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.
