Usefully Useless

So I’m eating a bag of “Kettle Chips”, with “sea salt and crushed black pepper”. Proudly on the front of the bag is “absolutely nothing artificial”.

Now I wonder, did these crisps come from a salt and pepper crisp tree? Let’s check those ingredients.

Select potatoes, sunflower oil, potato maltodextrin, potato starch, sea salt, black pepper, yeast extract, citric acid from sugar beet molasses, black pepper extract

How many of those are natural? Answer is not too many.

Potatoes are an artificially engineered version of a nightshade family plant once native to South America. They bear little resemblance to their natural ancestor and do not exist in nature.

Sunflower oil? You need to specially and artificially process sunflower seeds to get it.

Potato maltodextrin is made in large steel reaction vessels by the partial hydrolysis of potato starch. It is entirely artificial.

Potato starch is extracted from mashed up potatoes using solvents.

Sea salt is specially treated to remove all the things in seawater which will, given a chance, make you very ill. So again, it’s artifically refined.

Black pepper, for a change, is actually natural. Well, after we artificially process it. The berries of the pepper plant piper nigrum are dried in large factories which use giant fans to blow hot air over them. Once dried, they’re peppercorns ready for use.

Yeast extract is used because it contains massive amounts of monosodium glutamate and glutamic acid, two nutrients essential for life and good tasting. Flavourings, basically. It’s made by either hydrolysis or autolysis: Kill the yeast, filter off the cell walls and the contents of the yeast cells are the “yeast extract”.

Citric acid from sugar beet again requires extensive refinement to filter off the vegetable matter and the sugar. Artificial citric acid is much purer, as is citric acid from citrus sources – Sugar beet is just far cheaper.

Finally, black pepper extract. This is probably some piperine or some concentrate of it. Piperine is the slightly toxic chemical in black pepper that gives them their characteristic heat. This is used because it’s dirt cheap and means that less actual black pepper is needed to give it the same hot taste. It’s a cost-cutting measure, that’s all.

On the back of the pack are even more bold statements:

We don’t add MSG

Yes you do. What on earth do you think’s in that yeast extract? Yep, the exact reason you’re even using yeast extract – Because it contains huge amounts of MSG and that’s a flavour you just can’t get any other way.

We never use artificial flavours or colours

Calling cultured, processed and refined yeast “natural” is rather like calling a steel bar natural just because the iron ore was. Yep, that’s a flavouring.

We don’t use hydrogenated fat

I’m sure you don’t use diamonds either. Why are you telling us this? Hydrogenated fats would be unsuitable anyway!

We know the origin of all our ingredients

So what? As long as they meet quality standards, does it matter if they come from Surrey or Scotland? Better yet, why aren’t you telling us the origins?

We only use sunflower oil

Because it’s cheaper than the other suitable oil, olive oil.

The colour of our chips is determined by natural sugars in the potatoes we use

Same with everyone else’s.

Exactly how abstracted from nature do we need to get before something becomes artificial? Kettle Foods seems to think that drying, washing with solvent, filtering off the solvent and all different kinds of refinement means the resulting chemicals are still “natural”? Indeed, processing potato feedstock until it no longer contains any naturally occuring components means the end product is still natural?

By that logic, a car is perfectly natural. The aluminium came from natural bauxite, the steel from natural iron ores, the plastics from natural oil.

It’s important to understand probabilities and statistics, so here’s a whole bunch of them I’ve compiled from various sources.

