Oh What A Time... - #88 Space (Part 1)

Episode Date: January 20, 2025

Space: the final frontier and indeed, the subject of this week’s episode. We’ll have early astronomy, we’ll take a trip to the moon and we’ll ask the fundamental question: are we alone in the universe and has anyone from another civilisation visited us on earth? (Outside of that one particular episode of Beadle’s About in the 80s).Elsewhere, we’ll be discussing the loneliest human in history and why leech-based healthcare was so big for so long. If you’ve got anything else to contribute, here’s where you need to send it: [e-mail] you fancy a bunch of OWAT content you’ve never heard before, why not treat yourself and become an Oh What A Time: FULL TIMER?Up for grabs is:- two bonus episodes every month!- ad-free listening- episodes a week ahead of everyone else- And much moreSubscriptions are available via AnotherSlice and Wondery +. For all the links head to: ohwhatatime.comYou can also follow us on: X (formerly Twitter) at @ohwhatatimepodAnd Instagram at @ohwhatatimepodAaannnd if you like it, why not drop us a review in your podcast app of choice?Thank you to Dan Evans for the artwork (idrawforfood.co.uk).Chris, Elis and Tom xSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Wandery Plus subscribers can listen to episodes of Oh What A Time early and ad free. Join Wandery Plus in the Wandery app or on Apple Podcasts. Hello and welcome to Oh What A Time. The podcast that asked whether life was much worse in a time when, let's say you had a cold or you were feeling a bit fluid, there was literally no over-the-counter medication you could get hold of. Chris has got a cold, okay, you'll go for Lemsip, you'll do something like that. There would be a time in history where you'd feel like crap and you'd just have to wait it out. That's just what would happen.

If you went back to 15th century Scotland with a sniffle, no one's going to say, oh don't worry, I'll give you a wee bit of first defence. Because you couldn't buy first defence. Which incidentally my mother-in-law swears by. It's great! First defence was Hadrian's wall back then. First offence, first offence! That's actually quite a good historical joke. That is. Do you know what? You occasionally just do yourself a

don't. That's good stuff. Thank you. Sandbrookes should shit himself. When he hears that, he should shit himself. Yeah. First offence is miraculous. But the problem is if you're ill in the 15th century, there are cures. They're just all nonsense. Yeah, all like, it's a little beast. But the problem is if you're ill in the 15th century, there are cures. They're just all nonsense. Yeah, all like, it's all beast. Yeah, suck on this leaf.

Yeah, get a docked leaf, this tail of that squirrel, and I have a newt. Very leech heavy as well, wasn't it Batlin? Yeah. A lot of leeches seem to be the go-to. If you went to the doctor, I'd assume it was going to end up with them suggesting I'd put leeches on my body. Yeah. What's that you've got?

A headache. Got any access to topsoil? No. I was thinking the other day, do you remember, I think we talked about this, that in World War I they discovered that maggots were actually brilliant for treating wounds because they'd eat all the dead skin. Why did that take until the First World War? In 15th century, I imagine there's maggots knocking about everywhere.

Yeah, and a lot of wounds. And a lot of wounds as a cure. What were they doing in the middle ages? They were wasting their own time. As I would say, not a, I don't know, I'm certainly not a pessimist, but as someone who is not hugely into being experimented on. Right, yeah. If in World War One I had a terrible flesh wound and the doctor said, not hugely into being experimented on. Right, yeah. If in World War One I had a terrible flesh wound and the doctor said,

have you heard about this latest treatment? It's called maggots, I would say. Can we stick to the old treatments? And I'll take my chances. Give me some whisky, get your sore out and let's just get it off. Yeah, yeah. But give me a little bit of leather to bite onto and we'll hope for the best. Oh my gosh. So were maggots placed on the wound or was it that they noticed that maggots appeared

and then they would in time clean the wound? Is that what it was? I'm recalling from a World War I book I've read, which is that certain wounds were infested with maggots, but those people whose wounds were infected with maggots, they healed faster than people who didn't, or they had better outcomes than people who didn't have wounds. Yeah, lucky ones. I would say, why don't you try the maggot thing on that unconscious bloke over there who can't argue. As the conscious went on this ward, I'm going to say no.

That captured German. Yeah, try it on him. Who's missing a knee? Try it on Hans over there. So, today is going to be a really fun episode. This is an episode I've been looking forward to a lot actually. It's going to be such a fun subject. Normally we tell you directly at the top of the show what we're going to be discussing.

