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Comets in History (Does Ignorance Rule?) Long before (and even after) comets were recognized as card-carrying members of our solar system, they inspired fear and trepidation. Why? Because they came and went suddenly, without warning (unlike the sun, the moon and the stars), they seemed unpredictable, and their nature was not at all understood. |
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Then there was the matter of appearance. To some people, a comet (defined), with its long sweeping tail (defined), took on the appearance of
the head of a woman with hair streaming behind, a traditional
sign of mourning. To others, it appeared as a sword, a
portent of death and war.
Throughout history comets have been blamed for many bizarre things. The 1066 appearance of Halley's Comet inspired mass terror in Europe and was | |
| Encounter Between the Earth and a Comet of 13 June 1857, from "Actualities Astroligiques." |
said to foreshadow war
and the death of kings. Conveniently, King Harold the II
bought the big one that year at the Battle of Hastings, where
the victory of William the Conqueror and the
Normans changed the face of England -- and the course of history. In the Lucerne Chronicles, an early 16th-century illustrated manuscript of civic history, the 1456 appearance of Halley's Comet was blamed for earthquakes, illness, a mysterious red rain and even the births of two- headed animals. That same year, according to popular legend, Pope Callixtus III excommunicated the comet as an instrument of the devil. In more recent times, such as the 1835-36 appearance of Halley's Comet, a better understanding of the nature of comets did not prevent people from blaming it for everything from the massacre at the Alamo to a fire that almost burned New York City to a crisp. In 1910, thanks to astronomers at the University of Chicago's Yerkes Observatory, new myths were born. Using spectroscopy they discovered that Halley's tail contained poisonous cyanogen gas. Panic ensued when it was realized that the Earth was "scheduled" to pass through the "deadly" tail. Some people committed suicide and one group in Oklahoma, according to urban legend, tried to make things better by attempting the sacrifice of a virgin. (Funny. Weren't they supposed to cure volcanoes?) On the bright side, that scientific finding was a boon to wily entrepreneurs who hawked comet pills and comet insurance to the gullible (defined). And even in the enlightened 1980s, humans proved to be superb conjurers of weird comet crazes. One rumor, circulated for the 1985-86 apparition of Halley's Comet, noted that the comet would crash into the North Pole, corrupt the Earth's magnetic field, and electrocute us one and all! Yikes! So, what is a comet anyway? |
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