remarkable for furnishing us with the
+earliest human representation we have of a Comet.”</p>
+
+<p>The Comet of 1066 will ever be famous for ushering in a new era for
+England. Even to-day Halley’s Comet is remembered as “The Comet of the
+Conquest.”
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_81">[Pg 81]</span></p>
+
+<div id="I081" class="figcenter">
+  <img  src="images/i_081.jpg" alt="" width="400" height="505" />
+  <p class="center">WILLIAM THE CONQUEROR.<br /> (An English Dream.)</p>
+<p class="f90">Halley’s Comet appeared in 1066&mdash;<br />When William the Conqueror took
+England.<br /> Halley’s Comet is here to-day.&mdash;Kladderadatsch (Berlin).</p>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_82">[Pg 82]</span></p>
+
+<p class="f120"><b>989</b></p>
+
+<p class="drop-cap"><span class="smcap">The</span> appearance of the
+Comet this year was marked by bloody wars all over Europe. The Lombards
+under Otho were harrying the ancient Roman Empire, while the heathen
+Danes and Wends ravaged Germany.</p>
+
+<p class="f120"><b>912</b></p>
+
+<p class="drop-cap"><span class="smcap">The</span> Comet appeared early
+in the year and was seen over Germany, as noted in the chronicles
+of the monks of St. Gallus in Switzerland. Immediately after the
+appearance of the Comet, Germany was ravaged by war, both inside and
+outside, the Empire being invaded on all sides by the Danes in the
+North, the Slavs in the Northeast, and the Magyars from Hungary.</p>
+
+<p class="f120"><b>837</b></p>
+
+<p class="drop-cap"><span class="smcap">The</span> Chinese Astronomers
+record two Comets for this year, one in February, and the other in
+April. But the modern view is that this was the same Comet, as seen
+going to the Sun, and afterward, when it was coming away from the
+Sun.</p>
+
+<p>Immediately after the appearance of the Comet there followed a
+widespread rebellion in China with much bloodshed and fierce reprisals.</p>
+
+<p>The only Christian record of the Comet we have is that of Eginard, an
+astrologer employed at the Court of Louis the Debonair, in France. This
+is Eginard’s account of the Comet: “In the midst of the holy festival
+of Easter there shone forth in our sky a sign always ominous and of sad
+foreboding. As soon as the Emperor&mdash;who was in the habit of gazing up
+into the sky at night&mdash;first saw the Comet, he had me called before him,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_83">[Pg 83]</span>
+together with another learned star gazer. As soon as I came before him
+he asked me what I thought of the sign in heaven.”</p>
+
+<p>“‘Let me have but a little time,’ I asked of him, ‘that I may study
+this sign and see the exact constellation of the other stars around
+it, thus to gather from the stars the true meaning of this portent,’
+promising him that I would tell him on the morrow of the results of my
+studies.</p>
+
+<p>“But the Emperor, guessing that I was trying to gain time&mdash;as was
+indeed the truth, lest I be driven to tell him something unlucky and
+fatal to him&mdash;he said to me:</p>
+
+<p>“‘Go up on the terrace of the palace and look. Then come back at once
+and tell me what thou hast seen! For I did not see this star last
+night; nor didst thou point it out to me; but I know that sign in
+heaven is a Comet. Thou must tell me true what it forebodes to me!’</p>
+
+<p>“Then, before I could say anything, he said: ‘There is another thing
+thou art hiding from me. It is that changes in Kingdoms and the deaths
+of rulers are foretold by this sign.’</p>
+
+<p>“To soothe him I reminded the Emperor of the words of the Prophet
+Isaiah, who said: ‘Fear not signs in the Heaven, like unto the Heathen.’</p>
+
+<p>“But the Emperor smiled sadly and said: ‘We should believe only in God
+on High, who has created us and also all Stars in Heaven. Since He has
+sent this Star, and since this unlooked for Sign may be meant for us,
+let us look upon it as a warning from Heaven.’”</p>
+
+<p>Thereupon Louis the Debonair betook himself to fasting, prayers, and
+the building of churches and shrines, he and all his Court. Shortly
+thereafter he died.
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_84">[Pg 84]</span></p>
+
+<p>The French chronicler, Raoul Glaber, afterward wrote in his chronicle:
+“Comets never show themselves to man without foreboding surely some
+coming event, marvellous or terrible.”</p>
+
+<p class="f120"><b>760</b></p>
+
+<p class="drop-cap"><span class="smcap">A</span> Comet appeared in the
+Spring of this year, which without any doubt whatever was Halley’s. It
+was recorded in detail both by European and Chinese annalists, and its
+orbit has been calculated and identified by Laugier.</p>
+
+<p>A Greek record of Constantinople tells how “a Comet like a great beam”
+and very brilliant was observed in the twentieth year of Emperor
+Constantine V., surnamed Copronymus, first in the East and then in the
+West, for about thirty days. Its appearance was followed next Winter
+by a biting frost throughout the Orient, which endured 150 days, from
+October until February, blighting all crops in Egypt and elsewhere in
+the Eastern Empire.</p>
+
+<p class="f120"><b>684</b></p>
+
+<p class="drop-cap"><span class="smcap">Chinese</span>
+annals record a Comet observed in the West in September and
+October. This accords with the computed time for the course of Halley’s
+Comet that year. Immediately after the Comet’s appearance, China and
+the Far East were ravaged by the black plague. Millions died of it.
+Baeda the Venerable, in his “Chronicle of the English People,” records
+that the plague also reached England.
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_85">[Pg 85]</span></p>
+
+<p class="f120"><b>607</b></p>
+
+<p class="drop-cap"><span class="smcap">All</span>
+Europe and the former Roman Empire were in such dire confusion
+during this period that no records of this year, either astronomic
+or historical, have come down to us. Messrs. Cowell and Crommelin,
+however, have computed astronomically that the Comet must have appeared
+during this year. All we know is that Italy and the Latin World were
+overrun by ravaging Slavonian hordes from Hungary, who made all the
+country run with blood.</p>
+
+<p class="f120"><b>530</b></p>
+
+<p class="drop-cap"><span class="smcap">Of the</span> Comet this year,
+likewise, there is no astronomic record. All we know is that the
+appearance of a Comet is noted in European chronicles. It was followed
+by a virulent outbreak of the black plague.</p>
+
+<p>In the legendary history of Merlin, the ancient British seer, it is
+stated that on the appearance of a Comet this year he prophesied that
+Uter, brother of Ambrosius, on the death of the latter, should rule the
+kingdom; that a ray from the Comet which pointed toward Gaul presaged
+a son who should be born to him and who should be great in power; and
+that the ray “that goes toward Ireland represents a daughter, of whom
+thou shalt be the father, and her sons and grandsons shall reign over
+all the Britons.” These prophecies all came true.</p>
+
+<p class="f120"><b>451</b></p>
+
+<p class="drop-cap"><span class="smcap">The</span> Comet which appeared
+over Europe this year has been proven by Laugier to have been Halley’s Comet.
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_86">[Pg 86]</span></p>
+
+<p>It was seen in France just before the monster battle on the Catalaunian
+Fields (Châlons-sur-Marne), when Aetius, the last of the Romans,
+together with King Theoderic and his Goths, stemmed the tide of Hunnish
+invasion led by Attila, the “Scourge of God.”</p>
+
+<p>Theoderic, together with 148,000 warriors on both sides, were slain in
+this tremendous fight, which alone saved Europe from Tartar savagery.</p>
+
+<p class="f120"><b>373</b></p>
+
+<p class="drop-cap"><span class="smcap">Chinese</span>
+annals of this year record a Comet seen in the northern
+constellation of Ophiuchus in October. This year marks the beginning
+of the tremendous migration of peoples, which started in Mongolia and
+Tartary, and crossing the Volga gradually overflowed all the known
+world, like a huge human deluge.</p>
+
+<p class="f120"><b>295</b></p>
+
+<p class="drop-cap"><span class="smcap">The</span> appearance of a
+Comet this year (identified by Hind with Halley’s) was followed by
+a bloody rebellion of the ancient Britons against the Romans, and
+by another rebellion against Rome by the Egyptians. These patriotic
+uprisings of the people were suppressed with fire and sword and both
+countries ran with blood.</p>
+
+<p class="f120"><b>218</b></p>
+
+<p class="drop-cap"><span class="smcap">The</span>
+Chinese catalogue of Ma-tuan-lin records a Comet with a path
+exactly analogous with the orbit of Halley’s Comet computed for that
+year by Hind. In the Chinese record the Comet is described as “pointed
+and bright.” Its coming was connected with the death of Emperor Ween-te
+directly afterward, and the Civil Wars between various claimants to the
+throne of the Celestial Empire, which then rent China asunder.
