University of Leicester historian thinks Eilmer of Malmesbury saw two different comets: in 1018 and 1066
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Did a medieval flying monk spot Halley’s comet, twice? It’s complicated
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I think we can assume that Eilmer's wings, assuming they existed, looked nothing like the picture. Bat wings at that epoch would have most likely seemed devilish.
Willow isn't a bad choice for a framework but a glide slope of 1 in 4 for a first off seems very unlikely. Idle speculation suggests that he might have made a copy of extended bird wings, and that they acted as an extremely crude parachute. One wonders what his test models were like, or whether he simply trusted to Divine Providence. Or whether the actual jumpoff height got expanded as time went on.
Willow isn't a bad choice for a framework but a glide slope of 1 in 4 for a first off seems very unlikely. Idle speculation suggests that he might have made a copy of extended bird wings, and that they acted as an extremely crude parachute. One wonders what his test models were like, or whether he simply trusted to Divine Providence. Or whether the actual jumpoff height got expanded as time went on.
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Before it (possibly) gets nixed by the A/B testing, I have to commend Ars on the headline "Did a medieval flying monk spot Halley’s comet, twice?" - where else on the Internet can you trust such a headline to be justified with an interesting article behind it, rather than just being clickbait ?
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Did he invent an adhesive to stick the cloth onto the willow frame? Eilmers glue if you will.
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Well, he did break both his legs, which must have caused something of a twinge whenever he thought of refinements for Mk II.
It was a time with a more hey-nonny-no approach to Health and Safety regulations, but I can just imagine the abbot taking a Dim View, and confining Eilmer to theoretical astrology instead (‘they can be called monks cells for a reason, you know...!’).
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I would bet that he did a fair amount of testing if he got 600 feet and only broke his legs. he likely didn't think through the forward momentum.
All wild speculation of course, but I'm off to the articles to see if the is more on this flight attempt, sounds awesome.
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The materials used in the construction of those wings reminds me of the time when my brother was nine and I was five when he decided to make a hang glider. He came up with a rectangular framework of sapling wood with cloth from an old sheet between them. There was absolutely no airfoil shape, but when he tried jumping off the low edge of the garage roof, about four feet off the ground, he discovered it was a passable parachute.
Some of his friends came over and we all took turns jumping off the roof, working our way farther and farther up the gable end until we were eventually jumping from the very top, a full two stories above the driveway.
It was all great fun until our mom looked out the living room and yelled "What the hell are you doing?!?" She may have prevented one of us sharing Eilmer's fate, but it was disappointing at the time.
ETA: Thinking about it, I'm pretty sure Dad must have had a hand in building that thing. He was really good at stuff like knots and lashing, while my brother is hopeless. Then he would have left us to our own devices without oversight, which was totally in character for him.
Some of his friends came over and we all took turns jumping off the roof, working our way farther and farther up the gable end until we were eventually jumping from the very top, a full two stories above the driveway.
It was all great fun until our mom looked out the living room and yelled "What the hell are you doing?!?" She may have prevented one of us sharing Eilmer's fate, but it was disappointing at the time.
ETA: Thinking about it, I'm pretty sure Dad must have had a hand in building that thing. He was really good at stuff like knots and lashing, while my brother is hopeless. Then he would have left us to our own devices without oversight, which was totally in character for him.
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Brave! I used my cat for my parachute experiments after working up from my sister's cabbage patch kid. Got caught and punished before I could move onto the human experimentation stage.
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We talked about making a parachute for the cat, but never actually did it. We did tie a rope around the leg of the bunk bed so we could rappel down the laundry chute though.
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I've seen a documentary about a flying nun, and of course flying monkeys...but a flying monk?
Also "gliding 600 feet" is not flying...I have heard it described as "falling...with style"...
Also "gliding 600 feet" is not flying...I have heard it described as "falling...with style"...
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Kinda weird, man. My mom and I were just talking about people we knew who had accidents where they were parachuting and broke their legs (turns out, we know a few.)
Then this article shows up.
Anyway, aside from that, I appreciated this article. Imagine being a peasant in Malmesbury just trying to get your daily shopping done at the market, and seeing a (presumably screaming) monk soaring by on home-made canvas wings.
Then this article shows up.
Anyway, aside from that, I appreciated this article. Imagine being a peasant in Malmesbury just trying to get your daily shopping done at the market, and seeing a (presumably screaming) monk soaring by on home-made canvas wings.
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So.. the evidence for his seeing Halley's comet twice [/]and[/i] recognizing it as the same astronomical phenomenon is...let's just say, less than compelling. But kudos to him for surviving a rather reckless attempt to "be one with the birds", as it were. Reckless humans have advanced our capabilities multitudes of times!
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Later, Roger Bacon (who wasn't a monk but a friar, important distinction) would reportedly introduce reading glasses from his study of Arab science, and get locked up for his heretical ideas about Arab science being used to benefit the poor.
If you believe hard enough that you're going to Heaven, a certain amount of recklessness is OK. Atheists however - we read the hazard data sheets and use the safety equipment.
