The end - we've passed this way many, many times before

Judgment day is at hand, if you believe the doomsday drones and their divinely inspired calculators. Some religious zealots claim the final curtain will fall, or at least start to fall, on May 21. (Upside: I won’t have to mow the lawn this summer or listen to Sarah Palin after this week.) Then there’s the theory that everything will come crashing down in 2012 because that’s when the Mayan calendar ends.

As Smithsonian magazine pointed out back in 2009, talk of the imminent arrival of the apocalypse has been all the rage for, well, centuries. Of course, all previous predictions have been duds, so rather than run around like a chicken with its head cut off, I’m throwing in my lot with Abraham Davenport.

Davenport was a member of the Connecticut Legislature when darkness descended over New England at 9 a.m. on May 19, 1780. As Harper’s Magazine later reported: “Birds went to roost, cocks crowed at mid-day as at midnight, and the animals were plainly terrified." Smithsonian reported that “the unnatural gloom is believed to have been caused by smoke from forest fires, possibly coupled with heavy fog. But at the time, some feared the worst."

The Connecticut Legislature was in session when the big blackout hit 231 years ago today, and some members moved to adjourn, fearing that the apocalypse had come. Davenport was not among them. There are at least two versions of his response to the hand wringing and teeth gnashing, but they agree on one thing: Davenport kept his cool.

“The day of judgment is either approaching, or it is not,” Davenport said, according to one account. “If it is not, there is no cause of an adjournment; if it is, I choose to be found doing my duty. I wish therefore that candles may be brought.”

An alternative version reads as follows: “I choose, for one, to meet Him face to face, No faithless servant frightened from my task, but ready when the Lord of the harvest calls; and therefore, with all reverence, I would say, Let God do His work, we will see to ours. Bring in the candles.”