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_87">[Pg 87]</span></p>
+
+<p>Dion Cassius, the Roman historian, describes the Comet of this year as
+“a very fearful star with a tail stretching from the West towards the East.”</p>
+
+<p>The Roman augurs explained the Comet as a portent of the bloody death
+of Emperor Macrinus of Rome, who was murdered by his own soldiers on
+the night after the disappearance of the Comet.</p>
+
+<p class="f120"><b>141</b></p>
+
+<p class="drop-cap"><span class="smcap">In this</span>
+year the Chinese astronomers recorded a Comet in March and
+April (the time computed for Halley’s Comet), which they described as
+“a star six or seven cubits long and of a bluish-white colour.” The
+coming of the Comet was followed by a virulent outbreak of the plague
+in China and the Far East, which spread all over the known world. So
+virulent was this pestilence that in the City of Naples alone 400,000
+people died of the disease.</p>
+
+<p class="f120"><b>65-66</b></p>
+
+<p class="drop-cap"><span class="smcap">Halley’s</span>
+Comet, according to astronomic calculations, must have made
+its reappearance during the winter months of 65-66 A. D. The Chinese
+have recorded “two Comets,” one in 65, which was seen for fifty-six
+days, and “the other” in February, 66, which remained visible fifty days.</p>
+
+<p>This was the Comet which St. Peter and Josephus saw over the City of
+Jerusalem, before the fall of the Holy City. Josephus wrote of it:
+“Amongst other warnings, a Comet, of the kind called Xiphias, because
+their tails appear to represent the blade of a sword, was seen above
+the doomed city for the space of nearly a whole year.”
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_88">[Pg 88]</span></p>
+
+<p>Jerusalem was ravaged by pestilence and famine and soon afterward was
+stormed by the Roman soldiery led by Titus. The Temple was burned down
+and the streets of the Holy City ran with blood. It was the end of
+Jerusalem and of the Jews as a free city and people.</p>
+
+<p class="f120"><b>B. C. 11</b></p>
+
+<p class="drop-cap"><span class="smcap">This</span>
+is the farthest back that the appearances of Halley’s Comet
+have been traced in history. For earlier appearances there are no
+sufficiently trustworthy computations or records.</p>
+
+<p>Dion Cassius in his “History of Rome” has recorded “a Comet which hung
+suspended over the City of Rome just before the death of Agrippa,” who
+ruled over the Roman Empire during the absence of Augustus in Greece
+and Asia. Agrippa was so universally beloved, and his death was held to
+be such a loss to Rome that he was buried with imperial honours in the
+tomb intended for Augustus.</p>
+
+<p>The death of Agrippa occurred in the year 12, shortly after the
+disappearance of the Comet which Hind has identified with Halley’s.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb" />
+
+<p class="drop-cap"><span class="smcap">This</span> completes the
+record of all the known appearances of Halley’s Comet. The record fully
+justifies Chambers’ dictum, that the “Comet known as Halley’s is by far
+the most interesting of all the Comets recorded in history.”</p>
+
+<p>This historic record also appears to justify in no small measure the
+popular beliefs of the last two thousand years concerning Comets, as
+expressed by Leonard Digges in his book on Prognostics, published 350
+years ago:
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_89">[Pg 89]</span></p>
+
+<p class="blockquot">“Cometes signifie corruption of the ayre. They
+are signs of earthquakes, of warres, of changying of Kyngdomes,
+great dearth of food, yea a common death of man and beast from
+pestilence.”</p>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" />
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_90">[Pg 90]</span></p>
+<h2 class="nobreak">THE STORY OF EDMUND HALLEY</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class="drop-cap"><span class="smcap">The</span> great French
+astronomer Lalande considered Halley the greatest astronomer of his
+time. This opinion is still held. Halley’s “time” means the age of
+Kepler, Sir Isaac Newton, Flamsteed, Hevelius, and Leibnitz, all of
+whom achieved first rank in Astronomy.</p>
+
+<p>Halley’s greatest achievement in Astronomy was the discovery that our
+solar system was but an atom in immeasurable space whence wandering
+stars could be caught within the influence of our Sun, our Earth and
+the other Planets swinging around our Sun.</p>
+
+<p>Halley was the first to discover and to prove that the Comets that come
+within the vision of man have fixed periods of return. He made this
+discovery during the appearance of the great Comet of 1682, which has
+since been known by his name.</p>
+
+<p>In his studies of the motions of Comets, of which Halley computed the
+orbits of twenty-four, he observed that a Comet of similar phenomena,
+recorded by Appian in 1531 and by Kepler in 1607, had swung through the
+same orbit as the Comet under his observation in 1682. Halley surmised
+from this that these Comets might be one and the same, whose intervals
+of return appeared to cover a period of seventy-five or seventy-six
+years. Halley’s surmise seemed to be confirmed by the recorded
+appearance of similar bright Comets in the years 1456, 1378, and 1301,
+the intervals again being seventy-five or seventy-six years.</p>
+
+<p>Halley was deeply imbued with Newton’s new discovery of gravitation,
+for the publication of which Halley paid the expenses, so he brought
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_91">[Pg 91]</span>
+the principles of Newton’s theory of gravitation to bear on his own new
+theory of the motions of Comets. He rightly conjectured that Comets
+were drawn to our Sun across the disturbing orbits of our planetary
+system, and that the comparatively small differences of one or two
+years in the recorded intervals of this one Comet (Halley’s Comet) were
+due to the attraction of the larger planets.</p>
+
+<p>During the previous year, 1681, Halley computed that the Comet had
+passed near the planet Jupiter, the attraction of which must have had a
+considerable influence on the Comet’s motion. Making due allowance for
+this disturbing influence of Jupiter, he computed that the Comet would
+return to the vicinity of our Sun about the end of 1758 or beginning of 1759.</p>
+
+<p>Halley did not live to see his prediction fulfilled (he died in 1742),
+but he wrote shortly before he died: “If this Comet should return
+according to our predictions about the year 1758, impartial posterity
+will not refuse to acknowledge that this was first discovered by an
+Englishman.”</p>
+
+<p>All through the year 1758 the most noted astronomers of Europe were
+on the lookout for the return of the predicted Comet. One of these
+astronomers, Messier, looked for it through his telescope at the Paris
+Observatory every night from sunset to sunrise throughout that whole
+year. On Christmas night, 1758, the Comet was first seen by a German
+peasant near Dresden, who had heard about the Comet and was looking
+for it. He was a man of unusually good eyesight, yet his discovery was
+doubted until Messier, nearly a month afterward, at Paris, “picked up”
+the Comet with his telescope.</p>
+
+<p>From that time forth this Comet, which returned in 1835, and is
+reappearing in this year (1910), has been known as Halley’s Comet.
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_92">[Pg 92]</span></p>
+
+<div id="I092" class="figcenter">
+  <img  src="images/i_092.jpg" alt="" width="450" height="623" />
+  <p class="center">EDMUND HALLEY.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_93">[Pg 93]</span>
+Besides this achievement, Halley accomplished many other noteworthy
+feats in astronomy, such as his discovery of the proper motions of the
+fixed stars; his detection of the “long inequality” of Jupiter and
+Saturn, and of the acceleration of the moon’s mean motion; his theory
+of variation, including the hypothesis of various magnetic poles, with
+his suggestion of the magnetic origin of the aurora borealis; and his
+indication of a method still used for determining the solar parallax by
+means of the transits of Venus.</p>
+
+<p>On the strength of these achievements, Halley for many years was
+elected to serve as secretary to the Royal Society. Commissioned as a
+Captain in the Royal Navy, he also commanded a vessel on a long cruise
+of exploration, and late in life he was made Astronomer Royal.</p>
+
+<p>Although in his sixty-fourth year, he then undertook to observe the
+moon through an entire revolution of her nodes (eighteen years), and
+actually carried out his purpose. To appreciate the full significance
+of so painstaking an achievement it should be borne in mind that
+astronomical observations must be made in a temperature equal to that
+of the open air. Observatories cannot be heated because the heat would
+impair the accuracy of the instruments.</p>
+
+<p>Great astronomers, like poets, are born, not made. Edmund Halley was
+one of these. At the age of seventeen he had already observed the
+change in the variations of the compass. At nineteen he was recognized
+as an astronomer of reputation, having supplied a new and improved
+method of determining the elements of the planetary orbits. His
+detection of considerable errors in the tables then in use led him to
+the conclusion that a more accurate determination of the places of the
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_94">[Pg 94]</span>
+fixed Stars was indispensable to the progress of astronomy. With this
+end in view he set out on a voyage to the other side of the globe, St.
