Comet P/Halley’s life as a “media event” started long ago, because the first use of communication (in the modern sense of the term) goes back to Rabelais, who published in Patagrueline Prognostication pour l’an 1532:

“And whyth the comete sene laste yeare and the retrograte of Saturne a greate skoundrell shalle die, all weazynge and courd in scabbes, in the hospitall, and at his death there will be horrible warre between cattes and rattes, dogges and hares, faulcons and duckes, monkes and egges.”

Since then ways of spreading ideas have progressed enormously, but comets have remained “fashionable” and each of the last six apparitions of P/Halley has been the occasion of outbursts that are far removed from the scientific view.