A Benedictine monk named Eilmer glided 600 feet from a 150-foot tower at Malmesbury Abbey sometime in the early 11th century, wearing willow wood and cloth wings. He cleared the city wall before crash-landing near the River Avon. Both legs broke. The abbey still has a stained-glass window for him.
The timeline of Eilmer's flight depends entirely on when he was born, and that depends on which comet he saw. The 12th-century historian William of Malmesbury records Eilmer watching Halley's comet in 1066 and saying 'It is long since I saw you,' implying a prior sighting in 989. That would put his birth around 984 and his flight between 1000 and 1010.
James Aitcheson of the University of Leicester challenges this in a paper published in Notes and Queries. His argument: Eilmer may have seen the comet of 1018, not 989, pushing his birth date later and his flight into the 1020s to 1040s. The paper is worth reading for how much historical weight rides on a single ambiguous sentence from a monk watching the sky.
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