“I came in with Halley’s Comet in 1835. It is coming again next year, and I expect to go out with it. It will be the greatest disappointment of my life if I don’t go out with Halley’s Comet. The Almighty has said, no doubt: ‘Now here are these two unaccountable freaks; they came in together, they must go out together.”
Mark Twain passed away on April 21st, 1910, one day before Halley’s comet came closest to the Sun in its orbit. While Halley’s Comet usually has a 76-year orbit, sometimes due to the gravitational pull of other planets, it comes a year or two earlier. Or, it might have just decided to company a good friend back home.
*Found this story in an old lecture (1945) at Adler Planetarium’s Sky Show Collection.