The Uncanny Halley's Comet Lifespan of Mark Twain
Poet involved
What happened
The iconic American author Mark Twain was born in Missouri in 1835 on the exact day that Halley's Comet made its highly anticipated appearance in the night sky. In 1909, Twain publicly prophesied his own death, stating that he came in with the comet and expected to go out with it when it returned the following year. In an unbelievable cosmic coincidence, Twain suffered a fatal heart attack in Connecticut on April 21, 1910, the precise day after the comet reached its absolute brightest perihelion.
Literary impact
This perfect celestial bookending of Twain's life became a legendary piece of American literary folklore. It deeply reinforced the Symbolist and Modernist poetic idea that true creative geniuses are fundamentally tied to the larger, cyclical patterns of the cosmos, inspiring numerous poems about astronomical destiny.
Source: Wikipedia