Death from asteroid or meteorite strike: 1 in 1,960,000,000
Injury due to asteroid or meteorite impact: 1 in 210,000,000
Death due to earthquake (UK): 1 in 120,000,000
Death from anthrax: 1 in 55,053,000
Death from an act of terrorism (2008): 1 in 44,000,000 (note 5)
Death from venom (snake, jellyfish, spider, etc.): 1 in 54,050,000 (note 1)
Death from accidental fall: 1 in 45,000,000 (note 2)
Poisoning by cleaners, paints, other chemicals: 1 in 27,000,000
Death from an act of terrorism (1987): 1 in 19,000,000 (note 5)
Under 16 killed by stranger: 1 in 17,800,000
Any specific combination of 24 coin tosses: 1 in 16,777,216
UK National Lottery, all six numbers: 1 in 13,983,816
Death due to police action: 1 in 11,000,000
Death from salmonella: 1 in 10,587,115
Property damage due to earthquake: 1 in 4,900,000
Under 16 killed by his/her own family: 1 in 4,300,000
Death from lightning strike: 1 in 3,100,000
UK National Lottery, 5 numbers + bonus ball: 1 in 2,330,636
Randomly selected person is a paedophile: 1 in 1,300,000
Death from necrotising fascitis (flesh eating bacteria): 1 in 1,250,000
Death in a plane crash: 1 in 660,000
Royal flush in five card poker: 1 in 649,739
Death in a rail accident: 1 in 525,000
Death by firearm in England and Wales (1990): 1 in 510,000
Death by poisonous gases or vapours: 1 in 495,000
Death by electrocution: 1 in 493,000
Death by a falling object: 1 in 375,000
Death due to MRSA infection (2007): 1 in 300,000
Death by firearm in England and Wales (2007): 1 in 264,000
Death due to being stabbed in Greater London: 1 in 240,000
Death due to lack of healthcare: 1 in 83,720
Death in a residential housefire: 1 in 83,025
UK National Lottery, 5 numbers: 1 in 55,491
Death in a road accident: 1 in 6,500
Death from suicide (England and Wales, 2008): 1 in 4,350
Death from influenza: 1 in 4,100
Death from badly treated diabetes: 1 in 4,000
Death from accidental self-inflicted injury: 1 in 2,900
Death from chronic respiratory disease (asthma, cystic fibrosis, etc.): 1 in 2,200
Death from a stroke: 1 in 1,650
A Dutch dyke will flood in the next year: 1 in 1,250
Odds you will never marry (2007 rate): 1 in 1,200
UK National Lottery, 4 numbers: 1 in 1,032
Thames Barrier will flood in the next year: 1 in 1,000
Death from cancer: 1 in 500
Death from enemy action during active duty: 1 in 480 (note 4)
Death from heart disease: 1 in 390
Sharing a birthday with a randomly selected person: 1 in 370.4 (Note 7)
Being involved in any knife-crime in England and Wales (2005): 1 in 177 (note 8 )
Odds you will marry in the next year (2007 rate): 1 in 111
Britons as a proportion of global population: 1 in 100
UK National Lottery, 3 numbers: 1 in 57
UK National Lottery, any win: 1 in 54
Card deal is any specific card: 1 in 52
Odds police will arrest you for something that isn’t illegal (2009): 1 in 36
You are ill right now: 1 in 30
Home computer being an Apple Mac: 1 in 25
Being on the UK DNA Database: 1 in 19
Next meal is fast-food: 1 in 10
Developing or having an incurable disease of any severity: 1 in 10
PCs having at least one item of malware: 1 in 8
Undergraduate achieving a First: 1 in 7
Driver has an endorsed licence: 1 in 7
Randomly selected couple will be infertile: 1 in 6.7 (Note 6)
Chance you went to church last Sunday: 1 in 6
Die throw is any specific number: 1 in 6
Attending a private funeral in the next year: 1 in 5.6
A randomly selected child is obese: 1 in 5.5
Your front door has a CCTV camera aimed at it: 1 in 5
Odds a 13-17 year old has performed some act which was legally paedophilia: 1 in 4.2 (note 9)
You are obese: 1 in 4.1
Odds you have an illegal item in your household: 1 in 4
Odds that a car driver will break the law during his next journey: 1 in 3.2
Broadband speed is less than half of that advertised: 1 in 3
Black man being on the UK DNA Database: 1 in 2.7
Odds two children in a class of 23 will share a birthday: 1 in 2
Odds your first sexual encounter was legally paedophilia: 1 in 2 (note 3)
You have used illegal drugs: 1 in 1.9

Notes:
1. World-wide.
2. Age dependent.
3. 53% of the population is not virginal at the age of 18 (2009 estimate)
4. Assumes you’re already a soldier.
5. Terrorism deaths that year divided by population that year.
6. Defined as no conception after one year of unprotected sex.
7. It isn’t one in 365 as randomly selected 365 people could have all different birthdays! Given by 1-(365/364).
8. Includes merely carrying a blade longer than 3 inches in a public place
9. From estimated “sexting” rates.

Jim McCormick, director of the company ATSC, was yesterday (Friday 23rd) arrested on suspicion of fraud by misrepresentation.

For around £30,000, he would sell you an “explosives detector” (Iraq spent about £52 million on them) which worked using the “body’s own static electricity” for power. The device had a wand on a loose hinge and “detector cards” would slot into the base to make it detect different things, in ATSC’s claims anything from TNT to semtex to elephants with the ADE-651 (the device in question). I didn’t make that last one up.

Except that BBC’s Newsnight got hold of one of the cards, one for TNT, and had it analysed. It turned out to be nothing more than a simple retail anti-theft tag. In essence, the device is a dowsing rod, which have never been shown to work any better than dumb chance in any trial. Iraq has ordered an investigation, the UK has banned their export and Mr McCormick is looking at time behind bars.

