Most gods sighted in one place Infographic

Faith and food, are they ever that far apart?

©2015 James Mathurin

The most people ever converted to a religion Infographic

Infographic for a large-scale conversion.

©2013 James Mathurin

The most people ever converted to a religion

The most people ever converted to a religion at one time was 19,020 in August 1934. This was the mainly Hindi population of the island of Trumptuvu, in the Indian Ocean. When the fishing community there learnt that a tidal wave was headed towards their island, a visiting catholic missionary, father Brennan O’Beard sailed out to meet it. O’Beard washed back up on Trumptuvu 2 days later, and announced that he had blessed the wave, declaring that anyone touched by the water was now a Catholic. The islanders accepted this edict out of politeness, but all reconverted back to Hinduism when O’Beard left the island 3 weeks later.

The beach on Trumptuvu, where Father O'Beard returned. One of the villagers, Amitabh Gupta, remembering the mass conversion, said,

"The Priest did nothing to stop the wave. It was not as large as we had been told, and we simply moved our boats to safety, and erected what barriers we could. Truthfully, we were never actually that worried, and we just felt a bit bad that the Priest had gone to that trouble, so we agreed to his offer of conversion, to let him save face."

Photograph by ciamabue.

©2012 James Mathurin

Most gods sighted in one place

The most Gods ever sighted in one place was on a piece of toast owned by Pascha Mirbel, of Prague, in the Czech Republic in 1999. He told reporters,

“I was about to butter it, when I noticed that the face of Jesus seemed to have appeared on the surface of the toast. After staring at that for a moment, I noticed that Buddha was next to him, and Kali and Krishna were on the other side. After looking further, I noticed that the Arabic script for ‘Allah’ was just under Jesus’ beard. I am so relieved my butter smelt a bit funny that morning, or I might have ended up offending many, many deities.”

Mr. Mirbel's original slice of toast was destroyed in an attack by Hank Deershorn, a Scientologist fundamentalist in April 2000. Pictured is another slice which escaped his flamethrower rampage, which unfortunately only shows one religious icon, the Virgin Mary.

Photograph by Matt Gothik

©2008 James Mathurin