+Helena, where he undertook the task of making complete new observations
+of the entire Southern Hemisphere. Though the Heavens proved clouded
+he succeeded within two years in registering three hundred and sixty
+stars, a colossal achievement which won for him the title of the
+“Southern Tycho.” This was when Halley was barely of age.</p>
+
+<p>(The famous astronomer Tycho Brahe, long before this had won his fame
+by mapping the stars of the Northern Heavens.)</p>
+
+<p>No one could well have begun with prospects more remote from so high a
+career, for Edmund Halley was born in 1656, the son of a soap boiler
+in a shabby London suburb. From the refuse of rancid fat and lye the
+boy was rescued by friends, who procured for him a scholarship at Saint
+Paul’s school. By his brilliant attainments in mathematics he won
+another scholarship to Oxford University.</p>
+
+<p>While at Oxford the youth published a treatise on the planetary orbits
+and argued the Sun’s axial rotation.</p>
+
+<p>On his graduation from Oxford, the young would-be astronomer conceived
+the project of turning his attention to the southern Stars, of which
+no good observations had been made. Shortly before this time a Dutch
+astronomer, named Houtman, had observed these Stars in the island of
+Sumatra; and Blaeu, the best globe maker of the age, had used these
+new observations in the correction of his celestial globes. Halley, on
+examining these corrections, came to the conclusion that he himself
+could do better. He also concluded that the Island of St. Helena might
+be a better point for southern observations. His father, unable to pay
+the expenses of so long a trip, broached the project to some friends.
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_95">[Pg 95]</span>
+The young astronomer was recommended to King Charles II. by Williamson
+and Jones Moore, and the King in turn recommended the youth to the
+Indian Company, which then had control over the island of St. Helena.</p>
+
+<p>After this all was plain sailing. The India Company placed a ship
+at his disposition and promised him all the assistance he required.
+Young Halley provided himself with telescopes, and micrometers, and
+other instruments of the latest approved pattern. In November, 1666,
+at the age of twenty, he sailed for St. Helena. Among his luggage was
+a sextant of five and a half feet and a telescope twenty-four feet in
+length constructed under the supervision of Flamsteed, the Astronomer
+Royal.</p>
+
+<p>Halley was disappointed in the climate of St. Helena. Frequent rains
+and a constantly hazy sky scarcely permitted any observations in the
+months of August and September. Notwithstanding these difficulties, he
+succeeded in observing and cataloguing some 360 Stars.</p>
+
+<p>In addition to his work on the Stars, Halley made some investigations
+on the Moon’s parallax, combining his observations at St. Helena
+with those made in northern skies. He also evolved a new theory of
+the Moon’s motion, which proved of great aid in the determination of
+longitudes.</p>
+
+<p>On November 7, 1677, Halley observed a transit of Mercury which
+suggested to him the important idea of employing similar phenomena for
+the calculation of the Sun’s distance.</p>
+
+<p>Halley returned to England in November, 1678, and was hailed by his
+fellow astronomers as the “Southern Tycho.” He was elected a fellow of
+the Royal Society, and by the King’s command the degree of Master of
+Arts was conferred upon him by the University of Oxford.
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_96">[Pg 96]</span></p>
+
+<p>Six months later Halley set out for Dantsic for a personal conference
+with Hevelius, the Polish astronomer. Halley wanted to satisfy himself
+as to the accuracy of observations claimed by Hevelius without the
+aid of a telescope. Halley convinced himself that the errors of the
+observations made by Hevelius were less than had been supposed, and did
+not exceed a minute of an arc. The two became life-long friends. Halley
+proceeded to other cities of Europe where there were observatories. In
+Paris he observed with Cassini the great Comet of 1680. This was the
+beginning of Halley’s special study of Comets.</p>
+
+<p>Returning to England, the young astronomer married the daughter of
+Mr. Tooke, auditor of the Exchequer, with whom he lived harmoniously
+until her death, fifty-five years later. The young couple settled at
+Islington, where Halley erected an observatory of his own and engaged
+in constant lunar observations with a view toward finding a method for
+computing longitudes at sea.</p>
+
+<p>Halley’s mind at the same time was busy with the momentous problem of
+gravity, upon which Isaac Newton was working then. Independently of
+Newton, Halley reached the conclusion that the central force of the
+Solar System must decrease inversely as the square of the distance.
+Having applied vainly to his fellow astronomers, Hooke and Wren, Halley
+in August, 1684, made a special journey to Cambridge to consult Isaac
+Newton, who confirmed his conjectures.</p>
+
+<p>Halley and Newton became life-long friends. Halley had Newton elected
+to the Royal Society, and when Newton became too poor to pay his
+quarterly dues, Halley, through his influence with the leading members
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_97">[Pg 97]</span>
+of the Society, had them remitted. It was Halley who encouraged Newton
+to put his momentous discovery and elucidation of the forces of gravity
+into permanent form in his “Principia,” the first volume of which, “De
+Motu,” was presented to the Royal Society at Halley’s suggestion.</p>
+
+<p>In the proceedings of the Royal Society for December, 1684, there is an
+entry that “Mr. Halley had lately seen Mr. Newton at Cambridge, who had
+told him of a curious treatise ‘De Motu,’ which at Mr. Halley’s desire
+he promised to send to the Society to be entered upon their register.
+Mr. Halley was desired to put Mr. Newton in mind of his promise for the
+securing this invention to himself, till such time as he could be at
+leisure to publish it.”</p>
+
+<p>Early in the following year Newton sent his treatise to the Society, to
+whom it was read aloud by Halley. This treatise “De Motu” was the germ
+of the “Principia” and was intended to be a short account of what the
+greater work was to embrace.</p>
+
+<p>During the next two years Newton was hard at work on his “Principia,”
+while Halley was equally hard at work on his computations of the Comet
+of 1682, and on his theory of the orbits and the periodical returns of
+Comets which grew out of his observations.</p>
+
+<p>On April 21, 1686, Halley read to the Royal Society his own “Discourse
+Concerning Gravity and its Properties,” in which he stated that his
+“worthy countryman, Mr. Issac Newton, has an incomparable treatise on
+Motion almost ready for the press,” and that the law of the inverse
+square “is the principle on which Mr. Newton has made out all the
+phenomena of the celestial motions so easily and naturally that its
+truth is past dispute.”
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_98">[Pg 98]</span></p>
+
+<p>Shortly afterward Newton sent in the manuscript of his great work.
+The Society voted “that a letter of thanks be written to Mr. Newton and
+that the printing of his book be referred to the consideration of the
+council and that in the meantime the book be put into the hands of Mr.
+Halley.”</p>
+
+<p>The truth was that the Royal Society, at that time, did not have money
+enough to print the book. The Society went through the empty form of
+“ordering” that the book be printed “forthwith,” but no printer was
+forthcoming until Halley himself undertook the publication of the great
+work at his own expense.</p>
+
+<p>The delicacy of Halley’s feeling is revealed by his correspondence with
+Newton, in which he informed Newton that the book had “been ordered
+to be printed at the Society’s charge.” The preliminary delay about
+printing he explained to Newton “arose from the President’s attendance
+on the King, and the absence of the vice-presidents, whom the good
+weather had drawn out of town.”</p>
+
+<p>Later Newton came to realize how much he owed to Halley in this matter.