I’d like to know what the hell Iraq was thinking of? The FBI had had warnings out since 1995 not to use “bogus explosives detectors”, the ADE-651 had never passed a single effectiveness test and James Randi offered McCormick his $1 million USD prize for proof of paranormal power should the ADE-651 pass a controlled effectiveness trial.

All the warning signs were there, yet Iraq still blew £52 million on a piece of plastic, a few clothes tags and a bent coathanger which was even claimed by its own vendors to operate in a “non-scientific” way.

Up in Scotland, the Scottish National Party has been in control of a minority government for a while now, a great laboratory for us to examine how well a populist party does when in power.

The Scottish First Minister had promised school class sizes of 18 or less and free school meals for the first three years of primary school. He also introduced a programme of non-essential medical procedures and screenings, against the advice of senior medical officers.

Populist stuff, basically. Telling the people what they want to hear without regard for how achievable or realistic it may or may not be.

The SNP government has failed to meet both commitments on education and managed to create a £100 million shortfall in health funding, and now blames the financial crisis for it. However, as far back as July 2007 (when the economy was booming), officials were on record stating that the manifesto was unrealistic and not affordable.

Democracy, sadly, is a means and method by which the people get the government they deserve. The Scottish people voted SNP in and now they’re getting what they deserve. When a single-issue bunch of incompetent whiners gets into power, is there any wonder the government they create is so bad?

TV, newspaper, magazine, even online, ads for companies offering cash for old gold jewelry are everywhere.

The blaze of publicity is new, but the service isn’t. Gold can be melted down and re-used over and over again – and it is. Most jewellers, even high street names, will take your unwanted gold and pay cash for it. They don’t advertise that because they don’t make much from it.

Trading Standards decided to check out the new guys. In one case, a company claiming to “own its own foundries” did nothing of the kind, instead using a Swiss foundry. Another offering the “best prices possible” offered…well, let’s see.

They sent in a gold bracelet, which jewellers (yes, jewellers on the high street) had valued between £40 and £60, and got back £5.31. That’s right, one tenth of the value.

The Trading Standards officer then attempted to send the offer back and retrieve her bracelet; But the “seven day satisfaction guarantee” turned out to be not worth the words it was spoken with on the TV. There wasn’t an address to send it to and the company didn’t answer the phone. When the officer finally did get through to someone (after I’m guessing a Herculean effort), the seven day period had passed and the bracelet had been destroyed already. The company then increased their offer to £30.62, still barely half what a jeweller had originally valued it at.

The companies also only care about the gold. Any jewels, such as diamonds or rubies, aren’t even included in the valuation.

So what can you do? If you really need to get rid of jewelry for money, then go to the high street. If you can’t, then bear in mind that 9 carat gold is worth £8 per gram as scrap and a good offer to the consumer is around £6 per gram.

Jewelry which takes its value from set stones should NEVER be sent to these gold cowboys, the stones are simply discarded. With a spot of help, I took some gold to a “Gold Party”, where a “dealer” would offer cash on the spot for gold – I did this because sending it off to some company means you don’t get the option to walk away and say no. I’d previously valued these items (I’m not stupid) at the local jeweller’s shop who offered £7 per gram for 9ct and £15 per gram for 18ct, a good price as of October 2009.

Item	Value	Offer
Necklace (7.4g)	£51.80	£15
Ring with onyx inset	£22	£6
Hoop earrings (18ct)	£109.75	£45
22ct Gold Sovereign chain	£785	£95
9ct Crucifix chain with rubies	£98.20	£12

If I’d have sold those items at the party, I’d have walked out with £173. This compares not at all too favourably with the price I’d have got at the high street jeweller, a cool £1066.75 – In fact the rep there offered me £1,100 for all of them after handing me the valuation sheet. The offer from the “specialists” was a mere 16% of the true value.

The price of gold as a commodity (e.g. bullion) has gone through the roof since 2007, enabling the kinds of scam operated by the companies you see on TV to be very profitable. The demand for gold is phenomenal and the big three refineries, all in Switzerland, get through half a ton of scrap gold each year, a figure up ten fold from what it was in 2003.

Two factors conspire against the seller here. First off, the company sending you your cheque has to make money for all those flashy adverts somehow. They need to take their cut.

Secondly, and most importantly, jewelry is worth more than its weight in gold. A gram of 9ct gold has a retail value of around £12 to the consumer. As a ring, it can be upwards of £100. Craftsmanship, set stones, engraving and the production of the jewelry add to the value, but the gold melters don’t give a damn about that, they’re not in the business of reselling the jewelry, they care about melting it down.

