Canterbury, England: cosmic catastrophe — 18 June 1178
Gervase of Canterbury wrote that about an hour after sunset five witnesses watched as the upper horn of the bright new moon suddenly split in two. From the midpoint of this division a flaming torch sprang up, spewing out fire, hot coals and sparks. The moon “writhed [and] throbbed like a wounded snake.” This happened a dozen times or more, “turning the moon blackish along its whole length.” When a geologist suggested in 1976 that Gervase’s account referred to the meteor impact that created the 22 kilometer lunar crater called Giordano Bruno, the theory was widely accepted. However, as reported in several scientific journals in 2001, new calculations show that such an event would have resulted in a fierce, week-long meteor storm on Earth with 100 million of tons of ejecta raining down on our planet. Of course, this did not take place in the twelfth century AD, or archives all over the world would have recorded it! This begs the question “What did Gervase’s contemporaries really see?” Did they observe the dramatic entrance of a comet into the Earth’s atmosphere - or something even stranger? Were they even looking at the moon?
Source: University of Arizona news release dated 19 April 2001. The BBC website posted a report on May 1st, 2001: “Historic lunar impact questioned” (http://news.bbc.co.Uk/2/hi/science/natiire/1304985.stm). Case: W052