+In his letters to Halley henceforth he always referred to his book
+as if it had been Halley’s book. When the great work was finished at
+last Newton wrote to Halley under the date of July 5, 1687: “I have at
+length brought your book to an end, and hope it will please you.”</p>
+
+<p>The finished work contained a note to this effect: “The inverse law
+of gravity holds in all the celestial motions, as was discovered also
+independently by my countrymen Wren, Hooke, and Halley.”</p>
+
+<p>The book was dedicated to the Royal Society, and to it was prefixed a
+set of Latin hexameters addressed by Halley to the author, ending with
+the well known line:
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_99">[Pg 99]</span></p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0">“Nec fac est propius mortali attingere divos.”</div>
+  </div>  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0">(“It is not given to a mortal to get in closer</div>
+    <div class="verse indent2">touch with the gods.”)</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>Halley was fifty years old when he made his famous prediction of
+the return of the Comet of 1682. This was in his “Synopsis of Comet
+Astronomy,” which ended with these words: “Hence I may venture to
+foretell that this Comet will return again in the year 1758.”</p>
+
+<p>Besides being an astronomer of the first class, Halley was also a good
+navigator. In 1698 he was commissioned a captain in the Royal Navy
+and was put in command of the King’s ship, “The Paramour Pink.” With
+this vessel he set out on a long cruise to the Pacific for the purpose
+of making observations on the laws which govern magnetic variations.
+This task he accomplished in a voyage which lasted two years and
+extended to the fifty-second degree of southern latitude, when the ice
+compelled him to turn back. On the return voyage his crew mutinied and
+his lieutenant sided with the mutineers. Halley quelled the mutiny by
+sheer force of personality, and returning to England got rid of his
+lieutenant. The results of his voyage were published in his “General
+Chart of the Variation of the Compass” in 1701. Immediately afterwards
+Halley set out on another King’s ship and executed by royal command
+a careful survey of the tides and coasts of the British Channel, an
+elaborate chart of which he published in 1702.</p>
+
+<p>Next Halley was sent by the King to Dalmatia, for the purpose of
+selecting and fortifying the port of Trieste.</p>
+
+<p>On Halley’s return to England, he was made Savilian professor of
+geometry at Oxford, and received an honorary doctor’s degree. He filled
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_100">[Pg 100]</span>
+two terms of eight years each as secretary to the Royal Society, and
+early in 1720 he succeeded Flamsteed as Astronomer Royal.</p>
+
+<p>He died on January 14, 1742, at the age of eighty-five in the full
+possession of his faculties, the foremost astronomer of the day and a
+man universally beloved and respected. His gravestone stands at the
+Greenwich Observatory.</p>
+
+<p>Halley’s works fill several shelves in the library of the Royal
+Society. His fame is kept green by the periodical return of the
+wandering star known by his name.</p>
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" />
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_101">[Pg 101]</span></p>
+<h2 class="nobreak">WHAT ARE COMETS?</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class="drop-cap"><span class="smcap">The</span> modern answer
+to the question “What are Comets made of?” is this:</p>
+
+<p>Probably the heads are a mixture of solid and gaseous matter. The tails
+are gaseous&mdash;the result of the volatilisation of the solid matter of
+the heads.</p>
+
+<p>The spectroscope shows that gases appear to be a constituent of all
+Comets. The spectra of Comets are very similar to those of a Bunsen
+flame. Recent spectroscopic photographs have revealed the presence of
+hydrocarbons, nitro-carbons, of cyanogen and of the vapours of sodium,
+iron and other metals.</p>
+
+<p>The connection between Comets and Meteors implies the presence in
+Comets of solid matter. A modern theory, voiced by Schiaparelli, is
+that meteor showers are broken up Comets.</p>
+
+<p>The tails of Comets appear to be composed of luminous gases ejected
+from the head of the Comet through a solar force held to be “Light
+Pressure,” which causes these tails to shoot off and disperse into
+space at the rate of 865,000 miles an hour.</p>
+
+<p>The length of some Comets’ tails has been estimated at 125,000,000
+miles, while the Comets’ heads themselves are generally much larger in
+size than our Earth. Halley’s Comet is more than ten-fold the size of
+our Earth.</p>
+
+<p>E. W. Maunder, of the Royal Observatory of Greenwich, a modern
+astronomer, has thus summarized the latest theories of the substance of
+Comets:</p>
+
+<p>“Though the bulk of comets is huge, they contain extraordinarily little
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_102">[Pg 102]</span>
+substance. Their heads must contain some solid matter, but it is
+probably in the form of a loose aggregation of stones enveloped in
+vaporous material. There is some reason to suppose that Comets are apt
+to shed some of these stones as they travel along their paths, for the
+orbits of the meteors that cause some of our greatest ‘star showers’
+are coincident with the paths of Comets that have been observed. But it
+is not only by shedding its loose stones that a Comet diminishes its
+bulk; it loses also through its tail. As the Comet gets close to the
+Sun its head becomes heated, and throws off concentric envelopes, much
+of which consists of matter in an extremely fine station of division.”</p>
+
+<p>The orbits of Comets visible to human eyes are all governed by the Sun.
+In the words of C. L. Poor: “The attraction of the Sun is to the Comet
+like the flame to the moth. The Comet flutters for a moment about the
+Sun, and then swings back into outward space. But not unscathed; like
+the moth, the Comet has been singed. The fierce light of the Sun has
+beaten upon it, and spread out its particles and scattered them along
+its path.”</p>
+
+<p>As a comet swings toward and away from the Sun, it travels at a
+tremendous rate of speed&mdash;over a million miles an hour. The distance
+covered from one end of the orbit to the other is 3,370,000,000 miles.</p>
+
+<p>The great majority of Comets appear to travel in parabolas, open curves
+leading from infinite space to and around the Sun, and thence back into
+infinite space to some other fixed star invisible to us. As a matter
+of fact, though, the parabolic curves of Comets’ orbits through the
+gravitational attraction of the planets, whose orbits are crossed by
+it, may be changed into hyperbolic curves and ellipses by planetary
+perturbations. Hence the differences in time between the returns of
+certain Comets, like Halley’s, for instance.
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_103">[Pg 103]</span></p>
+
+<div class="figcontainer">
+  <div class="figsub">
+   <img id="I103A" src="images/i_103a.jpg" alt="" width="250" height="697" />
+   <p class="center">RELATIVE SIZES OF THE EARTH,<br />
+            THE MOON’S ORBIT AND<br />HALLEY’S COMET.</p>
+  </div>
+  <div class="figsub">
+   <img  id="I103B" src="images/i_103b.jpg" alt="" width="225" height="689" />
+   <p class="center">ORBIT OF HALLEY’S COMET.<br />THE TAIL ALWAYS POINTS<br />
+            AWAY FROM THE SUN.</p>
+   </div>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_104">[Pg 104]</span>
+In a general way, it may be said that every Comet comprises a nucleus,
+an envelope (called the “coma”) surrounding the nucleus and measuring
+from 20,000 to 1,000,000 miles in diameter, and a long tail which streams
+behind the nucleus from sixty to a hundred million miles or more.</p>
+
+<p>Astronomers have decided that the nucleus is probably a heap of
+meteorites varying in size from a grain to masses weighing several
+tons each; a heap, moreover, so easily sundered that its elements are
+distributed gradually along the orbit. It follows that every Comet must
+eventually perish unless it restores its nucleus by collecting stray
+meteors. That disintegration does occur has been observed time and time again.</p>
+
+<p>For example, Biela’s Comet, which was discovered in 1826, burst into
+two fragments, which drifted apart a distance of one million miles.
+Thus it became a twin Comet. Eventually it disappeared as a Comet, and
+in its stead we see a shoal of meteors whenever we cross its track
+every six and a half years.</p>
+
+<p>It is possible that the Comets of 1668, 1843, 1880, 1882 and 1887, all
+travelling in approximately the same path, are fragments of a single
+large body which was broken up by the gravitational action of other
+bodies in the system, or through violent encounter with the Sun’s
+surroundings.</p>
+
+<p>The luminous tail which streams behind the nucleus, which Shakespeare
+described so beautifully as “crystal tresses,” is startling, to say the
+least. Despite a length which may exceed a hundred million miles, it
+is so diaphanously light and subtle that it is difficult to compare it
+with any earthly fabric. The air that we breathe is a dense blanket in
+comparison. Several hundred cubic miles of the matter composing that
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_105">[Pg 105]</span>
+wonderful luminous plume would not outweigh a jarful of air. By reason
+of its fairy lightness, it is possible for a tail occupying a volume
+thousands of times greater than the sun to sweep through our solar
+system without causing any perturbations in planetary movements.</p>
+
+<p>No celestial phenomenon has caused more perplexity than the ghostly
+sheaf of light we call a Comet’s tail. In a day, in a few hours even,
+the form of that wonderful gossamer may change. Hence it is that
+periodic Comets are identified when they return, not by the length and
+arch of their tails, but by their orbits. These alone are permanent.</p>
+
+<p>When a Comet is first seen in the telescope, it appears as a diminutive
+filmy patch, often unadorned by any tail. As it travels on toward the
+Sun, at a speed compared with which a modern rifle bullet would seem to
+crawl, violent eruptions occur in the nucleus.</p>
+
+<p>The ejected matter is bent back to form the cloak called the “coma.”