The bottom line, then, is to get your jewelry valued professionally by someone who actually sells the stuff and have a rough figure researched already.

This post’s title? Pyrite is fools’ gold.

With the release of the moderately acceptable doomsday movie 2012, I thought it was perhaps time to release this to the world. Herein, and below, and even further below, and going REALLY far down the page, are a list of doomsday prophecies spanning over four thousand years.

I began this in 2003 and eventually chronicled the development of several religions (personal favourite is the Millerites) and included information about several hundred different “prophets”.

As we live in the West, then the later years show a distinctly Western bias, being mostly about Christians and their various sects and offshoots, I’d really like to include more Eastern stuff.

~2800BC
An Assyrian clay tablet bears the words “Our earth is degenerate in these latter days. There are signs the world is coming to an end. Bribery and corruption are common.” Good to know conservatives were alive and well 5,000 years ago.

634BC
The Roman way of thinking was that 1UAC (753BC) was the founding of Rome, and the world would end after the 12 eagles revealed to Romulus had expired, each eagle being 10 years.

~400BC
Writing of the Torah and founding of Judaism. The Jewish “way of life” had been around much longer, but was not codified into organised religion until the compilation of the Torah. According to Zoroastrian beliefs, this was one of the signs that the final days were upon us.

389BC Some Romans, having forgotten the screw up in 634BC, thought that each the number of days in a year, in years, would signify the end of Rome. So if we add 365 years to the founding of rome, we get 389BC (or 365 AUC, ab urbe condita, the Roman system.)

~60AD
Jesus said “Verily I say unto you, there be some standing here, which shall not taste of death, till they see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom.” Jesus was saying that his “Second Coming”, upon which the doomsday cult ‘Christianity’ is founded, would be within their lifetime. It wasn’t. The Apostles, taking Jesus at his word, expected him to return in their generation. He didn’t.

~70AD Another Jewish apocalyptic cult, the Essenes, saw the revolt in 66-70 AD as the battle of the apocalypse.

156AD
Montanus and two prophetesses predicted the world’s end was imminent. So great were the crowds who flocked to where heavenly Jerusalem would descend, near Ankara in Turkey, that a new town was constructed to house them all! As a rare plus to one of these entries, the ruins of the town gave modern archaeologists quite some insight into construction methods of the time.

~200AD
Novatian had a large Mediterranean following. But nothing happened. So did Donatus. But nothing happened. Both claimed the end in the near future as part of the Montanism movement, taking Christianity back to its apocalyptic roots. The cult lasted a few more centuries before the Church stamped it out.

247AD
Rome celebrated its thousanth anniversary, and coincidentally increased its persecution of subversive cults. It eradicated most, but a small one survived. Christianity, which recorded this time as being “The End is upon us”. It wasn’t.

365AD Using the EXACT same system as the Romans did (see 389BC), Hilary of Poitiers gave a year of doomsday. Because it worked so well for the Romans.

380AD Donatist scripture (closely related to Christianity and in the age, no more different than a Catholic is to a Methodist) claimed the world would come to a close in this year, over 100 years after Donatus himself did. It didn’t.

~380-397AD Saint Martin of Tours (316-397) “There is no doubt that the Antichrist has already been born. Firmly established already in his early years, he will, after reaching maturity, achieve supreme power.” He didn’t.

500AD Christianity, growing bigger than its doomsday cult beginnings at this stage, took control of Rome. Roman theologian Sextus Julius Africanus (c160-240) claimed that the End would occur 6,000 years after the Creation. He assumed that there were 5,531 years between the Creation and the Resurrection, and thus expected the Second Coming to take place no later than 500 AD. He was joined by Hippolytus (third century) and Irenaeus in claiming the year 500 AD. What’s that about idiots coming in threes?

~600AD Pope Gregory I (540-604) spoke with papal infallibility to claim the Second Coming was “already near”.

793AD Beatus of Liébana, a Christian prophet, prophecised that the world would end on April 6th, 793. He caused a minor panic as people fasted overnight. When the world did not end, one of the fasters is on record (Elipandus of Toledo made the records) “Let us now eat and drink, so that we will be fed if we are to die”.

800AD Sextus Julianus Africanus assumed he’d made a mistake, and revised his date to 800AD. He’d made another mistake.

800AD Beatus (793) wasn’t to be kept down, and in his Commentary on the Apocalypse, stated that there were only 14 more years left in the world. This was in 786, qualifying Beatus as the first crackpot to make two doomsday predictions in the same work.

