Friday, May 20, 2011

A pocket history of end of the World[ers]




I have no special plans tomorrow but at least it’s not supposed to rain.
I found a partial list herewith a sampling of 23 times the world was supposed to end but of course didn’t. Surprisingly four different dates are from the same group, The Millerites in the early 1800’s kept reworking or fine tuning the date and each time the end failed to happen. They ultimately disbanded many becoming Seventh Day Adventists.
In Russia 1900 one horribly aggressive group, The Brothers and Sisters of the Red Death believing the end was near had 100 members sacrifice themselves before authorities intervened.This group also forbid marriage but allowed intercourse if the sinners immediately suffocated themselves with a large red cushion.
Here is one more recent example that apparently had no serious consequences or did it?
OCTOBER 23, 1976—GEORGE KING
One day in 1954, taxi driver George King was drying dishes in his Maida Vale flat in London when he suddenly received a message from Mars that the world would end twenty-two years hence. Fortunately, King and his followers, organized as the Aetherius Society, were able to avert the catastrophe by concentrating 700 hours of prayer energy into a prayer book and releasing it in forty-eight minutes on the appointed day.

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