Messier's name will always be associated with discovery of over 100 deep sky objects. But to him they were just fuzzy patches getting in the way of his real hobby - looking for comets.
This page is dedicated to Charles Messier's obsession ...

Comet sense & nonsense

1066 and all that
Halley's comet is known to have appeared in 1066 - the year which began the Norman Conquest - and is shown on the Bayeux Tapestry. Apart from heralding the Battle of Hastings, comets are also said to have accompanied the deaths of Attila the Hun (453 AD), Emperor Valentinian (455 AD) and Charlemagne (814 AD) - not to mention the Fire of London (1666) and the birth of Napoleon (1769).

When beggars die, there are no comets seen; The heavens themselves blaze forth the death of princes. Shakespeare, Julius Caesar

Ave Maria
The appearance of Halley's comet, in 1456, just as the Turks had become masters of Constantinople, and threatened an advance into Europe, was regarded by Christendom with a superstitious dread, and to the Ave Maria was added the prayer: "Lord save us from the devil, the Turk, and the comet."
Chambers Encyclopaedia (1877)

Comet wine
A term of praise to signify wine of superior quality. A notion prevails that the grapes in comet years are better in flavour than in other years, either because the weather is warmer and ripens them better, or because the comets themselves exercise some chemical influence on them. Thus the years 1811, 1826, 1839, 1845, 1852, 1858, 1861, etc., have a repute.
Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable (1894)

 Hairy stars
The word comet comes from the Greek kometes meaning 'long haired'.

Old men and comets have been reverenced for the same reason; their long beards, and the pretences to foretell events. Swift, Thoughts on Various Subjects

 The largest comet
Centaur 2060 Chiron has a diameter of 182 km (113 miles).
Guinness Book of Records (1999 edition)

 Life, Jim, but not as we know it
... the four commonest elements making up the material [in the tail of a comet] are hydrogen, carbon, nitrogen and oxygen, just the same elements that are commonest in living material.... the proportions of these four vital elements [in living things] are always much the same and they are like comets, not like the earth's biosphere or any other astronomical body - an uncanny similarity for such enormously different objects ... cometary material must be the feedstuff of life. It is a conclusion which might seem remarkable enough, but one which I think is too cautious. Cometary material is life, I would say, not simply its precursor.
Fred Hoyle, The Intelligent Universe (Mermaid Books, 1983)

A long wait - perhaps
"...Delavan's Comet of 1914, whose path was not accurately determined. ...is not expected to return for perhaps 24 million years."
Guinness Book of Records (1982 edition)

Mark Twain - (1835 - 1910)
Aware throughout his life that he was born when Halley's Comet was visible, Mark Twain predicted that he would die when it returned; he was right! When Mark Twain died on April 21, 1910, Halley's Comet was once again visible in the sky.

I came in with Halley's Comet in 1835. It is coming again next year, and I expect to go out with it. It will be the greatest disappointment of my life if I don't go out with Halley's Comet. The Almighty has said, no doubt: "Now here are these two unaccountable freaks; they came in together, they must go out together." Mark Twain from Mark Twain: A Biography by Albert Bigelow Pain (1912)