799 – 806AD Bishop Gregory of Tours (538-594) calculated that the Second Coming and Rapture would occur no later than 806, and no sooner than 799. The last date on record is 848.

848AD – Final date given by Bishop Gregory of Tours, later Saint Gregory of Tours. We’re guessing he wasn’t canonised because of his doomsaying.

970AD Christians saw the 25th of March as being the day of the Annunciation, Good Friday, Adam’s creation, Isaac’s sacrifice, Moses crossing the Sea of Reeds, Jesus being concieved and Jesus being crucified. Given all these terrible horrors, it followed that the next horror would be the end of the world.

992AD Bernard of Thuringia calculated that the end would come in 992. The Pope prepared for the End of Times, but the sun rose as usual. Their God clearly wasn’t listening.

995AD The Feast of the Annunciation and Good Friday coincided again, like they did in 970. Again the world didn’t end.

1000AD Where to start? Being 1000 years after Christ’s supposed birth, the Christians were having a field day. Even small parish churches were warning their congregations to prepare for their deaths. But they didn’t die.

1033AD To save face after the screw up in 1000AD, Christians admitted to a mistake (maybe for the only time in their history) and moved the date to the date 1000 years after Jesus’ supposed crucifiction. The records from Radulfus Glaber in Burgundy describe how fear and paranoia ran rampant across Europe in the first years of the 11th Century.

1184AD The coming of the Antichrist was in this year. But it wasn’t.

1186AD The Letter of Toledo, penned by John of Toledo, warned of a planetary alignment (an astronomical confluence) on the 23rd of September, destroying the world. It didn’t.

1260AD Joachim of Fiore (1132-1202), an Italian mystic, somehow determined that Christ’s Millennium would begin between 1200 and 1260.

1284AD Pope Innocent III expected the Second Coming to happen this year, it being 666 years after the rise of Islam. He’s still waiting.

1290AD Followers of Joachim of Fiore rescheduled doomsday to 1290 when the 1260 attempt failed.

1306AD In 1147, Gerard of Poehlde believed Christ’s Millennium began with Emperor Constantine coming to power in 306AD, so the end of the millennium would be 1306 and Satan would have unlimited power. He didn’t.

1335AD Joachim of Fiore’s crackpots, the Joachites, gave another date. Three attempts, three failures.

1367AD Archdeacon Militz of Kromeriz believed the Antichrist to be alive and well and would manifest between 1363 and 1367, causing the end two years later. He wasn’t and didn’t.

1370AD French Ascetic Jean de Roquetaillade predicted the coming of the Antichrist in 1366, followed by Christ’s Millennium in 1368 or 1370. People will believe anything.

1378AD Arnold of Vilanova, another Joachite, wrote in “De Tempore Adventu Antichristi” that the Antichrist was due in 1378. He’s late.

1420AD Martinek Hausha, a Taborite (related to the Hussites), claimed the world would end no later than February 14th, 1420.

1496AD Christ’s Millennium, whatever that means, began in this year according to various 15th century mystics.

1504AD Sandro Botticelli’s “The Mystical Nativity” has a caption in Greek, reading: “I Sandro painted this picture at the end of the year 1500 in the troubles of Italy in the half time after the time according to the eleventh chapter of St. John in the second woe of the Apocalypse in the loosing of the devil for three and a half years. Then he will be chained in the 12th chapter and we shall see him trodden down as in this picture.” He thought he was living during the Tribulation and the Millennium would begin in three years.

1516AD The fifth Lateran Council banned apocalyptic prophecy throughout Christians as witchcraft. Someone tell Cotton Mather (1697 entry) that.

1524AD, February 1st. The End would occur from a great flood starting in London on February 1, according to some astrologers looking at planets in Pisces. 20,000 people abandoned their homes and clergymen stockpiled provisions in a makeshift fortress. It didn’t even rain. They re-scheduled for 1624.

1524AD, February 20th. A planetary confluence in Pisces was going to flood the world in 1524, February 20th, according to astrologer Johannes Stoeffler.

1524AD Nicolaus Peranzonus de Monte Sancte Marie (whew!) saw the planetary confluence (see above) taking place in Pisces as a sign that a Great Flood would end us all. Because Pisces is fish and fish live in water, silly.

1525AD Anabaptist Thomas Müntzer believed he was living in the end of all ages and, seeing devils everywhere (Including in Martin Luther), he led a peasants’ revolt to bring about God’s judgement which failed. He was tortured for several weeks before being treated to a public beheading. The end of his ages and ageing certainly, but in the 20th Century, he was revived as a “workers’ hero” by the communist East Germans, who placed his likeness on banknotes.

