[2] The course of the comet of 1556 was observed by Paul Fabricius, a mathematician and physician at the court of Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor.

[4] An anonymous English treatise on "Blazing Stares" (1618) spoke of the comet as follows : In the time of Charles the Emperor, surnamed the Great, a blazing star appeared, in the contemplation whereof the Emperor, having his eyes earnestly bent upon the star and considering profoundly thereupon, at length was wrapped into a great astonishment touching the significance of the same; and sending for a philosopher named Eginard, reasoned with him to and fro about the star, saying in conclusion that the appearing thereof did threaten unto him some dire calamity.

[4]The Portuguese Dominican friar Gaspar da Cruz, who visited Guangzhou in 1556, associated the comet with the devastating 1556 Shaanxi earthquake.

[5] Grounding his calculations upon elements deduced from Conrad Wolfhardt's chart along with some other crude data gathered from old records, and comparing the result he obtained with the account given by Friar Giles of Cambridge of a grand comet which appeared in 1264, John Russell Hind was led to conclude, as Richard Dunthorne had been in the previous century, that the comet of Charles V was that of 1264 returned.

At any rate, he found a high degree of probability in favor of the conclusion at which he had arrived, and argued that the bodies of these years were identical.