But we've got a piece of correspondence today, which is so apt, I'm going to read this and then we're going to go into it and you'll see why. Okay? So should we kick off a little bit of correspondence? Are we happy with this? Okay. This is from Lizzie Hopley, who has written an email with the heading, Spacemen and Women. Dearest funny boys, please, please, can you do an astronaut and cosmonauts episode? I found out recently, this is an amazing fact, and I am aware of versions of this actually in the current day, I'll explain. I found out recently that the first Russian who helped build the Mir space station, Sergei Krikalev, was left abandoned on it for six months because

the USSR, who sent him up, obviously, ceased to exist while he was up there. So there was no one to bring him home. That's terrifying. So, well, let's discuss that first of all. The reason I say it reminds me of stuff now is there are situations that people have to wait basically until the next ship is going up. You can't just come back when you want, obviously. And there are delays, there are technological problems, which means often you are trapped up there much longer than you expect to be up there. But let's focus on this poor old Russian chap, Sergey, six months extra because the USSR

collapsed, staring out into the nothingness, the endless nothingness of space. Yeah, yeah. Actually, I know it's not even that, is it? It's more painful because you can see Earth. Yeah. I think I'd move, if my bedroom is at that side of the smear station, I'm moving my stuff across the other side for those six months. I don't look at the painful reminder of where I could be. Here's what you could

have won. Oh my God. Well, here's a half remembered historical anecdote, but wasn't it the case that in Apollo 11, Michael Collins, who was the third wheel, not Neil Armstrong or Buzz Aldrin, but the third guy. And he had to stay in the lunar module that was orbiting the moon while those two went down. And as he's orbiting it, he went around the other side of the moon. And at that point, he was the most isolated human in history. Because obviously he's far from Earth and on the other side. He was just struggling to find a parking space, do they?

There's loads of double yellows on the moon. Your first defence gag I would describe as the best of Tom Crane and that gag right there, the worst of Tom Crane. How dare you? I think it's got a sort of charm and it's clean, which is rare nowadays. But imagine that, being the loneliest human in history. I haven't got it in me. No, absolutely not.

Not brave enough. I would say, if I was offered the chance to go to space in Elon Musk's or whichever billionaire is planning it next, I would not go. No chance. I'm too scared and I'm not interested enough in terms of being up there. No chance. No way. Are you going, Chris?

Well, you know these billionaires now, you can go into like an orbit, can't you? You can go like a… Not doing that either. Absolutely not. I would like to experience zero gravity. I mean, I haven't even been to Cork. And Elon Musk offered to pay for you to go to court, wouldn't he, Woods? Wouldn't you love to do zero gravity for a bit? Well, Buzz Aldrin's still alive, so we've kind of done him too much harm.

Yeah, he's all right. Yeah. I saw him punching a bloke in the street on Twitter a few years ago for saying that the moon landings were fake. Is that true? He gets very upset when people claim that the moon landings were fake and that it's a conspiracy. Yeah, I get that.

And some guy went up to him and went, why are you lying, Buzz? Why are you lying? And he gave him a right hook. It was great. The good thing about that clip is Buzz Aldrin's about 80. He's older than that. Yeah, I wouldn't mess with Buzz Aldrin. That's incredible. I do understand that if you were on the moon, because let's be honest, Buzz Aldrin, he was, it happened. They've got to you as well.

It must be annoying when people are claiming you haven't. This guy, your whole life's work is a lie. Yeah, exactly. This guy went up to his face and said, you are a liar. Wow. Yeah. As someone coming up to you, Will, saying you are not one of Britain's most beloved podcasters.

You're going to get a right hook. Knock him out. Bang, he's down. I'm coming up to you, Will, saying you are not one of Britain's most beloved podcasters. You're going to get a right hook. Knock him out. Bang, he's down. And then I realise that the block's much harder than me and he gets up again and out. Now I'm in big trouble. Now it's a race. He wasn't down, he was just doing his shoelace.

