October 23, 4004 B.C., 1701 A.D.

"Despite the accolades showered on his work by his contemporaries, Ussher's date for the creation of the world would have sunk into perpetual obscurity -- like the dates of the hundred or so chronologers before him -- if it hadn't been for a London bookseller named Thomas Guy. In about 1675, Guy, an enterprising businessman, contracted with the University of Oxford for the right to print Bibles under their license. As a marketing ploy he printed Ussher's chronology in the margin, thereby enabling readers to see at a glance when all the events in the Old and New Testaments had taken place. The new Bibles were an immediate success; possibly helped by the inclusion of dramatic illustrations of Bible stories, including -- in true tabloid style -- engravings of bare-breasted women. Sales boomed, earning Guy a small fortune, which he subsequently invested with great success in the infamous South Sea company. By the time he died he had make enough money to endow the famous hospital that still bears his name.
"But that was only the beginning. In 1701, Ussher's chronology received the blessing of the Church of England itself when William Lloyd, the Bishop of Worcester, authorized its use in an official version of the Bible. Once inside these holy pages, Ussher's dates practically acquired the authority of the Word of God. They quickly became the "Received Chronology," adopted by nearly all the Reformed Churches, and within a few generations had become such an integral and familiar part of the Bible that most people no longer remembered where they had come from. Consequently, they continued to be printed in the margins of Bibles right into the twentieth century."

-- Measuring Eternity: The Search for the Beginning of Time, Martin Gorst, 2001, p. 41-42.