1528AD Stoeffler of 1524 made a mistake and rescheduled Doomsday to 1528. Another mistake.

1528AD, May 27th. Reformer Hans Hut predicted the end would occur on the Pentecost. It didn’t. Sadly, Mr. Hut ended up in prison and, as religious prisoners were prone to in the Christian domination of Europe, he died there. Painfully.

1532AD The wonderfully named Frederick Nausea, Viennese bishop, was convinced the end would arrive in 1532 after hearing of bizarre happenings, including bloody crosses appearing in the sky alongside a comet.

1533AD Anabaptist “prophet” Melchior Hoffman claimed the Second Coming would arrive in this year, saving 144,000 people in Strasbourg and the rest of the world would be consumed by fire.

1533AD With the precision expected from mathematics, Michael Stifel’s calculations on the Book of Revalation showed the Day of Judgement beginning at 8am in the morning of Ocrober 19th. When the day came and went, angry citizens of Lochau (his hometown) beat the saurkraut out of him. Maybe one of his variables didn’t or one of his constants wasn’t.

1534AD, April 5th was to be the day of the Apocalypse, it being Easter. According to Jan Matthys, only the city of Münster would be saved. So what do you do? Take control of the city, kick out all the Lutherans and Catholics and make the city an armed Anabaptist self-prison camp. All books not labelled “Holy Bible” were banned and the cathedral was sacked. When April 5th came and went, well, Matthys saw the right way to end his times, and left the city to be promptly chopped into lots of pieces by the waiting Catholics and Lutherans.
The saga doesn’t end there. Jan Beuckelson took Matthys’ place as Head Screwball, immediately making almost every crime punished by death in order to purify the city. Adultery (any relations out of wedlock) was the most popular capital offence, then a few months later, crazy Jan proclaimed polygamy is the way of God…
Münster got crazier and crazier (and hungrier and hungrier) until the Catholic/Lutherian forces managed to break through the defences. This being Christian medieval Europe, the predictable gruesome end resulted for JB and his crazy crew. Funnily enough, the lasting legacy from J. Beuckelson et. al. is now in a museum. That lasting legacy being various body parts.

1535AD, February. Hot on the heels of the German Anabaptists, whacked Hendrik Hendriksz led his Anabaptist ‘congregation’ naked through the streets of Amsterdam crying doom about some Final Judgment.

1537AD French astrologer Pierre Turrel announced four different dates for the end of the world, using four different methods and spanning 277 years. 1537 was the first.

1544AD Turrel’s second date.

1544AD German astrologer Mussemius got the idea that Jesus arrived during a conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn in Virgo, which obviously meant that when Jupiter and Saturn were in Pisces, the Antichrist was upon us. Right?

1555AD Sometime around 1400, French theologian Pierre d’Ailly wrote that 6,845 years of human history had passed, and the end of the world would be in the 7,000th year. Christopher Columbus’ own apocalyptic thinking would be influenced by this.

1556AD Few records remain, but it seems a rumour was circulating about the end coming on Magdalene’s Day (July 22nd) of this year among court astrologers of France. French astrologers, who needs ‘em?

1572AD One way to pass the time is to take one total solar eclipse, one population of idiots and lots of praying.

1583AD, April. A conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn naturally meant the end of the world. Astrologers picked on everything from earthquakes, fire, floods and the Second Coming.

1583AD, April 28th. English astrologers predicted a great wind to kill us all. See, not all crap astrologers are French, but all astrologers are crap.

1584AD Cyprian Leowitz, another astrologer (haha!) predicted 1584AD as the end of the world. Leowitz was already on Pope Paul IV’s List Of Writers I’d Like To See Burned With Their Books, this probably did little to endear him.

1588AD The world ended in this year according to the predictions of the sage Regiomontanus. In actuality, Regiomontanus was being “paraphrased” by quacks.

1600AD Martin Luther was an odd sort. Widely regarded as ending the widescale corruption of the Christian Church on one hand, paranoid, woman-hating, Jew-loathing nutcase on the other who lived by anti-revelry terms that would make Puritans blush. Around 1500, Luther’s delusional nature finally cracked him and he went stark raving barmy, claiming God’s Final Judgment would cleanse the world of all sin, impious joy and “that happiness brought about by means other than God” in 1600AD. Which is ironic, because he was instrumental in stopping the Christians doing exactly that. Either him or his later followers then re-scheduled the “cleansing” until 2000AD.