+With a nearer approach to the sun, the tail begins to sprout,
+increasing in size and brightness as it proceeds. Evidently there is
+some connection between the Sun and the tail, something akin to cause
+and effect.</p>
+
+<p>When the Comet rushes on toward the Sun, invariably the tail drifts
+behind the nucleus like the smoke from a locomotive. But when the Comet
+swings around the Sun and travels away from it, a startling change
+takes place. The tail no longer trails behind, but projects in front as
+if some mighty solar wind were blowing it in advance of the head.</p>
+
+<p>This phenomenon has long been an astronomical riddle. Here was a kind
+of matter that refused to obey the laws of gravitation and yield to the
+enormous pull of the Sun.
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_106">[Pg 106]</span></p>
+
+<div id="I106" class="figcenter">
+  <img  src="images/i_106.jpg" alt="" width="400" height="638" />
+  <p class="center">OCTOBER 5.&nbsp;&emsp;&nbsp;OCTOBER 9.<br /> DONATI’S COMET OF 1858.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_107">[Pg 107]</span>
+It was thought for a time that the tail was flung away from the Sun by
+stupendous repelling electrical forces. That electricity plays its part
+in the formation of the fairy plume is conceivable, and even probable;
+but recently the physicist has discovered a new source of repellent
+energy which very plausibly explains the mystery of a Comet’s tail.</p>
+
+<p>This new source of energy is nothing less than the pressure or push of
+the Sun’s light. Solar gravitation is a force more powerful than we can
+realize. If it were possible for us to live on the Sun, we would find
+ourselves pulled down so violently that our body would weigh two tons.
+Our clothing alone would weigh more than one hundred pounds. Running
+would be a very difficult athletic feat. Light-pressure must indeed be
+powerful if it can conquer so relentless a force.</p>
+
+<p>Because we have never seen objects torn from our hands by the pressure
+of light, it may be inferred that this newly discovered force affects
+only bodies that are invisibly small. With the aid of instruments that
+feel what our hands can never feel and see what our eyes can never see,
+the modern physicist has critically analyzed the radiation that beats
+upon the earth from the distant Sun.</p>
+
+<p>Light really does sway infinitely small particles, as was first
+experimentally proved by the Russian Lebedev. Two American astronomers,
+Nichols and Hull, improved upon his method. They cast the solar
+effulgence into mighty mathematical scales and found that the earth
+sustains a light-load of no less than 75,000 tons.</p>
+
+<p>Most city-bred people are familiar with the so-called “Sun
+Motors”&mdash;little mills with black and white wings, enclosed in airtight
+vessels, which spin around in “perpetual motion” under the effect of
+“Sun Pressure.”
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_108">[Pg 108]</span></p>
+
+<p>It remained for the broad mind of a Swedish physicist, Svante
+Arrhenius, to apply the principle of light-pressure cosmically. He
+explained, very simply, that because a Comet’s tail is composed of a
+very fine dust it can easily be driven away from the Sun by radiation
+pressure.</p>
+
+<p>To understand how it is possible for so immaterial a thing as a sunbeam
+to produce so huge an effect, we have only to take a very simple
+example.</p>
+
+<p>Assume that you have before you a block of wood weighing one pound. The
+block exposes a certain amount of surface to the Sun’s light. Saw the
+block in half, and you increase the amount of that surface. Divide each
+half again into half, and the exposed surface is further augmented. If
+this process of subdivision is carried on far enough, the block will be
+reduced to sawdust.</p>
+
+<p>The entire mass of sawdust still weighs one pound; but its surface has
+been vastly enlarged. Indeed, the particles of sawdust, individually
+considered, may be said to consist of much surface and very little
+weight. If it were possible to take each granule of visible sawdust
+and subdivide it into invisible particles, a point would be reached
+where the pressure of light would exactly counterbalance the pull of
+gravitation, so that the particles would remain suspended in space,
+perfectly balanced in the scale of opposing cosmic forces.</p>
+
+<p>Finally, if the subdivision be continued beyond this critical point,
+the particles will be wrenched away from the grip of gravitation and
+hurled out into space by the pressure of light.</p>
+
+<p>So much has been discovered about the particles that compose a Comet’s
+tail that the more progressive scientists of our day have accepted this
+ingenious theory. Thus it has been decided by them that the delicate
+tresses of a Comet are to a large extent composed of fine particles of
+dust and soot.
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_109">[Pg 109]</span></p>
+
+<div id="I109" class="figcontainer">
+  <div class="figsub">
+   <img src="images/i_109a.jpg" alt="" width="250" height="240" />
+   <p class="f120">June 26.</p>
+  </div>
+  <div class="figsub">
+   <img src="images/i_109b.jpg" alt="" width="250" height="233" />
+   <p class="f120">June 28.</p>
+   </div>
+</div>
+
+<div class="figcontainer">
+  <div class="figsub">
+   <img src="images/i_109c.jpg" alt="" width="250" height="230" />
+   <p class="f120">June 30.</p>
+  </div>
+  <div class="figsub">
+   <img src="images/i_109d.jpg" alt="" width="250" height="225" />
+   <p class="f120">July 1.</p>
+   </div>
+</div>
+
+<div class="figcontainer">
+  <div class="figsub">
+   <img src="images/i_109e.jpg" alt="" width="250" height="228" />
+   <p class="f120">July 6.</p>
+  </div>
+  <div class="figsub">
+   <img src="images/i_109f.jpg" alt="" width="250" height="229" />
+   <p class="f120">July 8.</p>
+   </div>
+   <p class="f120 space-below2">CHANGES IN THE COMET OF 1863.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_110">[Pg 110]</span>
+Before we can completely accept the view that light-pressure forms
+this train of soot we must ascertain whether the pressure of light is
+capable of accounting for the flash-like rapidity with which a Comet’s
+tail changes.</p>
+
+<p>A Comet may throw out a tail sixty million miles long in two days. Is
+it actually possible for light-pressure to accomplish that astonishing
+feat? Arrhenius has computed that 865,000 miles an hour is the speed
+of a light-flung particle of one-half the critical diameter. Because
+they are only one-eighteenth as large as this particle of critical
+diameter, the dust grains in a Comet’s tail would be propelled over the
+same 865,000 miles in less than four minutes. It follows that the solar
+radiation is amply strong enough to toss out a tail of sixty million
+miles in two days.</p>
+
+<p>Photography in the hands of Prof. E. E. Barnard, of the Yerkes
+Observatory, has revealed some extraordinary changes in Comets’ tails,
+changes which are not apparent to the eye and which cannot be explained
+by light-pressure or by solar electrical forces. He has collected a
+formidable mass of photographic evidence which seems to show that
+there are other influences at work besides the Sun’s radiation, and
+that these influences manifest themselves in distorting and breaking a
+Comet’s tail. In some Comets of recent years, streams of matter have
+been shot out in large angles to the main direction of the tail without
+being at all bent by the pressure of light. In Morehouse’s Comet of
+1908, tails were repeatedly formed and discarded to drift bodily out
+into space and melt away. Sometimes the photographic plate has shown
+the tail twisted like a corkscrew and sometimes it has revealed masses
+of matter at some distance from the head, where apparently no supply
+had reached it. At one time the entire tail of Morehouse’s Comet was
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_111">[Pg 111]</span>
+thrown violently forward, a peculiarity so utterly opposed to the laws
+of gravitation that Professor Barnard suspects some unknown force at
+work in planetary space besides a force which undoubtedly resides
+in the Comet itself. If Halley’s Comet serves no other purpose than
+to throw light upon this mystery, its return will more than repay
+astronomers for all their observatory vigils.</p>
+
+<p>From the fact that the matter is ejected from the head to form the
+tail, it would follow that, unless it has the means of rejuvenating
+itself, a comet must eventually be disintegrated. Instances of this
+fragmentation and, eventual disappearance of a Comet are not wanting in
+astronomical annals. It has been stated previously that when Biela’s
+Comet appeared in 1846 it became distorted and elongated, that it
+eventually split up into two separate bodies, that in 1852 it again
+appeared in its double form, and that it has since disappeared.</p>
+
+<p>In a way, Comets may be said to bleed to death. At each return of
+Halley’s Comet, future astronomers will find it less brilliant than it
+was seventy-six or seventy-seven years before. Some time there will
+be no Halley’s Comet left, and the most famous Comet of its kind will
+be reduced to a shoal of meteors varying in weight from a few ounces
+to several tons and faithfully pursuing the orbit which their parent
+traced and retraced century after century.
