We know Isaac Newton as a mathematician, physicist, astronomer, and philosopher, but a doomsayer debunker? The Hebrew University of Jerusalem recently released papers from Newton in which he detailed the earliest date of the Apocalypse. According to his calculations, the world will end no sooner than 2060.
"It may end later, but I see no reason for its ending sooner," explains Newton. "This I mention not to assert when the time of the end shall be, but to put a stop to the rash conjectures of fanciful men who are frequently predicting the time of the end, and by doing so bring the sacred prophecies into discredit as often as their predictions fail."
Newton, also a scholar of religion and Jewish law, deciphered the date from analysis of the Old Testament's Book of Daniel. In his examination, he also asserted that Jewish people would return to the Holy Land prior to Doomsday. He didn't exactly go out on a limb with this standard forecast, but he is one for one with his religious predictions so far.
Acquired from a Sotheby's auction in 1936 by a Jewish scholar, Newton's papers have rested in safes at Israel's national library in Jerusalem since 1969. Only a handful of scholars accessed the files prior to the Hebrew University exhibit.