He was down. Now I'm down. I'm being kicked again. Oh dear. He's kicked me so hard I've been sick. Now he's kicked me so hard I've started to fart because I'm nervous. Now he's literally kicking the shit out of me. So Lizzie, after giving us this fantastic fact about the Russian who got trapped in

space, she's gone on to say, I think an Oh What A Time episode on astronauts and cosmonauts would be brilliant. All the love, Lizzie and Woolwich. Well, Lizzie, today is your lucky day. Sort of. This episode is entirely on the subject of space. Not really astronauts and cosmonauts, but where do they go? Space. So in a way, you're getting what you want. I am going to be talking about early astronomy today, the first people to study the stars, make sense of the universe and all that. ALICE I am going to be talking about lunar exploration and visiting the moon. And quite fortunately, I'm talking about a subject

that is very dear to my heart and I'm very interested in, which is essentially, have or are aliens visiting Earth? Great. Oh boy. Buckle up. That is such a good subject. No offence, El, but I can't wait to get through your stuff. I'm slightly worried my thoughts and theories in my section will end the podcast because I'm going to sound insane. But look forward to that. Can you imagine landing on the moon? Chris Skull as an astronaut, planting a big West Ham flag on the, on the moon's surface. Then I look, look over my shoulder and there's 50 Millwall fans already there. It's gonna go off.

And we're having an interstellar scrap on the moon. You whack the first one and they float off into it. Just keep going further and further. That's a risky fight, isn't it? You get hit too hard. You're not coming back. You end up in deep space. Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

I, uh, funny enough, I don't know how I got on this, but I watched a video the other day about what would happen if you fell from a 10-story height on the moon. Would, like, and basically you would probably die. Who would you? You kind of think of the moon as not having much gravity, but essentially there's sufficient gravity that if you were to fall 10 stories on the moon, it would be a significant enough impact

that you would at least be in very big trouble. That would be annoying, wouldn't it? Just enough gravity to hurt you. That's not one for the tourist brochure. And just remember, just enough gravity to really hurt yourself if you have a fall. Thank you. I think the worst type of injury there, there'll be one where if it was on Earth, medical help could come and sort you out. Yeah, like a broken leg.

Exactly. You're just too far away. And you ring up, they go, what's your emergency? You go, okay, technically I guess it's medical ambulance, but this could be problematic. Trying to convince them to come up. Isn't Mars, wouldn't it take something like six to nine months and you can only make the journey once every two years? Basically, the conditions are only right. Oh really? Imagine that. Like, I don don't know what could be kidney stones or something like that, just an annoying injury for which you're going to have to wait

like two years for help. Urinary tract infection. Kidneys that, I mean that in space and you haven't got any home comforts. Yeah. Oy, oy, oy. I mean, in zero grav, norovirus is the one you don't want. Oh, good God. That's going to feel very real very quickly.

Oh, in your suit. Oh no. Feeling covered in everything. Oh no. Oh no. And on your charts. And the people in Houston are like, have you done those graphs and readings for us? Um, yeah, sort of. I can remember some of it. Oh, sorry. And the people in Houston are like, have you done those graphs and readings for us?

Yeah, sort of. I can remember some of it. Oh, sorry. You've vomited and you've forgotten to pull up the visor beforehand. The helmet's now full like a goldfish bowl. Horrendous. If you want to get in contact with the show like Lizzie and suggest future subjects, as we've proven now, sometimes they come to pass. Lizzy, today's episode for you, it's space. All right, you horrible lot. Here's how you can stay in touch with the show. You can email us at hello at earlwatertime.com And you can follow us on Instagram and Twitter

at owhatatimepod. Now clear off. To kick off this episode, I am going to talk to you boys about early astronomy. Now, I think it's kind of a fair question to ask. Are you interested in the stars? Are you into when you go outside? Is it something you kind of enjoy looking up at space or is it not something that really bothers you that much? I'm not interested really if I'm honest. I occasionally,

I don't know if you ever get this, I accept the power and majesty because I've got young kids and young kids are fascinated by things like that. Yeah. And it's a very instinctive thing to look up at the moon and go, Oh my God, it's one of, it's often that one of the child's first words was they can just see it. And they're like, what the fuck is that thing? Yes. And occasionally, I don't know if you ever get this Tom or Chris, I occasionally feel bad that I'm not more moved by the things that have moved poets for thousands of years. I don't really give a shit about Birdsong. I don't give a shit about the sun or the moon

or the stars. The changing seasons? The changing seasons couldn't give a fuck. Frost, not bothered. I mean, autumn and leaves and rejuvenation, regeneration. I'm just like, what ever. However, the Carabao Cup final really does get you going. Wordsworth would have written about the Carabao Cup final. He was alive today. William Blake would be writing about the transfer window.

