Did a medieval flying monk spot Halley’s comet, twice? It’s complicated

University of Leicester historian thinks Eilmer of Malmesbury saw two different comets: in 1018 and 1066

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[Spazzles]

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.

 

[Spazzles]

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!

Ahem, it was 1492 that Columbus sailed the Ocean Blue.

And the boats were the Santa Maria, the HMS Endeavor, and the Lusitania. Duh.