In the early 11th century, a young Benedictine monk named Elmer, wearing a pair of crude wings made from willow wood and cloth, jumped from the 150-foot-high tower of his monastery in the small English town of Malmesbury. Elmer managed to cover a distance of 600 feet, scaling the city wall before crash-landing in a small valley near the River Avon. Due to the fall, both his legs were broken and he became handicapped. There is still a stained glass window in Malmesbury Abbey in Brother Elmer’s honour.
This famous experiment in medieval aviation comes to us through the 12th-century historian William of Malmesbury in an account written about 1125, although William neglected to provide the exact date of this feat to future historians. But William mentions another important event in Aelmer’s life when the monk was “advanced in years”: Aelmer saw Halley’s Comet in 1066, commenting, “It is a long time since I saw you.” Some historians have interpreted this to mean that Elmer first saw Halley’s Comet fly by in 989, when he would have been a young boy.
Assuming that Aelmar was at least five years old in 989, he would have been born no later than 984. This would make Ælfmar aged 80 in 1066, with the attempted flight – which occurred when he was “in his prime” – possibly falling between 1000 and 1010. However, according to James Acheson of the University of Leicester, this is an estimate based on a number of assumptions. A paper published in the journal Notes & Queries argues that Elmer may have seen a different comet in his youth – Comet 1018. If so, he would have been born much later and the date of his flight would have been between 1020 and 1040.
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