But, El, you wake up one morning, the street is covered in snow. Are you taking a picture of that on your phone? Snow is the one, because it snowed in where I live a few nights ago and I did take photos. I was actually walking home from something, I was walking from a gig or something, and I videoed myself walking down because it looked quite majestic, but that's the only one really. Snow. Snow is the only thing that impresses you about the natural world. The only thing that moves you. It feels like leaves changing colour. Don't care! Whatever. Have you thought about moving to Norway? Don't even notice!

It does feel like you can experience that every day if you want to. Now I'm actually, I'm the opposite of that. I don't know about you, Chris. So I went to the South France last year, out in the countryside, no light pollution. Obviously in London, the sky is at night. You see occasionally, if you're lucky, you can see stars. But for the mainstays, light pollution is an issue. Pollution generally, it's not a particularly clear sky here. Whereas in the South France last year,

and it was just beautiful, so clear. And I saw my first shooting star. I'd never seen a shooting star as well last year. I saw one. I'd blown away by it. Every night I'd go out and just stare at the star and I just absolutely loved it. I do find it very, very moving. And I completely get why ancient cultures, ancient man at a point pre-light pollution when it would have been even more sort of vivid. Tom. It would have just even more sort of vivid. Tom.

That it would have been an incredible thing to stare up at. Tom, you're sad. I'm with Tom. I love staring up at the night sky. Thank you, Chris. I've got the night sky app on my phone so I can see what the different stars are. And the thing I love about the sky is because of the nature of the speed of light, every star you look at in the sky is actually a representation of that thing at a different time depending on how far away it is.

And the things that were happening on Earth, like there's stars you can look at in the sky that when you look at them, there were dinosaurs on Earth when they looked like that. That blows my mind. There's so much stuff. Chris, Sean Dyche has just been sat by Everton. That has to be better than stars. In a distant constellation, there will be people staring at Earth, and it will take about four million years. But when they stare at Earth... And Everton are just wearing the cup when it's cut.

Yeah, they'll be staring at Earth at the moment Sean Dice was sacked. Yeah, I do feel bad. Do you know what? I like the sea. Okay. Yeah, I do feel bad. Do you know what? I like the sea. I do like staring at the sea. But that's the sort of… of all the poet topics. Well, at least what controls the sea? The moon. Well, it got to you too. The gravitational pull of the universe. How can you want one and ignore the other. Okay, let's talk about this then, the early study of space. The early astrologists. Now, some of the very earliest stargazers were the ancient Babylonians who

made loads of astronomical records on clay tablets. Okay, so among their most famous recordings, just how long people will be doing this, include an observation of Haley's comet. Now, do you remember that? Yeah, huge yes. 1986 I remember because it's every 75 years or so I think. Is that what it is? Something like that. I remember, so I would have been five. Wow. I remember watching an item about it on Blue Peter or something on news round and thinking will I live to see the next one because I'm not going to see this one because mum and dad won't let me stay up late.

Will I live to a post bedtime age? Basically, yeah. Or I get to. Yeah, it's in the Bay of Tapestry, Hades Comet. Is it? Really? Wow. That's incredible. There's a fact I did not know. Well, L, this comet was seen in 164, 163 BCE, that's how long ago it was still knocking about, and they called it Salamu, and a set of observations about the rise and fall in the sky of the planet Venus were recorded. As you were saying earlier, Chris, that's what I love, I love that these celestial objects were looked at so long ago in the same way that they are now, that their span is so much

larger than humanity. The time humanity's been around is a dot in terms of the time of the universe, the age of what we're looking up above. Mason Meehan That's what gets me about space is actually like the just time, how insignificant measures of time are when you're talking about space and millions of years like from distance, I was thinking millions of years. Will Barron The idea that when you see a star twinkle, because of the way it works, it was twinkling 100,000 years ago. That is pretty cool actually. Jason Vale Oh, here we go. We're starting to impress,

Ellis, with the natural world. Will Barron Can we win him round fully by the end of the episode? There's the goal. At the end of this episode, Elle, you have to tell us, have you been won round to the idea of space, the universe? Then I think about the refereeing of Andre Marriner, I think. That is great. That is good stuff. The insignificance of human life when put into contact of the refereeing of Andre Marriner. Exactly. You realise how little the sun matters. How little the Milky Way matters. No one has ever compared Andre Mariner to the scale of all humanity. To the majesty of the Earth's heavens.

