END OF WORLD SCARE

Evening Star, Issue 19615, 22 July 1927, Page 5

END OF WORLD SCARE

A FRENCHMAN’S PROPHECY.

A foolish scare has been aroused by the prophecy of a Frenchman that Pons Winuecke, one of the twenty periodic comets that flash into our field of vision and disappear again into space on their eternal journey about the central sun, is to crash into the earth and demolish it. The prophecy is believed in by'a large number of people, who are becoming needlessly alarmed as the time draws near for this fiery monster to flash across the dome of our night sky. This is not the first time the coming of a comet has been awaited with apprehension. Portents in the sky, most of all comets, have always inspired dread and terror. Not so long ago astronomers believed that if one of these bodies crashed into the earth our planet would be annihilated. It is now known that these bodies are gaseous, and the earth could pass through them without injuring it. But superstition dies hard. There are still many people who believe comets play a large part in human affairs. For instance, when Halley’s famous comet first appeared it so happened that the Turks had just captured Constantinople. The comet was blamed. People prayed to be saved from “ the devil, the ■ Turk, and the comet.” Comets were regarded as signs in ancient times. In Scandinavia it was firmly believed that comets appeared when tho King had committed some grave sin. Kings used to be dethroned on the word of soothsayers, who interpreted the meaning of the flashing comet. ■ The coming of scientific astronomy has not dealt a death blow to the strange superstitions which follow the comet in its dazzling flight. In France, for example, wine-growers will tell you the vintages of 1811 and 1858 are unique, because in those.years our globe passed through the tails of comets. The ozones of these comets made the grapes better than those of any other year, they say. One of the most alarming prophecies of the earth’s destruction caused tre- * raendous excitement aud alarm in the United States in 1922. Professor Porta, of Michigan University, predicted the end of the world for December, 1924. He based this belief on the malign effect upon tho earth of tho giant sunspots. Another end-of-the-world s r» occurred in 1923, whey Dr George Harding, brother of the late President Harding, predicted that the world would end before the conclusion of his brother’s term as President of the United States. , .

One of the greatest of all world scares was that which convulsed all Christendom on the eve of the year 1000 a.d. The first day of that yea x. was to usher in the Day of Judgment. People flocked to the_ churches, men immured themselves in monasteries, women in nunneries; there was prayer and repentance. The day came and went. Tho old earth rolled on and fear passed. Rather less than two centuries ago Nicholas do Cusa similarly announced the end of all things. De Cusa was a cardinal, and his prophecy accordingly carried weight. His argument, too, was plausible. Briefly, ho said the Flood, occurred on the thirty-fourth jubilee of the Creation ; therefore the _ world would end on the thirty-fourth jubilee of Christianity. It did not. There have been many similar scares, some based on a fallacious interpretation of the Scriptures; others upon the appearance of strange celestial bodies. The voice of accredited science is more comforting. According to Professor Nordmann, the French scientist, the earth is good for another ten thousand million years;. Professor Flinders Petrie gives it almost as long a lease of life.