For a good chunk of human history, comets were widely seen as an omen of either bad things or good things soon to happen. Nobody ever really seemed sure exactly which, but by god, if you saw a comet in the sky, you could bet your ass that something was going to happen. A big reason for this was because comets were the only thing in the sky which didn’t make a damn bit of sense. The stars tended to always stay in the same place and while planets tended to move, they did so in a predictable manner. However, comets just kind of appeared seemingly at random. Plus they had tails, which was definitely pretty weird too. Now despite these predictions of doom, or maybe good things happening, overall comets weren’t a very good harbinger of anything. However, occasionally the law of probability resulted in comets appearing at just the right time, such as Halley’s Comet appearing right before the Norman invasion of England in 1066, which of course were the moments people remembered, keeping the myth alive.
Luckily, the European Renaissance began to put to bed such ignorance. Using a little something called actual science, the great thinkers of the day began to understand how the universe worked, which meant they figured out that comets were just big balls of ice floating through space. This march of scientific progress culminated in 1703 when an astronomer by the name of Edmund Halley theorized that many of the comet sightings in history were actually the same comet, one with an orbit of only around 76 years, which was pretty unique given at the time scientists were beginning to understand that many comets had orbits of hundreds, if not thousands of years. Having viewed said comet in 1682, Halley predicted it would return around 1758. Halley never found out because he died in 1742 at the age of 85, but the comet did return in 1759, proving once and for all that comets weren’t random harbingers of doom, so of course they named it after him. Anyways, thanks to Halley’s work and the spread of knowledge around the world, the 1835 passing of Halley’s Comet was pretty humdrum, mostly just a bunch of astronomers and randos who like staring at the sky getting all hot and bothered by it. Unfortunately the same could not be said for the 1910.
By the time Halley’s Comet came around again in 1910, science had progressed to the point that we were not only able to predict its route with great accuracy, such as the fact that this time around the Earth would pass through the comet’s tail, but also use spectrometry, measuring how it reflected light, to gain a pretty good understanding of its chemical composition. One interesting tidbit from these studies was that the comet’s tail included a highly toxic chemical called cyanogen. Now most astronomers didn’t really give a shit about this, because comparatively the Earth was very big and the comet was very small, meaning there was absolutely zero danger. However, one astronomer, a crazy French son of a bitch named Camille Flammarion, went the opposite way with it, declaring that the Earth was about to get a bath in toxic gas that would surely kill all living things. For whatever reason, the New York Times found the ravings of this lunatic funny, so funny that they printed an article about it, sure everybody would be in on the joke. They were wrong. Once the article appeared in the New York Times, one of the most venerable papers of the day, it quickly spread to other papers around the world, where many readers missed the fact that it was supposed to be funny. So started the comic panic of 1910.
If there’s one thing that must be learned from human history, it’s that an uncomfortably sizable chunk of the human race is always ready to go into hysterics at the drop of a hat. The other thing that must be learned is that there are always people ready to take advantage of such things. People began buying up gas masks and making efforts to make their houses air tight, such as plugging up keyholes. Charlatans sold people anti-comet pills and religious revivals found parishioners stirred to nearly frantic levels of devoutness. The comet was in the sky, and it was only a matter of time. In response, pretty much every astronomer in the world declared Flammarion to be a dumbass, even Percival Lowell, the guy who was claiming Mars was crisscrossed by canals. In response, Flammarion kicked it up a notch, pointing out the tail also contained nitrous oxide, meaning not only would everyone die, they would die laughing. Other nuts also began to get in on the game, one upping each other on whatever crazy ass theories they could get anybody to believe. As the comet grew bigger in the sky, thousands around the world refused to go to work, waiting for the end of days. Others took a more proactive approach, such as suicide. However, for every story of someone actually panicking, there were probably a dozen or more hoaxes claiming extremely bizarre behaviors, such as a cult in Oklahoma attempting a virgin sacrifice. While many people definitely panicked on their own, the media of the day printed just about anything they thought might sell more newspapers, which of course made more people panic, which led to newspapers printing more garbage, in a self-sustaining cycle of bullshit.
Of course, the comet passed and exactly fuck all happened. Well, that’s not entirely true. King Edward VII of England died, which many believers attributed to the comet, as did the American author Mark Twain, though nobody seemed take the opinion that the comet was to blame. As well, many peasants in China, after falsely believing the comet would poison their water, instead went back to old habits of believing the comet was a portent for major change, leading many to support a rebellion the following year that resulted in the end of thousands of years of Imperial rule. However, overall most people just went back to their normal lives, doing their best to pretend they were never worried in hopes of their friends and neighbors forgetting what dumb asses they were. When Halley’s Comet returned in 1986, people pretty much went about their business as they always did. Halley’s Comet will return again in 2061.