This Day, But Wrong

In 1844, Baptist preacher William Miller did the math, announced the end of the world, and convinced tens of thousands of followers to sell everything and climb onto rooftops in white robes. The world did not end. The embarrassment, however, lasted considerably longer.

In 1892, Congress ordered Chicago to open the World's Columbian Exposition on Columbus Day — then Chicago threw a massive ceremony for a muddy construction site and called it done. The actual fair didn't open for another six and a half months.

In 1936, Australian officials handed a British woman a dictation test in Italian — a language nobody told her to learn — because they disapproved of her travel companion. She failed. Then she put her fingers in her ears. A bureaucratic absurdity that brought down a cabinet minister.

In 1596, a Spanish sailor tried to scare Japanese officials into returning his confiscated cargo — by explaining, in careful detail, exactly how Spain uses missionaries to conquer countries. The missionaries already in Japan did not survive his sales pitch.

In 1851, a London publisher reset Moby-Dick in type, made hundreds of unauthorised cuts, and accidentally dropped the one paragraph explaining how the narrator survived. British critics gleefully savaged the novel for its impossible dead narrator. Melville only found out what happened when his own author's copies arrived from London.

In 1814, a brewery clerk spotted a warning sign, shrugged, and went back to work. One hour later, 320,000 gallons of porter beer demolished a London slum and killed eight people. The brewery was later reimbursed by Parliament for its trouble.

In 1869, a cigar maker named George Hull buried a ten-foot fake stone man in upstate New York, dug it up, and charged thousands of Americans to stare at it. Scientists argued about it. Barnum copied it. And the guy who called it a fake — was the biggest sucker in the room.

In 46 BC, Caesar's astronomer made a calendar that was off by just eleven minutes a year. Sixteen centuries later, the Pope had to delete ten days from existence to fix it — and half of Europe refused to accept the memo.

On October 14, 2003, a lifelong Cubs fan reached for a foul ball — along with half a dozen other people — and became Chicago's most wanted villain overnight. Steve Bartman didn't cost the Cubs the pennant. But try telling that to a city that had been waiting 58 years.

The Moon That Started a War