Twain (inset) felt the pull of Halley’s Comet
GETTY X13, LIBRARY OF CONGRESS X1, TOPFOTO X1
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American author Mark Twain was born in 1835, two weeks after Halley’s Comet’s closest pass of the Sun. He predicted that his death would occur on its next appearance: “I came in with Halley’s Comet in 1835. It is coming again next year (1910), and I expect to go out with it ... the Almighty has said, no doubt: ‘Now here are these two unaccountable freaks; they came in together, they must go out together.’” He died one day after the comet’s closest pass of the Sun during its 1910 apparition.