Comet Halley

Comet Halley, officially designated 1P/Halley, more generally known as Halley's Comet after Edmond Halley, is the best-known and the brightest of the "short-period" comets from the Kuiper belt that visit the inner solar system in years or decades-long orbits rather than the millennial periods of comets from the Oort cloud.

Trivia

• Two of the comet's visits - 1835 and 1910 - are the same years as the birth and death of the American novelist Mark Twain. He wrote in 1909, "I came in with Halley's Comet in 1835. It is coming again next year, and I expect to go out with it."
• According to one story, first appearing in a posthumous biography in 1475 and later embellished and popularized by Pierre-Simon Laplace, Pope Callixtus III excommunicated the 1456 apparition of Halley's Comet, believing it to be an ill omen for the Christian defenders of Belgrade, who were at that time being besieged by the armies of the Ottoman Empire. However, no known primary source supports the authenticity of this account.
• Having first seen it as a young boy in 989, Eilmer of Malmesbury declared prophetically in 1066: "You've come, have you?...You've come, you source of tears to many mothers. It is long since I saw you; but as I see you now you are much more terrible, for I see you brandishing the downfall of my country" (William of Malmesbury, Deeds of the English Kings, Ch. 225, ISBN 0-19-820678-X).
• In the Talmud, it is mentioned that "There is a star which appears once in seventy years that makes the captains of the ships err" (Horioth, chap. III). It probably refers to the 66 CE perihelion.