Harold Camping, an 88-year-old civil engineer and evangelical radio station owner, is taking another shot at predicting the end of the world. Camping states that the end will come this spring, on May 21, 2011.
Campings followers seem pretty convinced, but keep in mind that this is not the first time that he has insisted that the end of the world was imminent. On September 6, 1994, Camping and his followers gathered with their Bibles open to the sky ready to go home to heaven. That, obviously, did not happen.
So how did Camping come up with May 21, 2011? He explains:
"Christ hung on the cross April 1, 33 A.D. Now go to April 1 of 2011 A.D., and that's 1,978 years."
He then multiplied 1,978 by 365.2422 days, the number of days in a solar year. Then he noted that April 1 to May 21 encompasses 51 days, so he adds 51 to the sum of the previous multiplication total, which equals 722,500.
