United States. During the passage of the Great Comet of 1843, tens of thousands of people turn to William Miller, a New England preacher, who predicts the end of the world brought by the comet. As you may have noticed from the fact that he still exists, the moment never came, and Miller was dead wrong. The episode would be called “The Great Disappointment” (of not being dead?). In 1840, Edgar Allan Poe also published a short story, “A Conversation of Eiros and Charmion,” in which the two characters converse in a world now finished, poisoned by the wake of a comet.
