h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Entry: The Great Disappointment of 1844: Millerites and Fake News - A87886516
Author: Dmitri Gheorgheni - U1590784

This month's Create theme is 'fighting Fake News'. Here's my contribution to the battle - a little late, since the Millerite business happened in 1844.

Still, I thought somebody might enjoy reading about yet another apocalyptic scare from old New England.

Put on your tinfoil hats. It's a wild ride.

Very good, I had heard of this before, but not in as much detail

A couple suggestions (of couse)

You mention 'the 'year without a summer', caused even Lord Byron to write an apocalyptic poem.'

It might be worthwhile to mention that his wife, Mary Shelley, wrote the novel 'Frankenstein' on the same occation.

An other good mention would be 'The Night the Stars Fell'. I read a great personal account of this http://dublinlaurenscountygeorgia.blogspot.com/2012/11/the-night-stars-fell.html several years ago by a woman who had been a young slave girl at the time. Of course I could not find in my search today

F S

There were a lot of books that came out of that experience. I don't want to throw in 'Frankenstein' because it's not apocalyptic. It's just a monster story. Byron's poem was about the end of the world.

If you look in the WPA slave narratives, you'll find a lot of references to the night the stars fell. Some people figured out their ages that way.

http://www.loc.gov/collections/slave-narratives-from-the-federal-writers-project-1936-to-1938/about-this-collection/

Since I've already explained that the 1833 event inspired apocalyptic thinking, I believe I'll leave it at that. This mess is long enough.

You might enjoy the pictures in 'Days of Delusion'. Try the link. The author picked up the illustration that's in your link, and some more besides. There's also a picture of a 103-year-old woman who told the author about the time when she sewed 'ascension robes' for some of the Millerites.

This is a very interesting account. It's easy to think this sort of thing wouldn't happen these days, but if you substitute some scientific fake news, like the arrival of a deadly new virus, for the religious panic, would we be so much wiser?

One question - what happened to Miller himself?

One sentence which I found confusing - 'The 'days' listed in that ancient esoteric text, along with the reference in that book to a mysterious '70 weeks'. Do you mean the book of Daniel in both clauses? In which case you don't need both 'that ancient esoteric text' and 'that book'.

Yeah, that IS unnecessary, thanks, MVP.

William Miller died in 1849. shouting something about glory, according to the friends that were with him. He said, well, he'd got it wrong, but the Lord would come in His own good time.

And I think you're very right: people just assume things. Think about all the hoaxes on Twitter and other social media. Or that Mayan Calendar stuff in 2012...I don't think anything has changed, other than the sources of the confusion. All the tinfoil hats aren't of a religious nature.

A difficult story to read as it reminds me of the similar one of the prophetess Nongqawuse. A few years after these Millerites in the early 1850s a teenage girl in South Africa had a vision in which she said that if everyone killed their cattle, their ancestors would come back from the dead, their cattle would be restored, and all the white (British and Boer) settlers in the area would leave. This resulted in well over 250,000 cows being killed and led to the deaths of 80,000 people from starvation.

<BB< (I did think about writing about the Fake News that was the Popish Plot of 1678 but I don't know enough about it.)

Oh, my. That South African story is sad.

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well done