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.