Perihelion: Stories of the Years of Halley's Comet

Halley's Comet traces an elliptical orbit around our Sun, coming closest to it at a point called its Perihelion, about every 75 years. It may be visible from Earth as it nears and then leaves its Perihelion, and observations of the comet have been recorded since 467 BC. In each of those years something extraordinary happened. This volume is an attempt to tell at least some of those stories. Most of what you will read here is fact, or what passes as fact in the genre of History. Some of it is fanciful, exaggerated, or confused. Interspersed with historical narrative I have added some fictional characters and fictional events. And I have asked the question, is 1P/Halley a dispassionate observer or an incessant actor?Beginning near the beginning, our stories encounter the famous, the infamous, and the lesser-known players in the drama of world history. We meet, among others, Mark Twain, some residents of pre-dynastic Egypt, Aeschylus, Xerxes, Judas Maccabee, Pharaoh Ptotemy VI, Emperor Cheng of the Han Dynasty, Saint Brendan of Ireland, Viking King Harald Hardraad, William the Conqueror, Genghis Khan, Giotto, Dante, Vlad the Impaler (aka Dracula), Jeanne d' Arc, Moctezuma, Juan Diego who saw the Virgin of Guadalupe, the settlers of the Popham Colony on the coast of Main, Edmond Halley, the Bideford witches, Mary Campbell who was captured by Native Americans, and the crew of the Challenger shuttle.