February 25: Bicheno, the obese apocalypticist

On February 25, 1851, James Ebenezer Bicheno died. A writer and English colonial official who had devoted his private life to study of the esoteric, he determined that Louis the XIV had been the Beast of Revelation, and that the second coming of Christ would occur in 1864. An obese man, it was also said that three bushels of wheat could fit inside a pair of his trousers.