1603AD Dominican monk Tomasso Campanella was told by God that the Sun would collide with Earth in 1603. The Sun would burn away the sins of mankind (and presumably everything else of mankind) and Campanella asked Galileo to compute the velocity of the Sun to work out when it’d hit us. The last sentence in these entries is usually witty in some way, but I’m really stretching to put one here that’s any crazier than the entry. Campanella, for what it’s worth, went batshit insane and was eventually imprisoned for heresy until his death 30 years later.

1623AD Eustachius Puyssel’s numerology derived the end of days as being 1623. With a name like that, it was likely more wishful thinking.

1624AD The same wrong astrologers who predicted the flood of 1524 revised up by 100 years when they failed. They failed again. Astrology, huh?

1648AD Rabbi Zevi in Turkey used the Kabbalah to predict miracles and Messiah in 1648. Of course the Messiah would be Zevi.

1652AD – 1690AD Oh boy, where to begin? Anyone familiar with Russian history is likely chuckling after just reading the years. Tsar Alexis I got his favourite cleric, a guy called Nikon, appointed Patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church. This is nothing new and it’s the way religious leaders always get put in place. Nikon, however, was a bit tapped upstairs. He had a grand plan involving church reform and Greek Orthodoxy and mixed the two into such a revolting bastardisation that even Christians, who’ll typically believe anything, wouldn’t touch it with a fifty foot stick. The ROC split into the “Old Believers” (the majority, priests refusing to preach Nikon’s madness) and their name for Nikon’s followers “Beasts of the Revelation”…the Old Believers convinced themselves that Moscow would fall, Nikon was the Antichrist and they were all in deep trouble. So what did they do? The logical thing, really. 20,000 of them set themselves on fire. Nikon’s New Church had no problem declaring them excommunicated which wasn’t hard since they’d already been declared dead. In the next few years, the new church simply drifted back to where it’d always been and Nikon is largely forgotten for everything but this mess.

1654AD In 1578, Helisaeus Roeslin thought the world would be consumed by fire 76 years later. When the year arrived, someone picked up on the potty prophecy and noticed there’d be a solar eclipse that year. Well, church bells rang and people were advised to stay indoors until the brimstone stopped falling from the heavens. They’re possibly still inside waiting for the brimstone to start falling.

1654AD A supernova in 1572 (Tycho’s Nova) was used by Helisaeus Roeslin in 1578 to predict the end of the world in 1654, consumed by fire.

1656AD In biblical mythology, there were 1656 years between the Creation and God realising he’d fucked up and bringing the Flood. Hence it logically followed that there would be 1656 years between the birth of Christ and the next flood. Right? RIGHT? Londoners took to the Thames on boats and…well, you don’t need me to go on, do you?

1657AD Apocalyptic battle and destruction of the Antichrist happened in this year, according to the Fifth Monarchy Men (Same as the Christian Coalition in modern times) who attempted to overthrow the English parliament to impose their own extremist views. Fundies rarely get anything right.

1658AD Christopher Columbus’ “The Book of Prophecies” claims that the world was created in 5343BC and would last only 7,000 years. Columbus eventually became a five star raving madman. Creationism wasn’t taken seriously by any of the educated elite as far back as 1500AD, but Columbus wasn’t an educated man and worse, was a ‘converso’, an extreme fundamentalist group not unlike today’s Southern Baptists. Then again, that pretty much says he wasn’t educated so the first bit was redundant. Eventually Columbus was certifiably insane, changing his name to some odd symbol and claiming himself as the “Christbearer” after consulting with Joachim of Fiore’s work (see earlier in this very list).

1660AD Joseph Mede’s work influenced both Newton and Ussher but also included that the Antichrist had been born in 456 and the end would come 1,204 years later. He should have stuck to science.

1662AD Michael Wigglesworth was touched by…something…to pen his 224 stanza epic poem entitled ‘The Day of Doom’. His day was real soon now, y’all. You see, Wigglesworth was a pioneer, one of the first blabbering crackpots to emerge from North America. He wouldn’t be anywhere near the last.

1665AD A re-emergence of the Plague in London got Londoners down enough without Quaker Solomon Eccles screaming and ranting in the streets that the Black Death was just the beginning of God’s cleansing of the world. As the plague abated, people turned their attention to poor Eccles, who ended up locked away. There’s no record of where he was locked or whether he’s still there or not.

1666AD Biblical numerology, upheaval and war in England meant many Londoners believed the end was upon them. Plague, English Civil War and The Great Fire of London didn’t help things either. There were a few doomsayers wandering around England, but they didn’t manage to attract much of a following. Yeah, surprised the hell out of me too.

