4 January 12

Today marks the birthday of James Ussher, Church of Ireland Archbishop of Armagh and Primate of All Ireland, who was born in 1581 and died in 1656. He is most famous for taking the year-numbers in the Old Testament and calculating that God created the world in 4004 BCE. (Later, Sir James Lightfoot improved (?) that calculation to 9 AM Oct 3, 4004 BCE.) Ussher's chronology was completely misguided, but none of our 50,000-year-old ancestors were around to correct him.