1355. Pressing for seamen to man the navy commenced.
1668. Sir John Denham, poet, died in London; he was born in Dublin, 1615.
1719. A surprising meteor was seen about eight o’clock in the evening, from all parts of England, Scotland, and Ireland. To an observer in St. Paul’s churchyard, it appeared a ball of fire as large as the moon, of a pale bluish light, and with little motion, till in a moment it assumed the shape of a common meteor with a stream of light, double the diameter of its first appearance, emitting a splendour by which the smallest print might have been read. Its duration was not above half a minute, and its greatest light about the tenth part of a minute. At Exeter its light exceeded that of the sun at noonday, and there it seemed to break like a skyrocket, into sparks of red fire, which reflected that colour on the houses, and shortly after a report, loud as cannon, shook the windows, succeeded at the interval of a minute by about thirty others; “they sounded just as the tower guns did in Mincing-lane, but shook the houses and windows much more.” Mr. Whiston calculated the greatest height of this extraordinary meteor to have been forty-three or fifty-one statute miles: it gradually descended lower till it came to Devonshire, where it was about thirty-nine miles high, and broke over the sea, near the coast of Brittany; its altitude then being about thirty miles.[32]
FLORAL DIRECTORY.
Yellow Star of Bethlehem. Ormithogalum luteum.
Dedicated to St. Joseph.
[32] Whiston’s Account of a Meteor, 8vo. 1719.