"The 19th of May 1780, was a remarkable dark day. Candles were lighted in many houses; the birds were silent and disappeared, and the fowls retired to roost. ... A very general opinion prevailed, that the Day of Judgment was at hand," Timothy Dwight wrote. The end was coming, and God had lowered his hand over the people of New England for their wickedness. Or at least that's what a lot of religious zealots believed in the spring of 1780. It seemed that the people of America were doomed. What happened that day? No one knows.