Re: Happy Birthday, Earth!! (;-)

[Derek Tearne <derek@iprolink.co.nz>]

At 08:55 -0400 23/10/97, Thomas R. Holtz, Jr. wrote:
>Well, everybody, the BIG DAY is here.  According to the cutting edge (for
>1650) research of James Ussher, Anglican Archibishop of Armagh and Primate
>of All Ireland, today is the 6000th birthday of the Earth.

Taken from nz.general ...  (I particularly like the 1400's...)

--------------------------------------------------------

Well today the earth is 6000 years old according to Bishop Usher.
Unfortunately this was not good enough for Dr Lightfoot, and so in the
seventeenth century, in his great work,  Dr. John Lightfoot,
Vice-Chancellor of the University of Cambridge,  and one of the most
eminent Hebrew scholars of his time, declared, as a result of his most
profound and exhaustive study of the Scriptures, that "heaven and
earth, centre and circumference, were created all together, in the
same instant, and clouds full of water," and that "this work took
place and man was created by the Trinity on October 23, 4004 B.C., at
nine o'clock in the morning."

For those of you who know a little about geology a beginning:

23 Oct. 4004 BC: Encounter with Nemesis knocks Lucifer out of Oort
Cloud.

1 Nov. 4004 BC: Earth still largely molten; Adam and Eve cover their
shame
with Asbestos waders.

3714 BC: The first biotechnologist, Cain, invents cyanobacteria.

3554 BC: Komataiites inundate earliest crust, Noah's Ark incinerated
providing earliest radiocarbon date for charcoal.

2724 BC: Archaean stratiform sulfide deposits form, ending the
neolithic.
Bronze introduced.

2444 BC: Tired of reading graphic granite, Inkhaten invents
hieroglyphics.

2184 BC: Earliest sedimentation. Discovery of slate leads to stone
tablets.

2094 BC: Nimrod the Hunter erects the Geosyncline of Babel.

2004 BC: Breathable atmosphere develops; first sermon preached.

1914 BC: Advent of diapirism; Lot's wife turned into first salt dome.

1804 BC: Tubal Cain inaugurates banded Iron Age. Sphinx starts to
fossilize.

1794 BC: Children of Ham split from Israelites, insisting that the
Burgess
shale fauna are kosher. Chowder invented.

1704 BC: Samson attempts first Perovskite synthesis; Laboratory of the
Philistines implodes.

1624 BC: Charshumash the Hittite bitten by first vertebrate, lawyers
emerge from slime.

1444 BC: War of the Chaldean Succession, Pangaea broken up in
accordance
with the Treaty of Tartessos.

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.

1104 BC: Ezekiel see de Pterodactyl, 'way up in de middle of the air.

1024 BC: Goliath stepped on by irate Barosaurus; David takes credit.

794 BC: Jonah swallowed by Carcharas Megalodon.

454 BC: Marble deposits form in Greece, Parthenon erected.

338 BC: Aristotle publishes Air-Earth-Fire-Water phase diagram,
concludes
that quartz is a polymorph of water.

64 BC: Pliny the Elder writes eye-witness account of the Alpine
orogeny.

48 BC: All of Gaul is divided into three parts when Corsica collides
with
the European plate.

AD 24: Miracle of the Loaves and Ichthyosaurs.

AD 494: Snakes evolve and are driven out of Ireland.

AD 974: Lief the Unlucky lost with all hands when his dragon ship is
mistaken by a rutting male Kronosaurus.

AD 1066: William the Conqueror invades England by walking through
northern
France.

AD 1215: Magna Carta eaten by Velociraptor.

AD 1324: Gunpowder introduced, dinosaurs immediately hunted to
extinction.

AD 1384: Dante Aligheri describes core-mantle boundary.

AD 1484: Leonardo da Vinci designs Archaeopteryx.

AD 1492: Mesoamerica emerges just in time to be discovered by
Columbus,
the Santa Maria is attacked by Ammonites.

AD 1522: Cortez uses asteroid impact to conquer Aztec Empire.

AD 1588: Spanish Armada frustrated by continuing absence of English
Channel.

AD 1604: Flowering plants appear; Wars of the Roses recommence.

AD 1636: Earliest primates appear, Harvard founded.

AD 1664: A primate is elevated to Primate of Ireland; Archbishop
Ussher
successfully deduces last four out of nine digits of the age of the
Earth.

AD 1674: A gibbon, as the first simian graduate of Oxford, submits
_Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire_ as D. Phil. thesis.

AD 1688: A vengeful Spain finally invades England via London-Bruges
canal;
Inquisition burns Newton at the stake for Alchemy.

AD 1776: Washington's Mastodon cavalry routs Hessians at Battle of the
Hudson Canyon.

AD 1834: Charles Darwin attacked by giant Rattite in Galapagos,
returns
home a convinced Neptunist.

AD 1894: Awed by extent of glaciation, Cecil Rhodes proposes Capetown
to
Cairo bobsled run.

AD 1914: Lesser Dryas sea level rise unleashes U-boats into the
Atlantic,
Holy Roman Empire wins World War One.

AD 1948: Paul Nitze proposes using ice to contain Stalin, Cold War
begins,
ending First Interglacial.

AD 1954: Second 56-day Interglacial allows Viet Minh to end era of
European colonialism with siege of Dienbienphu.

AD 1957: Glaciers return to Fulda gap as De Gaulle invades Russia.
Says
"Napoleon never experienced a real Russian winter."

AD 1961: Rachel Carson links DDT to Glyptodont's decline.

AD 1969: Last sighting of Sabre-tooth in Central Park, Elizabeth
Taylor
divorces Proconsul .

AD 1971: Warhol paints Campbell Soup cans on walls of Lascaux caverns.

AD 1983: Australopithicus wins The America's Cup.

AD 1988: Homo Habilis evolves into Pat Robertson, who is talked out of
naming Family Channel for ancestor.

AD 1990: Last Neanderthals perish in siege of Kremlin.

AD 1991: Saddam Hussein discovers fire, creating Holocene tar sands in
Kuwait.

AD 1995: Citing black smoker emissions, EPA bans continental drift.
Thermophilis wins Nobel prize for sequencing its own DNA while trapped
in
amber.

25 Oct AD 1997: talk.origins becomes a moderated newsgroup, T. Holden
appointed; St. John's Millennium begins.

Cheers
Brian Grant

brian@grant.co.nz  http://www.scuba.co.nz
PGP 5.0 Key ID 0x007C940F PGP 2.6 Key ID 0x6BB27FF1

---
Derek Tearne.   ---   @URL Internet Consultants  ---  http://url.co.nz
Some of the more environmentally aware dinosaurs were worried about the
consequences of an accident with the new Iridium enriched fusion reactor.
"If it goes off only the cockroaches and mammals will survive..." they said.