Earth passes through Halley's Comet's tail
Newspapers spread panic as hucksters sell 'comet pills'
In May 1910 Earth passed through the tail of Halley's Comet. Press reports of astronomer Camille Flammarion's remarks about poisonous cyanogen in the tail caused panic, and hucksters sold 'comet pills' and gas masks. Nothing happened.
Wikipedia (Russian) · Wikipedia (English) · 20th century
Did you know
The same Halley's Comet embroidered on the Bayeux Tapestry in 1066 returned in 1910 — when the Earth even passed through its tail.
Meanwhile around the world (±25 years)
Whole world
- 1914–1918 World War I — 4 years later
- 1918–1920 Spanish flu pandemic — 8 years later
- 1920 League of Nations founded — 10 years later
Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1905–1907 Russian Revolution of 1905 — 5 years earlier
- 1908 Tunguska event — 2 years earlier
- 1917 October Revolution — 7 years later
- 1917–1922 Russian Civil War — 7 years later
- 1929–1933 Collectivization in the Soviet Union — 19 years later
Middle East
- 1905–1911 Persian Constitutional Revolution — 5 years earlier
- 1908 Oil struck at Masjed Soleyman — 2 years earlier
- 1908 Young Turk Revolution — 2 years earlier
- 1915 Armenian genocide — 5 years later
- 1916 Sykes–Picot Agreement — 6 years later
Africa
- 1885 The Mahdists take Khartoum — 25 years earlier
- 1886 The Witwatersrand Gold Rush — 24 years earlier
- 1897 The British sack Benin City — 13 years earlier
- 1904–1908 The Herero and Nama genocide — 6 years earlier
- 1922 Discovery of Tutankhamun's tomb — 12 years later
Asia
- 1885 Founding of the Indian National Congress — 25 years earlier
- 1894–1895 First Sino-Japanese War — 16 years earlier
- 1896–1898 Philippine Revolution — 14 years earlier
- 1911–1912 Xinhai Revolution — 1 year later
- 1923 Great Kantō earthquake — 13 years later
Americas
- 1906 San Francisco earthquake — 4 years earlier
- 1910–1920 Mexican Revolution — same year
- 1913 Ford's moving assembly line — 3 years later
- 1914 Opening of the Panama Canal — 4 years later
- 1929 Wall Street Crash and the Great Depression — 19 years later
Oceania
- 1893 New Zealand women win the vote — 17 years earlier
- 1893 Overthrow of the Hawaiian Kingdom — 17 years earlier
- 1911 Amundsen reaches the South Pole — 1 year later
- 1912 The death of Scott's polar party — 2 years later
Alive at the time
- Leo Tolstoy (aged 82)
- Thomas Edison (aged 63)
- Nikola Tesla (aged 54)
- Marie Curie (aged 43)
- Mahatma Gandhi (aged 41)
- Vladimir Lenin (aged 40)
- Ernest Rutherford (aged 39)
- Winston Churchill (aged 36)
- Joseph Stalin (aged 32)
- Albert Einstein (aged 31)