Reply #41: In the 1840s

[TlalocW]

A minister went through the Bible and assigned a code to everything - mountains meant a certain number, clouds another, etc. He predicted the end of the world to his congregation on a specific date in March - say it was March 29, 1844, for simplicity's sake. So they people stopped tilling their fields, stopped paying their debts, etc, and when the day came, the competitive members of the congregation climbed hills and trees to get a jumpstart on being swept up into Heaven; ladies held up opened parasols to help their ascension; some people tied themselves to trunks full of their most prized possessions to take to Heaven, and the upper class members stood apart from the lower class members of the congregation so they wouldn't ascend with the riff-raff.

Of course, nothing happened, so the minister went back and looked his calculations and discovered some math mistakes, and told his congregation that it was going to be September 29. The spectacle repeated itself, and nothing happened.

Of course, in religion, you can have a poor track record like that and still be successful. That church eventually evolved into the Seventh Day Adventists (David Koresh's church).

TlalocW