Did the old flying monk see Halley’s star, twice? It’s difficult

At the beginning of the 11th century, a young Benedictine monk his name is Eilmer he jumped from the 150-foot tower of his abbey in the small English town of Malmesbury, wearing black wings he made from willow sticks and fabric. Eilmer was able to walk a good 600 yards, past the city wall before falling into a small valley near the river Avon. His fall broke both his legs, crippling him. Malmesbury Abbey still has a stained glass window in honor of Brother Eilmer.

This remarkable attempt at ancient aviation comes to us by way of a 12th-century historian William of Malmesbury in an account written about 1125, although William neglected to give later historians the exact date of the work. But William also mentioned another important story of Eilmer’s life when the monk was “old”: Eilmer saw Halley’s comet in 1066, and said, “I saw you long ago. Other historians we have defined This means that Eilmer saw Halley’s comet fly by as early as 989, when he would have been a boy.

Assuming that Eilmer was at least five years old in 989, he would not have been born before 984. This would make Eilmer in his 80s in 1066, and his attempted escape – which occurred in his “first youth” – probably fell between 1000 and 1010. Leicester, who argues paper published in the journal Notes and Queries that Eilmer may have seen a different comet in his youth—the comet of 1018. If so, he would have been born too late and the date of his escape would have been between the 1020s and 1040s.