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_112">[Pg 112]</span></p>
+
+<div id="I112" class="figcenter">
+  <img  src="images/i_112.jpg" alt="" width="400" height="566" />
+  <p class="center">COGGIA’S COMET, 1874: ON JULY 13.</p>
+</div>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" />
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_113">[Pg 113]</span></p>
+<h2 class="nobreak">THE PERIL OF THE COMET</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class="drop-cap"><span class="smcap">It was</span> Edmund Halley who
+first revealed a source of danger from Comets, of which even medieval
+superstition had never dreamed.</p>
+
+<p>While he was patiently plotting out the orbit of the Comet of 1680,
+which had inspired no little dismay among his contemporaries, Halley
+found that the Earth’s orbit had been approached by the Comet within
+four thousand miles&mdash;half the diameter of the Earth.</p>
+
+<p>If the Earth had been struck by that fiery wanderer?</p>
+
+<p>None had ever thought of the possibility.</p>
+
+<p>Halley began to do some mathematical figuring, and decided that, if a
+Comet’s mass were comparable with that of the Earth, our year would
+have been changed in length because the Earth’s orbit would have been
+altered. He also speculated what would happen to the Earth, and reached
+this conclusion:</p>
+
+<p class="blockquot">“If so large a body with so rapid a motion were to
+strike the Earth&mdash;a thing by no means impossible&mdash;the shock
+might reduce this beautiful world to its original chaos.” </p>
+
+<p>Halley even thought it probable that the Earth had actually been struck
+by a Comet at some remote period, struck obliquely, moreover, so that
+the axis of rotation had been changed. Thus he was led to infer that
+possibly the North Pole had once been at a point near Hudson’s Bay, and
+that the rigour of North America’s climate might thus be accounted for.</p>
+
+<p>The seed which was thus sown by Halley has borne fruit. In Halley’s own
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_114">[Pg 114]</span>
+time, learned men were brooding over the ultimate destruction of the
+Earth by collision with a Comet.</p>
+
+<p>Dr. Whiston, who succeeded Newton at Cambridge in the Lucasian chair of
+mathematics, was sure that a Comet caused the Deluge, and went so far
+as to prophesy that a Comet, as it passed us on its outward course from
+the Sun, would ultimately bring about a “General Conflagration,” and
+thus envelope the Earth in flames.</p>
+
+<p>One century after Halley, the French astronomer Laplace, whose
+mathematical attainments were surpassed only by those of Newton,
+applied his brilliant mind to the possibility of a collision with a
+Comet, and arrived at this conclusion:</p>
+
+<p class="blockquot">“The seas would abandon their ancient beds and
+rush towards the new equator, drowning in one universal deluge the
+greater part of the human race.... We see, then, in effect, why the
+ocean has receded from the high lands upon which we find incontestable
+marks of its sojourn; we see how the animals and plants of the south
+have been able to exist in the climate of the north, where their
+remains and imprints have been discovered.”</p>
+
+<p>The famous French mathematician Lalande showed that if a Comet as heavy
+as the Earth were to come within six times the distance of the Moon,
+it would exert such a powerful attraction upon the waters of the globe
+as to pull up a tidal wave 13,000 feet above the ordinary sea-level
+and inundate the continents Every European mountain would be submerged
+except Mt. Blanc, and only the inhabitants of the Rockies, the Andes
+and the Himalayas would escape death.</p>
+
+<p>Since Lalande’s day there has been more than one Comet “scare.” One
+of these startled Europe in 1832. On October 29th of that year, Biela’s
+Comet crossed the Earth’s orbit. The announcement was received with
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_115">[Pg 115]</span>
+stupefaction. It was only when Arago soothingly pointed out that the
+Earth would not reach the exact point where the Comet had intersected
+the Earth’s orbit until November 30, at which time the Comet would be
+50,000,000 miles away, that the popular excitement subsided. A similar
+alarm seized the world in 1857. Some prophet declared that on June 13
+the world would collide with a certain periodic Comet having a period
+of revolution of three centuries. It is related that the churches
+and confessionals were crowded for days. Still another prediction,
+made in 1872 by Plantamour, the distinguished director of the Geneva
+Observatory, set Europe in a ferment. His calculations were based on
+errors, which were pointed out by other astronomers, and the public
+mind was quieted.</p>
+
+<p>Although more than two centuries have passed since Halley was in his
+prime, the possibility of a collision with some vagabond star still
+haunts the mind of the astronomer.</p>
+
+<p>That a collision is apt to occur is an admitted astronomic fact. The
+latest estimate, made in 1909 by Prof. William H. Pickering of Harvard
+University, would seem to prove that the core of one Comet in about
+100,000,000 Comets will hit the earth squarely. An encounter with some
+part of a Comet’s head will happen once in 4,000,000 years. Since
+Comets’ orbit are more thickly distributed near the ecliptic than else
+where in the celestial sphere, the collisions will occur according to
+Pickering, perhaps more frequently than this.</p>
+
+<p>Because Pickering’s figures differ from those other astronomers&mdash;Arago
+and Babinet, for instance&mdash;it must not be inferred that his
+predecessors are wrong and that he is right in his calculations. The
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_116">[Pg 116]</span>
+problem is too complex for that. Pickering, Arago and Babinet differ
+partly because they have assumed different average sizes for their
+Comets, and partly because their definitions of visible Comets are not
+in accord.</p>
+
+<p>That the possibility is very real, we shall all have an opportunity of
+judging on May 18, 1910. On that date the Earth will be plunged in the
+tail of Halley’s Comet, and the head will be less than 15,000,000 miles
+away&mdash;a mere hand’s breadth in the vastness of the universe.</p>
+
+<p>What will happen?</p>
+
+<p>Nobody knows for certain.</p>
+
+<p>By means of the wonderful instrument called the spectroscope, an
+instrument which analyzes a distant star as readily as if it were a
+stone picked up in the road, it has been discovered that a Comet’s tail
+is composed of gases called “hydrocarbons” (combinations of hydrogen
+and carbon), and that it bears a close chemical resemblance to the blue
+flame of a kitchen gas-stove.</p>
+
+<p>Illuminating gas, as we all know, is poisonous. If a Comet’s tail were
+dense enough, it is conceivable, therefore, that every human being on
+this planet might be asphyxiated by breathing the Comet’s poisonous
+vapour as the Earth plowed through it. There is also this possibility,
+suggested by Flammarion, that the gases of a very dense tail might so
+combine with the nitrogen which constitutes nearly 80 per cent. of
+the air we breathe, that the atmosphere would be converted into the
+“laughing gas” employed by dentists. The world would die in a delirium
+of joy. At first a delightful serenity would settle upon mankind. Then
+would follow a contagious gaiety, febrile exaltation, a paroxysm of
+delight, and then madness. Flammarion even conceives the world merrily
+dancing a joyous, hysterical sarabande in which it perishes laughing.
