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During its first documented flight, in the year 837, Halley’s comet grazed planet Earth by five million kilometers, a hair’s breadth in interstellar space. In this era marked by Viking raids and the Carolingian renaissance, it must have been the brightest object in the sky, even eclipsing Venus! And yet, no panic, no crowd movement has been reported by the chroniclers of these superstitious times. No, to reach the psychosis of the end of the world, we will have to wait… 1910.
Well identified flying object
Halley’s comet has returned several times since 847. Sighted by the soldiers of William the Conqueror in 1066 and considered a premonitory sign of his victorious conquest of Normandy, it was represented on the famous Bayeux tapestry.
On the left, scene no. 32 of the Bayeux tapestry (between 1066 and 1083) represents men observing Halley’s comet in 1066. | photo Myrabella via Wikimedia Commons
In 1301, the Italian painter Giotto observed it in the sky in Italy. A few years later, he probably made it appear on his fresco The Adoration of the Magithus revisiting the iconography of the star of Bethlehem.
The Adoration of the Magi, fresco by the Italian painter Giotto, created between 1304 and 1306, visible in the Scrovegni Chapel (or Arena Chapel) in Padua, in northeastern Italy. | via Wikimedia Commons
At the end of the 17th century, after several observations, the English astronomer Edmond Halley established that it was the same celestial body in periodic orbit around the Earth. Scientists will soon prove him right: the comet – which will later bear his name – has probably been playing hide and seek with the solar system for almost 200,000 years.
Since then, Newtonian science has thrown to the ground the beliefs which saw in the movements of the stars the expression of divine whims. From the 18th century, comets became objects of scientific curiosity.
With an elliptical orbit that brings it close to Earth every seventy-six years, the traveling comet was able to see human history in fragments, like a kaleidoscope. Thus, it went directly from Louis XIV to L’Encyclopédie, from the Industrial Revolution to the Symphony No. 9 from Ludwig van Beethoven, from Napoleon Bonaparte to the rabies vaccine. As if each flight over the planet promised progress.
And yet, it was in 1910, during the beginning of the age of aviation, radio and the first plastics, that this march towards progress was slowed down by a curious event. The return of Halley’s Comet causes contagious panic among Earthlings.
A hair’s breadth from disaster
It was the French astronomer Camille Flammarion who was the first to predict the apocalypse. “[Il] did not absolutely reject the hypothesis of the destruction of our world by a celestial collisionwrote a journalist from Le Petit Parisien on January 19, 1910. Regarding Halley’s Comet, he examined the possibility of this incident. The combination of oxygen from the Earth’s atmosphere with hydrogen from the comet’s tail would have the effect of suffocating us in a matter of moments.”
Funny premonition from a man of science… Who, certainly, has a penchant for the paranormal. A few years earlier, in 1893, Camille Flammarion had published a science fiction novel, The end of the world, which imagines the Earth being hit by a comet. But he does not firmly believe that his scenario will materialize. “These predictions should not, however, torment (unnecessarily) worried minds”he saw fit to clarify.
Too late. The damage has already been done and the sensational press will add fuel to the fire, despite the denials added by other scientists. The spectacular flood of the Seine, which reached 8.62 meters in Paris at the end of January 1910, is partly attributed to the “collateral damage” caused by the meteor.
By telegraph, the French panic spread across the Atlantic from February 6. Serious dailies like the New York Times and the Washington Post relayed Camille Flammarion’s dire prediction. It is rumored that the “hair” of Halley’s Comet contains toxic gases, notably cyanogen, capable of extinguishing life on the Blue Planet.
Despite refutations from reputable observatories, panicked Americans are rushing to stores to buy gas masks, blocking their keyholes with paper, and hiding in cellars or underground wells. And during this time, the comet continues its approach towards Earth at 190,000 km/h.
“Apocalypse Now”?
At the end of May 1910, Earthlings held their breath when the fateful glow tore through the sky. Newspapers around the world followed its trajectory, wondering whether or not the Earth would be swept away by the meteor’s tail. In superstitious villages, people burn candles while scanning the sky with apprehension. We crowd nervously in church pews. Gullible Americans are even being fooled by street vendors who offer “anti-comet pills” loaded with sugar and quinine.
Although marginal, similar scenes are occurring elsewhere on the planet. The hills of Mexico are covered with crucifixes, the churches of St. Petersburg full of frightened worshipers. A choir of believers rises in Saint Peter’s Square in Rome, the heart of Christianity. South Africans lock themselves in underground mines.
On the evening of May 18, 1910, Parisians went to bed without knowing if they would wake up. And then the next day, early in the morning… Nothing changed. The buildings, the houses, the garden gnomes are still there. “She… brushed past us and we didn’t die”, breathes Le Petit Parisien in its edition the next day. Phew. So life went back to normal.
“Halley’s comet: the roofs of Paris transformed into observatories”: front page of the daily newspaper Le Petit Parisien, May 15, 1910. | Private collection / Leemage via AFP
Ultimately, the only prediction that proved correct was the one that surfaced in the United Kingdom, Edmond Halley’s country of birth, at the beginning of 1910. For some enlightened people, his comet was a sign precursor of an inevitable war against Germany. It is true that at the beginning of the 20th century, imperialist tensions and colonial rivalries put the nations of Europe on edge… And what was supposed to happen happened. Four years later, Europe plunged into the inferno of the First World War, the nights of which were marred by artillery constellations.
