In 1833, Abraham Lincoln witnessed a meteor shower that rained shooting stars from the sky.  At the time, people thoughtout North American were sure that the shower ssignaled the end of the world.  The young Lincoln used the memory to bring home a point decades later, as he spoke to a large delegation of bank presidents during the darkest time of a Civil War.

During this meeting, one of the bank presidents asked Lincoln if his confidence in the survival of the Union was not waning even a little bit.

Lincoln answered: "When I was a young man in Illinois, I boarded for a time with a deacon of the Presbyterian church.  One night I was roused from my sleep by a rap at the door and I heard the Deacon's voice exclaiming, 'Arise, Abraham, the day of judgment has come.' I sprang from my bed and rushed to the window and saw the stars falling in great showers.

"But looking back . . . I saw all the grand old constellations with which I was so well acquainted, fixed and true in their places.  Gentlemen, the world did not come to an end then, nor will the Union Now."

-adapted from Sky & Telescope magazine

April 2009 newsletter, page 2