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_117">[Pg 117]</span></p>
+
+<p>The tail of a Comet is fraught with still other possible dangers. Our
+atmosphere contains a certain amount of hydrogen, a marvellously light
+gas to which balloons owe their buoyancy. Besides its lightness, this
+gas is characterized by an extreme inflammability. The law of the
+diffusion of gases teaches us that part of this hydrogen in the air
+is mechanically mixed with other gases, and that part of it probably
+floats in the upper air, far beyond the reach of any balloon. A Comet
+may be regarded as a huge lighted torch whirling through space, which
+may be brought dangerously near that upper layer of highly inflammable
+hydrogen. If the gas shall ever be touched off by this flying torch,
+our planet will be ignited. The whole atmosphere will become a seething
+ocean of flame, in which forests and cities will burn like straw, in
+which oceans will boil away in vast clouds of steam, and in which all
+animal life will be snuffed out of existence before it shall realize
+that the world is on fire. In a word, the globe will become a planetary
+funeral pyre. Since water results from burning hydrogen in oxygen,
+this same fierce and terrible flame must be speedily extinguished by
+a mighty deluge which will engulf the Earth.</p>
+
+<p>A spectroscope analysis of Halley’s Comet has furthermore revealed
+the presence of cyanogen gas in the tail. Cyanogen is a compound of
+nitrogen and carbon, one of the most poisonous compounds with which the
+chemist is familiar. Prussic acid, potassium cyanide and many other
+cyanides, all of them almost instantaneously fatal if taken into the
+human system, are compounds of cyanogen. If that gas is present in
+large enough quantities, one flick of a Comet’s tail will end all human
+and animal existence.</p>
+
+<p>So much is certain. A collision of the Earth with a Comet will
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_118">[Pg 118]</span>
+undoubtedly prove disastrous&mdash;how disastrous will depend largely on
+the size of the Comet’s head and on its speed. That a violent heat will
+be developed, we have every reason to believe, from our knowledge of
+meteors. The mere movement of a meteor through the thin upper layers of
+our atmosphere produces a dazzling trail and reduces the meteor itself
+to a molten metallic mass. Arrest a body in swift motion, and you must
+dissipate its energy in some way. As a rule, the energy is converted
+into heat. A bullet discharged from a rifle is often melted when
+suddenly stopped by steel armour. A Comet travels at a pace compared
+with which a projectile, fired from the most powerful twelve-inch gun,
+seems only to crawl. What, then, must be the frightful effect when it
+strikes the Earth?</p>
+
+<p>A Comet rushes through space not at the bullet’s rate of thousands of
+feet an hour, but of a million miles an hour. The bigger it is, and the
+faster it moves, the greater will be the heat developed by its stoppage.</p>
+
+<p>“At the first contact with the upper regions of the atmosphere,” writes
+Prof. Simon Newcomb, “the whole heavens would be illuminated with a
+resplendence beyond that of a thousand Suns, the sky radiating a light
+which would blind every eye that beheld it, and a heat which would melt
+the hardest rocks.” The same conclusion was reached by Prof. Faye.</p>
+
+<p>When the time comes for a collision with a Comet of formidable size,
+the human race will be in the horrible predicament of knowing the exact
+hour and minute of its doom. The newspapers will print a dispatch from
+some great observatory, reading perhaps like this:</p>
+
+<p class="space-below2">“A telescopic Comet was discovered by Caxton in
+right ascension 7 hours 13 minutes 1 second, and declension 17 degrees
+28 minutes 31 seconds. Moderate motion in a northwest direction.”
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_119">[Pg 119]</span></p>
+
+<div id="I119" class="figcenter">
+  <img  src="images/i_119.jpg" alt="" width="400" height="627" />
+  <p class="blockquot">“If so large a body with so rapid a motion were to
+strike the Earth&mdash;a thing by no means impossible&mdash;the
+shock would reduce this beautiful world to its original
+chaos.”</p>
+<p class="author space-below2">&mdash;<span class="smcap">Edmund Halley.</span></p>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_120">[Pg 120]</span>
+At first the discovery produces not even a ripple of excitement.
+Telescopic Comets are discovered too frequently. Three days later the
+discoverer has worked out an ephemeris, which gives the date when the
+body will pass around the Sun, and which indicates the Comet’s path. He
+finds that on a certain date and at a certain hour the Earth and the
+Comet must crash together. Again and again he repeats his calculations,
+hoping that he may have erred. The utmost permissible allowance for
+accelerations and retardations caused by the outer planets of the solar
+system fails to change the result.</p>
+
+<p>The Earth and the Comet must meet. With some hesitation the astronomer
+sends a telegram to a central observatory, which acts as a distributor
+of astronomical news. At first his prediction is discredited and even
+laughed at. Another computation is made at the observatory. Again
+mathematics infallibly indicates the exact time and place of the
+encounter, and the last lingering hope is dispelled. Telegrams are sent
+to astronomical societies, to the leading scientific periodicals and to
+the newspapers.</p>
+
+<p>At first the prediction of the Earth’s doom is received with popular
+incredulity, engendered by years of newspaper misrepresentation. The
+world’s end has been too frequently and too frightfully foretold
+on flamboyant double-page Sunday editions. When the truth is at
+last accepted, after days of insistent repetition of the original
+announcement, a wave of terror runs through the world.</p>
+
+<p>There is no escape. International committees of astronomers meet daily
+to mark the approach of the Comet. Bulletins are published announcing
+the steadily dwindling distance between the world and the huge
+projectile in the sky. The great tail, arching the Heavens as the Comet
+approaches, seems like a mighty, fiery sword held in an unseen Titanic
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_121">[Pg 121]</span>
+hand and relentlessly sweeping down. The temples, churches and
+synagogues are thronged with supplicating multitudes on bended knees,
+in a catalepsy of terror. The stock exchanges, banks, shops and public
+institutions are deserted. Business is at a standstill. The roar of the
+street is hushed. No wagons rattle over the pavement; no hucksters call
+out their wares.</p>
+
+<p>As the Comet draws nearer and nearer, night changes into an awful,
+nocturnal day. Even at noon the Comet outshines the Sun. There is no
+twilight. The Sun sets; but the Comet glows in the sky, another more
+brilliant luminary, marvellously yet fearfully arrayed in a fiery plume
+that overspreads the sky. The Moon is completely lost, and the Stars
+are drowned out in this dazzling glare. Warned by the astronomers,
+mankind takes refuge in subterranean retreats to await its fate.</p>
+
+<p>Long before the actual collision&mdash;long before the Earth is reduced
+to a maelstrom of lava, gas, steam and planetary debris&mdash;mankind is
+annihilated with merciful swiftness by heat and suffocation. A candle
+flame blown out by a gust of wind is not more quickly extinguished.</p>
+
+<p>When the Comet encounters the upper layers of the atmosphere, there is
+a blinding flash, due to friction between the air and the Comet. A few
+seconds later the crash comes. From within, molten rock and flame, pent
+up for geologic ages, burst forth, geyser-like. The Earth is converted
+into a gigantic volcano, in the eruption of which oceans are spilled
+and continents are torn asunder, to vanish like wax in a furnace.</p>
+
+<p>When it is all over, the Earth swims through space, a blackened
+planetary cinder,&mdash;desolate and dead.</p>
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" />
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_122">[Pg 122]</span></p>
+<h2 class="nobreak">THE END OF THE WORLD</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class="drop-cap"><span class="smcap">Camille Flammarion</span>, the
+French astronomer, in his story, “The End of the World,” gives this
+graphic description of the results of a collision between a Comet and
+our Earth:</p>
+
+<p>In Paris, London, Rome, Berlin, St. Petersburg, Constantinople, New
+York and Chicago&mdash;in all the great capitals of the world, in all the
+cities, in all the villages&mdash;the frightened people wandered out of
+doors, as one sees ants run about when their ant-hills are disturbed.
+All the affairs of every-day life were forgotten.</p>
+
+<p>All human projects were at a standstill. People seemed to have
+lost interest in all their affairs. They were in a state of
+demoralization&mdash;a dejection more abject even than that which is
+produced by sea-sickness.</p>
+
+<p>All places of worship had been crowded on that memorable day when it
+was seen that a collision with a Comet had become inevitable.</p>
+
+<p>In Paris the crowds in the churches were so great that people could
+no longer get near Notre Dame, the Madeleine and the other churches.
+Within the churches, vast congregations of worshippers were on their
+knees praying to God on High. The churches rang with the sounds of
+supplication, but no other sound was heard. The great church organs and
+the bells in the steeples were hushed.</p>
+
+<p>In the streets, on the avenues, in the public squares, there was the
+same dread silence. Nothing was bought or sold. No newspapers were
+hawked about.</p>
+
+<p>The only vehicles seen on the streets were funeral hearses carrying to
+the cemeteries the bodies of the first victims of the Comet. Of these
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_123">[Pg 123]</span>
+there were already many. They were people who had died from fright and
+from heart disease.</p>
+
+<p>With what anxiety everyone waited for the night!</p>
+
+<p>Never, perhaps, was there a more beautiful sunset. Never a clearer sky.
