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A comment on When the English Witnessed Battles in the Sky. Parent comment

Re:When the English Witnessed Battles in the Sky by robotresearcher on Sunday November 08, 2020 @05:29PM (#25029717)
From the fine article:

> On the night of March 6, 1716, people all over England witnessed a bloody war unfolding in the sky.

> the aurora was bright enough to read by

Aurora. Visible across the country. Rare in England, hence the amazement.

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Re:When the English Witnessed Battles in the Sky by mark-r on Sunday November 08, 2020 @07:57PM (#25030473)
Is "aurora" a term used at the time, or was it added later by people who thought they knew better?
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Re:When the English Witnessed Battles in the Sky by dredmorbius on Monday November 09, 2020 @12:30AM (#25031739)
'Aurora borealis" seems to have begun appearing in print at rougghly this period:

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&...

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Re:When the English Witnessed Battles in the Sky by mark-r on Monday November 09, 2020 @10:35AM (#25035799)
The 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?
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Re:When the English Witnessed Battles in the Sky by robotresearcher on Monday November 09, 2020 @01:25PM (#25037860)
At 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.

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