(PERIHELION)
Nov. 16,
1835 Born: Nov. 30, 1835
April 20, 1910 Died:
Apr. 21, 1910
According
to Albert Bigelow Paine, Mark Twain’s first biographer, as the author’s heart
attacks increased during 1909, he began to make preparations, both private and
public, for his own departure: “I came in with Halley’s Comet in 1835,” he said
to Paine. “It is coming again next
year, and I expect to go out with it.
It will be the greatest disappointment of my life if I don’t go out with
Halley’s Comet. The Almighty has said,
no doubt: ‘Now here are these two unaccountable freaks; they came in together,
they must go out together.’ Oh, I am looking forward to that.”
As the dates indicate, Mark Twain got his
wish. Having been born only fourteen
days after perihelion, as the comet emerged from the other side of the Sun, and
having died only one day after perihelion in 1910, Twain almost literally rode
the comet in and out!
Another
famous American author has a slight literary connection with Halley’s
Comet. He is James Thurber, who was
born on December 8, 1894. Thurber was
16 years old when Halley’s Comet was visible.
In his book, My World, And Welcome To It, Thurber made reference to the
public mood at the time of the comet’s return.
He was aware of certain predictions that Halley was going to strike
earth somewhere between Boson, Mass., and Boise, Id., and knock it into the
outer darkness, far from the Sun. He
humorously wrote: “Nothing happened, except that I was left with a curious
twitching of my left ear after sundown and a tendency to break into a dog-trot
at the striking of a match or the flashing of a lantern.”