Is Andre Mariner a celestial being? No, but he's a very good referee. I've heard that. Is it right? Does the moon go around Andre Mariner? I know I'm getting confused which one it is. The ancient Babylonians, they made these observations about Haley's comet. They're fascinated clearly by what's above them. However, as always, it falls to the good old ancient Greeks to really step things up, to really develop astronomy into a fully fledged mathematical science. What an incredible civilization that was.

There are so many things that civilization we have to thank for. They had debates about a geocentric universe which models the universe with the Earth at its center, or a heliocentric one which places the sun at its center, which was one of the big debates at the time. The invented technology, such as the Antikythera mechanism, which enabled calculation of the positions of astronomical objects up in space. Also, they identified six planets in the solar system, Mercury, Venus, Earth. I mean, Earth is quite an easy one to identify. That's like getting a mark for writing your own name on the exam paper.

Mars, Jupiter and Saturn. The remaining planets were not discovered until 1781, which is Uranus, and 1846, Neptune. Ellis, were you surprised it took them so long to discover Uranus? I knew. Yeah. As soon as you said Uranus. As soon as you said Uranus. I thought, what's he... And would you agree that Uranus now. I knew. As soon as you said Uranus. As soon as you said Uranus. I thought what's... Would you agree that Uranus is massive? I thought what's he got up his sleeve? Yeah, the thing with Uranus, from what I remember, it's a gas giant.

It's good stuff. Isn't it right? And I hope, yeah. That the atmosphere in Uranus is unbreathable. I've heard that people want to visit Uranus, but nobody... Is that right? It feels like a step too far. Has anyone even seen Uranus? People are interested in my Uranus. Certainly not in my lifetime though. There'll be no going there. So the Greek civilization was absolutely fascinated by space, basically. And at its peak, Greek astronomy... That's a job I could do in engineering history. Being an astronomer.

Because you're not impressed by the natural world. You could look at it objectively. I'd fucking plug it, man. Come on! Because all it is is staring at the sea. I mean, it's sort of, you're part of the nighttime economy, I suppose, so it would mess up your body clock. But I could handle that. Certainly in the winter, you'd be done by 6pm. I think we're winning him round, Chris. Oh my god. At the beginning he had no interest in space, now he wants to be an astronomer. We're not

even out of part one. Can I just say about the ancient Greeks, one of the things I've become obsessed about, particularly at the back end of last year, was flat earthers and what flat earthers believed. But in the course of researching what flat earthers believe, I discovered that in ancient Greece they pretty much all knew the earth was round. But there was loads of people, Pythagoras, who had done experiments that could see the angle of shadows, et cetera. Their observations, they knew the earth was round, which amazed me.

And more than that, Chris, there was a common acceptance that the other planets were round. The ones they discovered were also round. It's amazing, really, isn't it? It's kind of mind-boggling. It's clever, yeah. Yeah. At its peak, Greek astronomy viewed the universe, though. It's worth saying, although they got a lot of stuff right, at that point they viewed it as fundamentally geocentric, which meant the remaining celestial objects orbited Earth in the following order – the Moon, Mercury, Venus, the Sun, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn. Fascinatingly, do you know what they thought about the stars? Do you know what they thought was happening with the stars? This was not right. Spoiler alert. Did they think it was a big sheet that had holes in with some sort of infinite light source behind it?

Not an awful guess, El. I know that sounds mad, but there is some kind of logic to what you're saying there. Did they think they were planets? So what they believe, they believe that the stars were fixed in place on an altimosphere at the edge of the universe, and they appeared to move at the same speed and arrangement because the celestial sphere rotated around the Earth. So they thought there was an edge to this universe, that's where the stars were fixed and that sphere would turn around the Earth. That's why they were always in the same arrangement, as far apart from one another, etc. etc. And always at the same

speed because that sphere was just turning around the Earth. It's kind of fascinating really. However, there was another theory present in Greek astronomy, which is the heliocentrism of Aristarchus. Now he believed that the Earth moved around the Sun, since the Sun was very much larger as an object, and the stars in the sky were other suns set at very great distance. Unfortunately, his ideas were largely lost, and it was the geocentric theories of Aristotle that survived into the medieval period. So unfortunately, his ideas were largely lost and it was the geocentric theories of Aristotle that survived into the medieval period. So unfortunately, these ideas were lost and these sorts of assumptions that were wrong were carried through to medieval period.

