Franklin collected it near Studley, England, the Associated Press reported at the time, from “an anonymous hen with an odd affinity for astronomy.” She said she’d put her ₤5,000 winnings toward a car. Linda Franklin’s triumphant egg didn’t bear a stardust pattern, but it did have a bit of a tail, though it actually looked kind of like a skinny, palm-sized bowling pin, or a maraca. © Trustees of the Natural History Museum, Londonīut they did declare a winner. The 1986 “comet egg” egg is held in a serious research collection. “Many of the markings on these eggs are fairly commonplace, resulting from excessive calcium deposits on the shell, or from irregularities in the chicken,” one said, in a press release. Officials from the United Kingdom’s Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food-tapped as judges-reviewed the entries, and weren’t convinced that any of the streaks or bands were cosmic, or even in any way remarkable. (No staining, drawing, or other shell-meddling was allowed.) More than 350 people joined the publicity stunt, each claiming possession of an honest-to-goodness specimen. This special egg was front-page news.īy the time 1986 rolled around, Thames Valley Eggs, a British producer, put out a call far and wide: Bring us your comet eggs. Fogg was, presumably, even more surprised the next morning, when he found that the hen had laid an egg “with a long tail on it,” seemingly modeled after the comet itself. to watch the comet, “he was puzzled to see his pet hen running around in the yard cackling and looking into the heavens,” the Reno Gazette-Journal reported. Fogg, stumbled out in his bathrobe at 3 a.m. When a county clerk, identified only as Mr. The shape of a sun was said to have appeared on an egg in Bologna during an eclipse, and another “comet egg” reportedly turned up in Reno, Nevada, when Halley’s Comet soared by in 1910. When word of the “wonder egg” spread, Marsden writes, the Paris Academy confirmed that “the event caused the hen to cackle extraordinarily loudly, that the egg was uncommonly large, and that it was marked … with several stars.” If the report was true, one French journal noted at the time, “it would not be the first prodigy of this nature that has appeared in Italy during eclipses or comets.” In December 1680, when a comet shot past overhead, a hen in Rome was said to have laid an egg spangled with a cosmic pattern. Marsden, late director of the Minor Planet Center at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, recounted to NASA.
This lore dates back at least to the 17th century, as Brian G. Egg shape can be affected by sickness, stress, and other factors. So there could have been an unsavory dimension to the more recent legend that whenever the comet shot past, some kind of extraterrestrial image would appear on the shell of a chicken egg. (There, it looks like a plucked sunflower cast on its side.) The comet has inspired generations of artists, chroniclers, scientists-and chicken owners.Ĭomets had long been associated with mysticism and maleficence-occasionally a bringer of luck, but more often a harbinger of war or misfortune. appear to have been recorded on on Babylonian tablets, and it was also embroidered on the 230-foot-long Bayeux Tapestry, which depicts the Battle of Hastings and England falling to the 11th-century Norman conquest. Named for English astronomer Edmond Halley-who analyzed its past visits and predicted its return around 1758-this particular “ dirty snowball” is what’s known as a periodic comet, meaning that its orbit brings it around to us at regular intervals, leaving a bright, milky smudge across the sky. The comet, though predictable, has never failed to captivate. Freitag, a senior science specialist at the Library of Congress, who compiled a bibliography of information about the comet a year prior. “By the time Halley’s Comet swings past the sun … and heads back into the dim and distant reaches of its orbit, everybody on Earth may well be tired of hearing about it,” wrote Ruth S. Anticipation was high, so much so that some people were wondering if the celestial visitor would wear out its welcome. The year 1986 was approaching, and earthlings were gearing up for a flyby from a long-awaited cosmic guest star. Unusual eggs were said to have been laid when Halley’s Comet passed in 1910.
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