5 Monks and a Crater

June 18, 1178 - It was on this night that 5 English monks witnessed an amazing spectacle. They saw what appeared to be "two horns of light" on the shaded part of the Moon.

...a flaming torch sprang up, spewing out . . . fire, hot coals and sparks. . .The body of the moon, which was below writhed. . .throbbed like a wounded snake...

Almost 800 years later, a geologist named Jack Hartung concluded that what the monks saw was actually the formation of the Girodano Bruno crater, a well-known landmark on the lunar surface.

The timing of the monks' sighting also coincided with the annual Taurid meteor shower. Some believe that a meteor from the Taurids was also responsible for the Tunguska event.

Critics of the connection between the monks' sighting and the crater point to the fact that an impact of that size on the Moon should have been followed by a significant increase in shooting stars seen from the Earth, but no such spike shows up in the historical record.