A long time ago, I read an interesting book, where they tried to shed more light on natural phenomena we know happened in the past, by studying contemporary texts: Most of there contemporary descriptions didn't know what they were describing, so a lot of it was trying to figure out that 'evil fire from the mouth of the mountain' meant a volcano eruption.
One of the descriptions was thought to maybe be about the formation of a lunar crater. I remember it as being from the middle ages, but maybe it was older. It described how the 'snake in the night sky' got bitten in the tail, which made it twist with pain. Todays historians believed this was a crecent moon that got struck by a meteor, which caused an "earth quake" (moon quake?") on the moon, hence 'twisting in pain'. I remember I looked up what the crater was, and was impressed that it was a clearly visible one, but now I can't remember which it was :( I tried googleing, but I think my memory is too vague to search relevant words.
Does this ring a bell for any historians? I imagine that such a description would be quite significant, so I'm surprised I've not heard more of it.
On a slightly related note, any other historic, cryptic descriptions of major phenomena in the past? I find it really interesting to read what people thought they saw, and then reading the actual explanations.
The Canterbury Chronicle for the year 1178 CE (which was written by a monk named Gervase) contains an entry that reads:
"This year on the 18th of June, when the Moon, a slim crescent, first became visible, a marvelous phenomenon was seen by several men who were watching it. Suddenly, the upper horn of the crescent was split in two. From the mid point of the division, a flaming torch sprang up, spewing out over a considerable distance fire, hot coals and sparks. The body of the Moon which was below, writhed like a wounded snake. This happened a dozen times or more, and when the Moon returned to normal, the whole crescent took on a blackish appearance.”
There has been a great deal of speculation about what this means.
In 1976, Jack Hartung (a geologist) theorized that the monks witnessed the creation of the Giordano Bruno crater on the Moon.
This has since been questioned, and possibly debunked, but as I am not an astronomer, I'm not sure what the current consensus view is.
In any event, it is quite common in medieval chronicles for portents and omens to be described, sometimes involving things like comets and other space or sky-related phenomena, especially right before some local disaster is recorded, as a sign from God. (A famous example is the blood red comet supposedly sighted before the first assault of the Vikings on Lindisfarne in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle.)
So, it is an open question, so far as I know, whether the Canterbury Chronicle has any truth to it.
You might be referring to an incident recorded in the Chronicle of Gervase of Canterbury, which took place about an hour after sunset on June 18, 1178.
From the midpoint of the division a flaming torch sprang up, spewing out, over a considerable distance, fire, hot coals and sparks. Meanwhile the body of the Moon which was below writhed, as it were in anxiety, and to put it in the words of those who reported it to me and saw it with their own eyes, the Moon throbbed like a wounded snake. Afterwards it resumed its proper state. This phenomenon was repeated a dozen times or more, the flame assuming various twisting shapes at random and then returning to normal. Then, after these transformations, the Moon from horn to horn, that is along its whole length, took on a blackish appearance.
In 1976, geologist Jack Hartung suggested that the Giordano Bruno crater on the far side of the Moon is roughly the right size, location, and age to match Gervase's description.
The problem is, an impact that size would have kicked up tons of lunar material into space and causing a massive meteor shower on Earth roughly a week later...no such event has been found in any astronomical archives, including those of Europe, Arabia, China, Korea, and Japan.
The current hypothesis is that the monks saw a large exploding meteorite, and happened to be in exactly the right place so that meteorite looked like it was impacting the moon.
This would also explain why it wasn't recorded elsewhere...it's hard to believe a Lunar impact which was visible to the naked eye would have only been noticed and recorded by a few monks in England, when it would have been visible to half of the planet.
Source: NASA.gov: The Mysterious Case of Crater Giordano Bruno
Ahh, thanks guys! Yes, this is exactly what I was reffering to :) I remembered it as being on the near side of the moon, but I guess it makes sense that such a big even would be seen even if it happened slightly on the back side. If it was even what happened. Intersting that it's apparently not so straight forward to date moon craters, in order to rule out whether this would have happened at that time or not