4 ms·
Is "aurora" a term used at the time, or was it added later by people who thought they knew better?
by mark-r 6y ago
Is "aurora" a term used at the time, or was it added later by people who thought they knew better?
- dredmorbius 6y ago'Aurora borealis" seems to have begun appearing in print at rougghly this period: https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=aurora+borealis&year_start=1600&year_end=2000&corpus=15&smoothing=10&case_insensitive=true&direct_url=t4%3B%2Caurora%20borealis%3B%2Cc0%3B%2Cs0%3B%3BAurora%20Borealis%3B%2Cc0%3B%3Baurora%20borealis%3B%2Cc0%3B%3BAurora%20borealis%3B%2Cc0%3B%3BAURORA%20BOREALIS%3B%2Cc0 https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=aurora+boreali... References prior to 1714 (daate attributions may be inaccurate): https://www.google.com/search?q="aurora%20borealis"&tbm=bks&tbs=cdr:1,cd_min:1600,cd_max:1714&lr=lang_en&gws_rd=ssl https://www.google.com/search?q="aurora%20borealis"&tbm=bks&...
- mark-r 6y agoThe question is one of revisionist history. Did the people writing of the event at the time recognize it for what it was? Or did a later transcription of the event substitute their current understanding and lose the confusion surrounding the original?
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- robotresearcher 6y agoAt least some reports at the time were of heavenly armies and other fantastic things. So at the time the phenomenon was not described (at least universally) as aurora. The article - written much later - assumes that it was in fact an aurora. The comment I replied to proposed "tl;dr: IMO they were probably high on wacky loaf." Which is an alternate explanation that doesn't really match the fact that this was seen all over the country on the same night, and not other nights.