And those who took the pills survived … as did everyone else.

There were also 'Comet Protecting Umbrellas.'Įarth passed through the tail for six hours on May 19 in 1910. With regards to Halley's comet, swindlers were selling “comet pills” and gas masks to protect the public from poisoning. Challenger and his friends seal a room, and use oxygen cylinders as they see people collapse outside - including his servants, who have not been included! But in the end, it turns out the belt only caused unconsciousness. This could well have been an influence behind Arthur Conan Doyle's novella, 'The Poison Belt', published in 1912, where Professor Challenger has predicted that the Earth is moving into a belt of poisonous ether which will cause the end of humanity. Two years later astronomers calculated that the Earth would pass directly through comet Halley's tail, and there was concern that the gas would saturate the Earth's atmosphere and kill every living thing. They were able to detect the presence of poisonous cyanogen gas in the tail, which smells of almonds. Leaflet produced in 1910 as the Earth went through the tail of Halley's comet.Īfter the 1908 appearance of Morehouse's Comet, the scientists at Chicago's Yerkes Observatory were able to analyze a comet's tail using spectroscopy. Close your windows and keep indoors for the Earth will soon pass through the Tail of the terrible Comet and its poisonous gases will fill the heavens!

The poison belt