There was one other guy who really should have been listened to, who was a guy called Epicurus, and he realized correctly, this is another ancient Greek, that the universe does not... Imagine being this bright, okay, having access to the technology they had then. He realised that the universe does not have a single centre since it comprises infinite space and has no boundary, and the centre of something is a midpoint between two edges. So he already had figured out that the universe was infinite and therefore could not have a centre.

And this is in ancient Greece. People must have just thought he was mad. I mean, it's astonishing he's right about that, in my opinion, as far as we know. I don't even know what people's opinions would have been on that. I would say the last year I wasn't googling things that I was curious about was probably 2006. I couldn't have come up with that in 2006. I could be alive for a thousand years and I would never come up with that. No, actually I wouldn't bother. I mean, God, imagine the doom scrolling you do for

a millennium. Just also, imagine if Pythagoras had the internet or Plato. Do you know what I mean? They're creating a whole lot of knowledge from scratch. Or a calculator. Imagine if, you know, Excel, Microsoft Excel. It could be run in all kinds of formulas. Imagine what they could have got done. But maybe if they had the internet they'd have got less done.

Yeah, that's true. If they'd had Microsoft's Office, they could have had spreadsheets, they could have been writing these things down. That's all they needed. The paper clip saying, did you mean to say the universe is infinite? Because that sounds mad. You were right though, Chris. His ideas were disregarded, they were lost, of course they were correct, which is the cruel thing.

Another thing that the ancient Greeks liked to do was catalogue the objects that they saw in the sky. In fact, in 130 BCE, one scientist called Hipparchus began to compile his star catalog, which I like to imagine is like the Argos catalog. And people are really excited every year when it comes out what's going to be in there. No, do you know what it sounds like? It sounds like the website of an agent who manages social club acts. Welcome to my star catalogue. We've got impersonators, dancing dogs, singers, or magicians, everything you could possibly want. And it's in that mid-90s website style as well.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely. With loads of text. And a banner that's rotating. In this catalogue, there was a list of at least 850 stars which was lost to history until parts were rediscovered using sophisticated analysis of documents which are now housed in Oklahoma but originally found in the Middle East. However, his catalogue does not compare to Tolmie's catalogue, which by contrast does still survive and was the basis of medieval European knowledge of space. That was even bigger and it consists of 48 constellations and more than a thousand stars. I would be so

bad. My nightmare job would be documenting and listing stars because every night I would come out and I would forget where I'd got to the night before. And if I'd done that once... Yes, so they were... Where do you forget? And they all look the same. Exactly. Did I do that once? I was trying to document grass.

It's so hard. I mean, you could just about manage it with photos and things like that. What am I doing today, boss? You're going to Wembley, and you're going to catalogue individual blades of grass. Okay. Is this a prank? Yeah. And the blades of grass are moving every night.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. But he achieved it. However, and I'll end on this, if there is one celestial object that stands out most from early astronomy, it is the aforementioned Haley's Comet. So you remember seeing this, Al, only you nearly saw it in the 90s. Well I remember it being a huge news story. Yes, but your parents would not let you stay up late enough. Well, the comet appears several times in ancient text. This is what I just find incredible, with various observers noting its arrival in the

sky with further appearances on a set of coins minted during the reign of Emperor Elagalblus, which is 218 to 22 CE. Another important appearance is in 12 BCE when in the words of the Roman writer Cassius Dio, the star called the comet hung for several days over the city of Rome. The same comet returned in 66 CE when it was observed by a writer called Josephus. And it's even possible that the star of Bethlehem associated with the birth of Jesus is based on the appearance of Haley's Comet. Something similar, either in 12 BCE or 66 CE, and from there made its way into the story. Whatever the truth of that start, Roman writers were generally convinced that seeing a comet was a sign of something really either good

or bad, but they really saw it as prophesying or reacting to something that happened. They saw it as something significant. For example, a comet was present in the sky a few months after Julius Caesar's assassination in March 44 BCE and was considered by the historian, Hisotonius, to be Caesar's soul rising up to the heavens. That's how they saw it. Wow. The object came to be called the Julian Star in the Dictator's honor. And the Emperor Augustus even went on to utilize the comet as a propaganda symbol, associating Caesar's