+The sun seemed to dip into a sea of red and gold.</p>
+
+<p>The huge red ball of the sun sank majestically to the horizon. But the
+stars did not appear. Night did not come.</p>
+
+<p>To the solar day succeeded a new day, the daylight of the Comet. Its
+intense light resembled that of an Aurora Borealis, but more vivid,
+coming from a great incandescent spot, which had not been visible
+during the day because it was below the horizon, but which would
+certainly have rivalled the splendour of the Sun.</p>
+
+<p>This luminous spot rose in the East almost at the same time as the full
+Moon. The two luminous bodies rose together, side by side. As they
+rose, the light of the Moon seemed to pale, but the head of the Comet
+increased in splendour with the disappearance of the Sun below the
+western horizon.</p>
+
+<p>Now, after nightfall, the Comet dominated the world&mdash;a scarlet-red ball
+with jets of yellow and green flame which seemed to flutter like fiery wings.</p>
+
+<p>To the terrified people it seemed like a giant of fire taking
+possession of all Heaven and Earth.</p>
+
+<p>Already the outermost jets of flame had reached the Moon. From one
+instant to the next the flaming rays would descend upon the Earth.</p>
+
+<p>All eyes were distended with horror when it was seen that the horizon
+was lighting up with tiny violet flames as from a vast fire.</p>
+
+<p>An instant afterward, the Comet diminished in brilliancy. This was
+apparently because the Comet, upon touching the atmosphere of our
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_124">[Pg 124]</span>
+Earth, had come within the penumbra of our planet and had lost part of
+its reflected light coming from the Sun. But in reality this apparent
+extinction was the effect of contrast. When the less dazzled eyes of
+the awestruck, human spectators had grown used to this new light, it
+appeared almost as intense as at first, but paler, more sinister and
+sepulchral.</p>
+
+<p>Never before had the Earth been lit up with so sickly a light.</p>
+
+<p>The drouth of the air became intolerable. Heat, as from a huge burning
+oven, came from above. A horrible stench of burning sulphur&mdash;due, no
+doubt, to electrified ozone&mdash;poisoned the atmosphere.</p>
+
+<p>All the people then saw that their time had come.
+Many-thousand-throated cries rent the air. “The World is burning.
+We are on fire!” they cried.</p>
+
+<p>All the horizon, in fact, was now lit up with flame, forming a crown
+of blue light. It was, indeed, as had been foreseen by scientists, the
+oxide of carbon igniting in the air and producing anhydrid of carbon.
+Clearly, too, hydrogen from the Comet combined with it.</p>
+
+<p>On a sudden, as the people were gazing terrified, motionless, mute,
+holding their breath, and scared out of their wits, the vault of Heaven
+seemed to be rent asunder from the zenith to the horizon. Through the
+gaping breach there seemed to appear the huge red mouth of a dragon,
+belching forth sheaves of sputtering green flames.</p>
+
+<p>The glare of the atmosphere was so fierce that those who had not
+already hidden themselves in the cellars of their houses, now all
+rushed helter-skelter to the nearest underground openings, be they
+subway steps, cellar doors or sewer manholes. Thousands were crushed or
+maimed during this mad stampede, while many others, frantic from fright
+and stricken with the heat, fell dead from apoplexy.
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_125">[Pg 125]</span></p>
+
+<p>All reasoning powers seemed to have ceased. Among those cowering in
+dark cellars and subterranean passages below, there was nothing but
+silence, begot by dull resignation and stupor.</p>
+
+<p>Of all this panic-stricken multitude, only the astronomers had remained
+at their posts in the Observatories, making unceasing observations of
+this great astronomic phenomenon. They were the only eye-witnesses of
+the impending collision.</p>
+
+<p>Their calculations had been that the terrestrial globe would penetrate
+into the core of the Comet, as a cannon ball might into a cloud. From
+the first contact of the extreme atmospheric zones of the Earth and of
+the Comet, they had figured, the transit would last four hours and a half.</p>
+
+<p>It was easy to compute, since the Comet, being about fifty times as
+large as the Earth, was to be pierced, not in its centre, but at
+one-quarter of the distance from the centre, with a velocity of 173,000
+kilometers an hour.</p>
+
+<p>It was about forty minutes after the first atmospheric impact with the
+Comet, that the heat and horrible stench of burning sulphur became so
+suffocating that a few more moments of this torment would put an end
+to all life. Even the most intrepid of astronomers withdrew into the
+interior of their glass-domed observatories, which they could close
+hermetically as they descended into the deep subterranean vaults.</p>
+
+<p>The longest to stay above was a young assistant astronomer, a girl
+student from California, whose nerves had been steeled during the
+ordeal of the San Francisco earthquake. She remained long enough to
+witness the apparition of a huge, white-hot meteorite, precipitating
+itself southward with the velocity of lightning.</p>
+
+<p>But it was beyond human endurance to remain longer above. It was no
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_126">[Pg 126]</span>
+longer possible to breathe. To the intense heat and atmospheric drouth,
+destroying all vital functions, was added the poisoning of our air by
+the oxide of carbon.</p>
+
+<p>The ears rang as from the tolling of funeral bells, and all hearts were
+in a flutter of feverish palpitation. And always, everywhere, there was
+that suffocating stench of sulphur.</p>
+
+<p>Now a shower of fire fell from the glowing sky. It was raining
+shooting-stars and white-hot meteorites, most of which burst like
+bombs. The fragments of these, like flying shrapnel, crashed through
+the roofs and set fire to the buildings.</p>
+
+<p>To the conflagration of the sky were added the flames of fire
+everywhere on earth.</p>
+
+<p>Claps of ear-splitting thunder followed each other incessantly,
+produced partly by the explosions of the meteors, and partly by a
+tremendous electric thunderstorm. Rifts of lightning zig-zagged hither
+and thither.</p>
+
+<p>A continuous rumbling, like that of distant drums, filled the ears of
+the cowering people below, awaiting their fate. This low rumble was
+interspersed with the deafening detonations of exploding meteors and
+the high shriek of hurtling aerial fragments.</p>
+
+<p>Then followed unearthly noises, like the seething of some immense
+boiling cauldron, the wild wailing of winds, and the quaking of the
+soil where the earth’s crust was giving way.</p>
+
+<p>This unearthly tempest became so frightful, so fraught with agony and
+mad terror, that the multitudes grovelling below were overcome with
+paralysis, and lay prone. Laid low like dumb brutes, they met their doom.</p>
+
+<p>The end of all had come.</p>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" />
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_127">[Pg 127]</span></p>
+<h2 class="nobreak"><i>COLOPHON</i></h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class="center"><i>POST HOC, NON PROPTER HOC:<br />
+Sic veteres de multis rebus opinabantur,<br />
+Eodemque dicto eas jugiter absolvisse<br />
+Recte sibi visi sunt,<br />
+Vt puta quaecumque et qualiacumque<br />
+Cometarum saeculares reditus sequuntur.<br />
+CVR TV ITAQVE, forsitan quaeras,<br />
+Haec auditu minime jucunda nobis narrasti,<br />
+Terrae motus, fluminum inundationes, annonae defectus,<br />
+Pestes mortiferas, incendia, bella,<br />
+regumque magnorum excidia?<br />
+Si tibi cordi est,<br />
+LECTOR BENEVOLENTISSIME,<br />
+rationem nostram didicisse,<br />
+eia, veram accipe:<br />
+MVNDVS VVLT DECIPI.</i></p>
+
+<p class="f150 space-above2"><b><i>FINIS.</i></b></p>
+
+<div class="transnote bbox space-above2">
+<p class="f120 space-above1">Transcriber’s Notes:</p>
+<hr class="r5" />
+<p class="indent">Antiquated spellings or ancient words were not corrected.</p>
+<p class="indent">The illustrations have been moved so that they do not break up
+                  paragraphs and so that they are next to the text they illustrate.</p>
+<p class="indent">Typographical and punctuation errors have been silently corrected.</p>
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