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grokme
Guest
I just read <i>A Journal of the Plague Year</i>, a fictional account of the Great Plague of London by Daniel Defoe, the same person who wrote Robinson Crusoe. The book is based in large part on his uncles eyewitness accounts of the city at the time. <br /><br />One thing I found interesting is that he mentions a comet occuring a couple months before the appearance of the plague, which would have been late 1664 or early 1665, depending on when you consider the plague to have started in earnest. Then, just before the London fire in 1666, he talks about what sounds like a large meteor which is explosive and fast. Both of these events supposedly were seen as signs of impending doom by the people of London. <br /><br />I have found some weblinks on comet sitings in 1664 and 1666. There's also mention of Pepys seeing a comet on December 15th 1664. Pepys diary is a very good source since he was one of the founding members of the Royal Astrological Society and he kept a very private and frank account of events in London at that time, thinking that his diary was undecipherable. <br /><br />The 1660's seem to be comet rich, with at least three sightings by French preists as well. Do we know if these comets ever reappeared or are they way out there somewhere waiting to come back around, and we don't know when? If not, is there a way to find them now with modern instruments and calculations based on their location in the 1660s and projections about where they could have gone?