divinity with his own right to rule. So comets were a huge deal to the Romans. They really put a lot of worth, value, importance in them. And this is partly why they documented why they wrote about them, why they were so in awe when they turned up. The ancients did not know what comets really were, so they kind of gave them different meanings just as they tried to understand the sun, the moon, the earth, other things like that. But in a way, I suppose it's just like nowadays,

astronomers are trying to make sense of the universe, trying to understand it, the principles of what is life, where are we. It's the same back then basically. It's all just a clamor for knowledge, isn't it? And some kind of understanding of who we are and the human experience really, and the human existence. But nothing's really changed in that manner. Will Barron Do you want my favourite thing about ancient historical sightings of comets? I love this about history.

Based on ancient accounts like in ancient China of visions of these comets, they're able to trace a lot of the time the exact day on which these accounts were recorded. Like Tuesday the 17th of July, for example, like 500 BCE or whatever. Because they know they can plot the path of these comets. So when they see them in ancient texts being mentioned, they know exactly when that happened. That's so cool. That's cool, isn't it?

That's incredible. Because Emperor Hirohito observed the Haley's Comet in 1986, and he'd already seen it in 1910, when he was eight. Because he was 84 by the time it came round in 1986. And he yawned when it came round again. Clean it, done it. Was there someone, was it Mark Twain, who was born on Hayley's Comet and said I would die on Hayley's Comet? Isn't there someone famous? Mark Twain was born two weeks after Hayley's Comet come around and he said he would die

when Hayley's Comet came back around again. I think that's exactly what happened. Oh wow. Is that really what happened? He said, I came in with Hayley's Comet in 1835, it is coming again next year, I expect to go out with it. Hayley's Comet next appeared on the 21st of April 1910, which is the day that Mark Twain died. No way!

My other Hayley's Comet fact. Great historical fact. Yes! That's good stuff. Yeah. That is really good stuff. That is good stuff. That is good stuff. We've actually ended part one on a bit of a cliffhanger. If you'd like to hear if I can actually become interested in astronomy,

you're going to have to listen to part two. Will it happen over the course of the next two topics? If you want to hear that now, then by all means become an O What A Time full-timer. Go to owhatatime.com. Have we Tim Peaked your interest? Oh! Have we Tim Peaked your interest? That is really, really good stuff.

Would you say, Al, that that sort of gag is worth £4.99 a month? I think I would actually, because then you get even more of Tom Crane's strained puns is the phrase I'm going to use. Will I be buzzing Aldrin about astrology that's not quite as good? I'm trying to think of a Helen Sharman one. Over the moon? Over the moon! There you go. Well done. That'll do. I don't actually know enough astronauts to name another one. It's it buzz Aldrin? What the other ones Helen Sharman buzz Aldrin Neil Armstrong Yuri Gagarin are the only four I can think of the top of my head Oh, here we go. Will you like her the sound of oh like the dog become a dog Yeah, there you go. I

Couldn't work out the end of the sentence was Well, if you want more excellent historical banter like that, you can become an O What A Time full-timer. You can sign up at owhatatime.com and join either Wandery Plus or at another slice. Let me tell you one thing, by the way, before you say goodbye. We had a little joke of my sitcom Reincarnation, which will be... Listen to BBC Sounds, you can hear it. I wrote it with Henry Packer. It's excellent as well, by the way. Oh, thank you very much. Here's a sort of joke we had of it.

One of the characters said he met that dog that went into space. The second character says, like her. And the first character goes, yeah, he's all right. There you go, it's good stuff. Yeah. For such a funny sitcom, I remember it being nominated for Best Rage of comedy at the Arias

a few years ago. It was, and yes, and some BBC stuff as well. And it deservedly so, for such an excellent sitcom, you've actually done quite a bad sell for it with that joke there. Of all the hundred jokes you had to write for that sitcom, because it's really tightly plotted, great characterisation, probably the worst line in the entire thing and you're like, please, it's available on Boopsy Zones. Well, return to find out if Ellis becomes a cosmonaut in part two. See you shortly. So The The End. Follow Oh What A Time on the Wondry app, Amazon Music or wherever you get your podcasts.

You can listen early and ad free right now by joining Wondry Plus in the Wondry app or on Apple podcasts. the world.