Millard County Chronicle | 1915-12-23 | Page 7 | Observed the Usual Omens

OBSERVED TH E US UAL OWENS French Astronomer Claims the Start, as Always, Foretold Coming of War In Europe. In a recent number of L'Astronornie ( ainille Manimarion publishes an Ingenious In-genious uitmuir, illustrated with quaint woodcuts from a sixteenth century cen-tury work on prodigies, in -which he shows that all th celestial and terrestrial terres-trial omens of war in which our forefathers fore-fathers so lirraly believed duly ushered ush-ered in the great conflict now raging in Kurope. These include (1) the total solar eclipse of August 21, 19H, visible in Kurope and Asia; (2) Dela-vun's Dela-vun's naked-eye comet, known as the "war comet," discovered at the close of la 13 and destined to remain visible for the next live years (from which the superstitious might augur seven years of war); CI) the transit of Mr-cury Mr-cury on November 7, 1914; (4) the fall of a 35-pound meteorite in England last October; C) the great Italian earthquake of January 13. 1915; (6) a "trieolored" star, of which M. Flam-marion Flam-marion promises to furnish particulars particu-lars later, only remarking for the present that it was an optical effect much exaggerated by the popular imagination; and lastly all sorts of remarkable weather, including a wintry win-try day in June of last year, with a minimum temperature of 41 degrees in Paris. It would be too bad, adds the Scientific American, to refute this accumulated evidence of the futility of modern science by seeking for previous pre-vious periods of a year or so in which similar omens were manifested and no war followed.