From kfoster@shell.rmii.com Wed Oct 1 16:11:09 EDT 1997 Heh-heh. Watch for it. Having recently heard that, according to Bishop Ussher's calculation the 6000-year span of Earth will end on October 23 this year (to be followed by the Millennium described in the Revelation to St. John), I figured that somebody might try to cash in... Meanwhile, I hauled out the following, made a few changes in the format, and corrected some typos (and probably missed some others), but it's otherwise unchanged. Enjoy! ````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````` From: mnestheus@aol.com (Mnestheus) Newsgroups: sci.skeptic Subject: Usshering in the Millenium Date: 30 Sep 1996 17:55:12 -0400 Message-ID: <52pfk0$fgm@newsbf02.news.aol.com> ''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''' ------------------------------------------------------------------------ USSHERING IN THE MILLENNIUM `EARTH' Magazine, Feb. 1996 ------------------------------------------------------------------------- The 6000th Anniversary of the Earth's Creation (4004 B.C. - 1997 A.D.) is about to be celebrated by congregations that revere geochronology's founder, the good and great Archbishop Ussher. Their enthusiasm seems bound to spill over into their Congressional Districts, with obvious ramifications for the funding of geophysical research. So it may be prudent to amend geochronology to fit a Biblically Correct 6000-year format, at least for the fiscal year to come: ------------------------------------------------------------------------- 25 Oct. 4004 BC: Encounter with Nemesis knocks Lucifer out of Oort Cloud. 1 Nov. 4004 BC: Earth still largely molten; Adam and Eve invent Asbestos waders. 3884 BC: The first biotechnologist, Cain, invents cyanobacteria. 3554 BC: Komatiites inundate earliest crust, Noah's Ark incinerated. 3264 BC: Methusaleh begins to notice passage of geological time. 3124 BC: Archaean stratiform sulfide deposits form, making Bronze age possible. 2844 BC: Tired of reading graphic granite, Imhotep invents heiroglyphs. 2584 BC: Earliest sedimentation; Discovery of slate leads to stone tablets. 2444 BC: Breathable atmosphere develops; first sermon preached. 2384 BC: Descendants of Tubal Cain inaugurate banded Iron Age. Sphinx starts to fossilize. 2024 BC: Nimrod the Hunter erects the Geosyncline of Babel. 1914 BC: Advent of diapirism; Lot's wife turned into first salt dome. 1794 BC: Children of Ham split from Israelites, insisting that the Burgess shale fauna are kosher; Chowder invented. 1704 BC: Charshumash the Hittite bitten by first vertebrate; Lawyers emerge from slime. 1624 BC: Samson attempts Perovskite synthesis: Laboratory of the Philistines implodes. 1444 BC: War of the Chaldean Succession, Pangaea broken up in accordance with the Treaty of Uruk. 1334 BC: Shang Empire abandons efforts to invent compass when China drifts over south magnetic pole. 1264 BC: Moses invents hydrofracturing, opening of Red Sea rift drowns Egyptian army. 1194 BC: Odysseus runs aground on Gondwandan riviera; Circe founds Club Teth. 1104 BC: Ezekiel see de Pterodactyl, 'way ub in de middle of de air. 1024 BC: Goliath stepped on by irate Barosaurus; David takes credit. 794 BC: Jonah swallowed by Carcharas Megalodon. 564 BC: Pythagoras publishes Air-Earth-Fire-Water phase diagram. 454 BC: Marble deposits form in Greece, Parthenon erected. 338 BC: Aristotle concludes that quartz is just another polymorph ofice, like diamond or pearls; this is known as the Wisdom of the Ancients. 64 BC: Pliny the Elder writes eyewitness account of the Alpine orogeny. 48 BC: All of Gaul is divided into three parts by the collision of Corsica with the European plate. The Year Zero: Nothing much happens, there being none. AD 31: Miracle of the Loaves and Ichthyosaurs. AD 70: Paul, formerly Saul the Tarser, undergoes identity crisis on the road to Damascus and writes Epistle to the Cephalopods. AD 344: Vanguard of Attila the Hun perishes when Romans breach Gibraltar escarpment, flooding the Mediterranean Desert. AD 494: Snakes evolve and are driven out of Ireland. AD 974: Lief the Unlucky lost with all hands when his dragon ship is spotted by an amorous Kronosaurus. AD 1066: William the Conquerer invades England by walking through northern France. AD 1215: Magna Carta eaten by Velociraptor. AD 1324: Gunpowder and plate armor introduced; Dinosaurs hunted to extinction. AD 1384: Dante Aligheri describes core-mantle boundary. AD 1444: Flowering plants appear; Wars of the Roses commence. AD 1484: Leonardo Da Vinci designs Archaeopteryx. AD 1492: Mesoamerica emerges, thwarting Columbus's discovery of Japan; the Santa Maria is attacked by Ammonites. AD 1519: Asteroid impact shatters Aztec Empire ; Cortez mops up. AD 1588: Spanish Armada frustrated by continuing absence of English Channel; Shakespeare tours seacoast of Bohemia. AD 1636: Earliest primates appear, Harvard founded. AD 1664: An English primate becomes Primate of Ireland - Archbishop Ussher successfully deduces last four out of ten digits of the age of the Earth. AD 1688: Hapsburg Iceboat Armada invades England via London-Bruges canal; Inquisition burns Isaac Newton at the stake for alchemy. AD 1776: General Washington's Mastedon cavalry routs Hessians at Battle of the Hudson Canyon. AD 1787: Gibbons evolve and author masterpieces like 'The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'. AD 1835: Charles Darwin attacked by giant Rattite in Galapagos, returns home a convinced Neptunist. AD 1846: A milestone in ape evolution is passed - a son is born to Bishop and Lady Wilberforce. AD 1867: COSMOS superstar Alexander Von Humboldt wins Napoleon III Peace Prize posthumously for sabotaging the Baltimore Gun Club's lunar artillery program . AD 1894: Awed by extent of glaciation, Cecil Rhodes proposes Capetown to Cairo bobsled run. AD 1914: Younger Dryas sea level rise unleashes U-boats into the Atlantic, Holy Roman Empire wins World War One. AD 1948: Harry Truman proposes using ice to contain Stalin, Cold War begins, ending Last Interglacial. AD 1954: Glaciers retreat from Fulda gap, General De Gaulle invades Russia. AD 1957: Civil Rights movement challenges Jim Cro-Magnon laws. AD 1961: Rachel Carson links DDT to Glyptodonts' decline . AD 1969: Last sighting of sabre-tooth tiger in Central Park; Elizabeth Taylor divorces Proconsul. AD 1971: Warhol paints Cambell Soup cans on walls of Lascaux caverns. AD 1983: Australopithicus wins The America's Cup. AD 1988: Homo Habilis volunteers to serve as Pat Robertson's running mate. AD 1990: Last Neanderthals perish in seige of Kremlin. AD 1991: Saddam Hussein discovers fire, Holocene tar sands form in Kuwait. AD 1997: Citing black smoker emissions, E.P.A bans continental drift. Thermophilis wins Nobel prize for sequencing its own DNA while trapped in amber. + + + N.B. : As all dates save the first are +- ~2.6 billion years,the author strongly advises against using this chronology for purposes of exegesis or dendrochronology. Editor's note: Russell Seitz reports that the inspiration for his revised geochronology was a remark made at a meeting of the American Geophysical Union last spring by the late Cesare Emiliani, a renowned geophysicist and author of the book "Planet Earth." --T.Y.