1882? Hmmm. GREAT SEPTEMBER COMET OF 1882: This comet is perhaps the brightest comet that has ever been seen; a gigantic member of the Kreutz Sungrazing Group. First spotted as a bright zero-magnitude object by a group of Italian sailors in the Southern Hemisphere on Sept. 1, this comet brightened dramatically as it approached its rendezvous with the Sun. By the 14th, it became visible in broad daylight and when it arrived at perihelion on the 17th it passed at a distance of only 264,000-miles from the Sun's surface. On that day, some observers described the comet's silvery radiance as scarcely fainter than the limb of the Sun, suggesting a magnitude somewhere between -15 and -20! The following day, observers in Cordoba described the comet as a "blazing star" near the Sun. The nucleus also broke into at least four separate parts. In the days and weeks that followed, the comet became visible in the morning sky as an immense object sporting a brilliant tail. Today, some comet historians consider it as a "Super Comet," far above the run of even Great Comets.