Part 1

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.

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.