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My brother's and I and some local friends tried the bedsheet parachute thing from a woodshed onto a sawdust pile about 6 feet down. It worked... poorly, fortunately no broken bones resulted. Also, noticing the seeming lack of resistance of the makeshift parachute some of the more intrepid jumped without it a few times.
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This is likely the best comment I have seen on Ars.
I cannot recall a better comment offhand.
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Oh pshaw! We’re inundated with flying monks here. There’s Saint Joseph of Cupertino, the 17c friar who was infamous for levitating at prayer, mass, or in moments of religious ecstasy. He flew so much the Church apparently needed to move him somewhere quieter. Now he’s the patron saint of aviators, pilots, and astronauts.
There’s also Sun Wukong, the flying Monkey King (and sometimes monk) of the Chinese epic, Journey to the West.
I throughly recommend reading the Julia Lovell translation, Monkey King, and / or watching at least the first couple of episodes of the indisputably authentic Chinese TV ‘documentary series’ from 1986 on YouTube.
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The most recent appearance of Halley's Comet was a bust. Not worth a second look.
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And that explains why there was no repeat. Having been Dad under not dissimilar circumstances, the Mom backlash is not quickly forgotten, although no kids were actually broken during the experience, and in the '50s we were left much more to our own devices.
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Another GREAT article by Jennifer. Over and over and over and over she comes up with articles like this and shows how interesting history REALLY is despite how boring history was based on my history teachers in school.
The ONLY thing I learned about Columbus in school (I graduated from high school in 1979 - yes, DECADES ago) was that Columbia sailed on the Ocean Blue in 1742 or something like that with three boats which I'm embarrassingly spacing on their names right now.
But NOTHING was said about EVERYTHING ELSE that we knew about Columbus at the time because ALL that mattered was the ability for schools to be able to give tests and to see how many students remembered "just a few" things about each thing they taught about.
I didn't get interested in history until AFTER I was twenty-three when I stumbled into some articles about different people in history that were FASCINATING and this was during a time when I was working a LOT of hours as a computer programmer and was looking for something to get my mind thinking about other things during my off hours.
Anyway, a Gold Medal to Jennifer for another great article!
The ONLY thing I learned about Columbus in school (I graduated from high school in 1979 - yes, DECADES ago) was that Columbia sailed on the Ocean Blue in 1742 or something like that with three boats which I'm embarrassingly spacing on their names right now.
But NOTHING was said about EVERYTHING ELSE that we knew about Columbus at the time because ALL that mattered was the ability for schools to be able to give tests and to see how many students remembered "just a few" things about each thing they taught about.
I didn't get interested in history until AFTER I was twenty-three when I stumbled into some articles about different people in history that were FASCINATING and this was during a time when I was working a LOT of hours as a computer programmer and was looking for something to get my mind thinking about other things during my off hours.
Anyway, a Gold Medal to Jennifer for another great article!
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In college, I got to work several performances of The Monkey King by a touring Chinese opera company. Traditional Chinese opera shares very little in common with western opera and I highly recommend seeing it if you have the chance. The night we went out to dinner with the opera company was the night I decided I finally needed to learn to eat with chopsticks to be polite and by the end of the meal I was doing passably well.
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This was just after the turn of the '70s and childhood then was a largely feral experience for most, amplified for me by our extremely rural location. When I became a parent I tried to find a good balance between that and over-parenting. I think I mostly succeeded.
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GI Joe's and handkerchief parachutes for us.
And model airplanes, meticulously assembled, then packed with firecrackers for their simultaneously maiden and final "flights."
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My experience in a very small town had the advantages of of enough people to feed each other (bad) ideas but a very short distance to adult free areas. The "crick", a small river, was about a quarter mile, "the hill" was about twice that. Fortunately (to my knowledge) no lives were lost to any locals due to pre-drivers age shenanigans. Not even any broken bones, aside from those in supervised sports like football. We most certainly engaged in many risky behaviors including some that would, today, put a child on a terror watch list.
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Purex bottle napalm for little green army men? I can still hear the bewww...bewww...bewww sound it made dripping off the end of the burning bleach jug. Oh and hairspray flame throwers!!! We also made little rockets fueled with phosphorus carefully scraped from matches.
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Offhand remarks are reserved for stories of Leopold's moral transgressions in the Congo.
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The punchline to the scraped-match story for us was that, after days of collecting our fuel, Johnny (last name withheld) decided one summer afternoon he couldn't wait anymore, and his exuberance ended in burning down his parents' garage and singeing the neighbor's siding.
I was not allowed to play with Johnny anymore.
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Ahem, it was 1492 that Columbus sailed the Ocean Blue.
And the boats were the Santa Maria, the HMS Endeavor, and the Lusitania. Duh.
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We had the Swamp and Devil's Pond at the top of the road, although the cattle guarding them were usually not very aggressive, but a lot bigger than eight year olds, and even at that age we knew to avoid the bull when he was pastured behind the electrified fence. For some reason my brother has never forgotten peeing on the electric fence, and after 60+ years still claims it was my idea. The quarry (long disused) was interesting, and the railroad tunnel and embankment were great places to do things like get pennies flattened. And despite the warnings of the old lady at the top of the road, the cowpats never gave us polio, although the vaccine arrived at about that time, so maybe she was not so much wrong as behind the times.
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