My Dad told me of an event he experienced during his childhood, telling of it possibly in 1986, but that was a re-statement from much earlier when I was a kid. Halley's Comet appeared in 1986, disappointingly due to alignments, but my Dad's having witnessed the 1910 event, when he was 9, would live vividly forever in his memory! In 1910, the Earth passed through Halley's tail! That this would happen was well-known in advance. Living on the family farm in Wisconsin then, all the neighbors admonished my Paternal Grandpa for planting his crops early in Spring, claiming they would be wiped out by the comet event. My Grandpa called that talk "bullshit". The neighbors skipped planting; Grandpa was the only resident who had crops that year! My Dad said the sky was deep red for a number of nights, as the Earth traveled through the comet's tail. There were no other manifestations, as he recalled, such as smell or audible sensation. Except for the neighbors wailing in fear! Some refused to sleep at night. Here is an excerpt: "The 1910 approach, which came into naked-eye view around 10 April[62] and came to perihelion on 20 April,[62] was notable for several reasons: it was the first approach of which photographs exist, and the first for which spectroscopic data were obtained. Furthermore, the comet made a relatively close approach....... making it a spectacular sight. Indeed, on 19 May, Earth actually passed through the tail of the comet. One of the substances discovered in the tail by spectroscopic analysis was the toxic gas cyanogen, which led astronomer Camille Flammarion to claim that, when Earth passed through the tail, the gas "would impregnate the atmosphere and possibly snuff out all life on the planet."[86] His pronouncement led to panicked buying of gas masks and quack "anti-comet pills" and "anti-comet umbrellas" by the public.[87] In reality, as other astronomers were quick to point out, the gas is so diffuse that the world suffered no ill effects from the passage through the tail.[86] Interesting story here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halley's_Comet A photograph of Halley's Comet taken during its 1910 approach