Someone in my community has the Virginia license plate "JAN 1061". I have seen this plate several times and became obsessed
with finding out what significance this date has.
Research on the Internet reveals the following historical events for the year 1061:
Apr 24th - Halley's Comet sparks English monk to predict country'll be destroyed
Oct 28th - Emperor disposes of bishop Cadalus & Pope Honorius II
Perhaps this individual was obsessed with Halley's comet:
5 September 989
The 989 apparition may have been seen by Eilmer of Malmesbury when he was a young boy, as he may have referred to it when
writing about the 1066 apparition (see below).
20 March 1066
The comet's appearance in 1066 was recorded on the Bayeux Tapestry. The caption, ISTI MIRANT STELLA, was translated in
a 1966 National Geographic article as "These men wonder at the star."
In 1066, the comet was seen in England and thought to be an omen: later that year Harold II of England died at the Battle
of Hastings; it was a bad omen for Harold, but a good omen for the man who defeated him, William the Conqueror. The comet
is represented on the Bayeux Tapestry as a fiery star, and the accounts that have been preserved represent it as having appeared
to be four times the size of Venus, and to have shone with a light equal to a quarter of that of the Moon. Halley came within
0.10AU of the Earth.[39]
This appearance of the comet is also noted in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. Eilmer of Malmesbury may have seen it in 989,
as he wrote of the comet in 1066: "You've come, have you?…You've come, you source of tears to many mothers, you evil.
I hate you! 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. I hate you!"[45]
The Irish Annals of the Four Masters recorded the comet as "A star [that] appeared on the seventh of the Calends of May,
on Tuesday after Little Easter, than whose light the brilliance or light of the moon was not greater; and it was visible to
all in this manner till the end of four nights afterwards."[44]
Chaco Native Americans in New Mexico may have recorded the 1066 apparition in their petroglyphs.[46]
Today (25-July, 2009) I was waiting in line for a State Emissions Inspection and I happened to notice this car
filling up at the gas pump. I asked the owner what significance the date had.
"Oh, it just came out that way," apparently it was a random license plate that looked like a date.
