Today In History: Media hysteria, the early years...

On this date in 1910, the Earth passed through the tail of Halley's Comet. In a sort of dry run for Y2K and the post-9/11 world:

Cyanogen gas, a poison, had been detected spectroscopically in the tail of Comet Morehouse in 1908, so people feared, understandably, they they might be poisoned by gases from the tail of Halley’s Comet. From Chicago it was reported that women were stopping up doors and windows to keep out the toxic vapour. In Haiti a voodoo doctor sold comet pills to ward off the evil influence of the comet, as did two swindlers in Texas who also did a good trade in leather gas masks. Purchasers were told that the pills (actually made of a harmless combination of sugar and quinine) would help them withstand the gases of the comet’s tail. Police arrested the men but were forced to let them go again when the gullible victims campaigned for their release.

Notably absent from the hysteria was a new Federal Department of Comet Gasses. No doubt it was considered and, had one been formed, it would still be with us today, a vital part of our federal bureaucracy, stuffed full of juicy sinecures like the Departments of Education or Energy or Homeland Security...