1666AD Rabbi Shabbati Zevi (see 1648) recalculated to 1666 after he turned out to be wrong first time. Despite every prediction he made being wrong, he had amassed a large quantity of followers in Turkey, convincing them he was the Messiah and he would lead them to Israel while riding the back of a giant lion with a seven headed dragon in its jaws. My cats only bring back dead birds damn it. He aquired a truly enormous following and led his people to Constantinople where he made more extortionate demands from the Sultan every day. The Sultan relented at first but eventually got pissed off. Zevi was arrested and given the choice of converting to Islam or being executed. He wisely chose the former.

1673AD Undisturbed by their previous string of consistent failures, the Fifth Monarchy Movement claimed the Millennium of Christ would begin this year. Their losing streak didn’t end.

1688AD Discovering logarithms made John Napier quite famous, but his prediction of The End in 1688 from readings of Revelations is normally omitted from biographies.

1689AD Huguenot Camisard prophet Pierre Jurieu confidently predicted Judgement Day in 1689 during the Huguenot revolt.

1694AD German theologian Johann Alsted and Alglican rector John Mason independently decided Christ’s Millennium would begin in this year. Two wrongs don’t make a right.

1694AD Using theology and astrology (because they’d been so accurate over the years), German prophet Johann Zimmerman decided to go to the New World with a group of pilgrims to welcome Christ back. He died in February and Johannes Kelpius took over the leadership of their “Woman in the Wilderness” (despite being an exclusively male organisation), they paid their way to the New World and, of course, their messiah didn’t show. This is where Germantown, PA, got its name from by the way.

1697AD Anglican rector Thomas Beverly said the Millennium would begin in earnest in 1697.

1697AD Witchhunter Cotton Mather of Puritan New England didn’t just burn women, he also predicted the end of the world. Three times.

1700AD Puritans believed all “revelry, feasting, enjoyous crimes and other sinful acts of Man” would be eradicated in 1700, leaving a pure godly world. Aren’t we lucky it was just another religious doomsaying?

1700AD John Napier’s second prediction, based on the Book of Daniel. He really should have stuck to playing with logarithms.

1700AD The Second Coming according to Henry Archer of the Fifth Monarchy Movement in his 1642 book “The Personall Reign of Christ Upon Earth”. They attempted to sieze control of Parliament and turn the country into an extremely repressive theocracy which any modern American Republican would be proud of, in order to please the “rightful King” Jesus when he returned in 1700. Eventually, however, even Oliver Cromwell got annoyed with them and expelled them from politics. They became a terrorist organisation hich was eventually crushed a while later and their last leader, Thomas Venner, was publically hanged by the neck until not psychotic.

1704AD Cardinal Nicholas de Cusa was a scholar, mathematician, astronomer, philosopher, philantropist, cartographer and botanist, among other things. Sounds like the perfect recipe for a “renaissance man” right up there with Galileo and Huygens, right? Oh, did I mention he was hard-line fundamentalist? His interest in the sciences was to denounce it all as heretical, to inflitrate the sciences so deeply that he could find the one common thing they were doing wrong to make reality disagree with the Bible, then he could expose it as the sham it is. His stance in Catholicism was conservative by THEIR standards. Though he died in 1464, he scheduled Christ’s Millennium in 1704.

1705-1708AD Camisard prophets gave end dates varying wildly, but between 1705 and 1708. “Man is not meant to be free, this liberal corruption of our people of servants will cause doom upon us all”. Pretty much business as usual for Bible Belt America today.

1716 Cotton Mather’s second date.

1719AD, April 5th. The return of a comet was going to wipe out Earth according to Bernoulli. Yes, *that* Bernoulli. Earth was neither wiped out, nor did his 1680 comet return.

1734AD 15th century Cardinal Nicolas of Cusa predicted the end no sooner than 1700 and no later than 1734.

1736AD Cotton Mather’s third strike. Sadly he was dead (1728) before he could be struck out.

1736AD, October 13th. Alarmist William Whitson predicted that London would be doomed by flood on this day, prompting many scared Londoners to sit on the Thames in boats (again). Whitson wasn’t some nobody, he was the great Isaac Newton’s successor at Cambridge. When it started to rain in the morning, almost all of London went stark raving barmy, but the shower had passed by noon and the boatloads of morons sat there slightly damp and very stupid.

1757AD Angels in a vision spoke to Emanual Swedenborg, and told him that the world would end in 1757. He wasn’t taken seriously which shows that there was hope for Mankind even as far back as the 18th Century.

1761AD April 5th. An earthquake in London on the 8th of February, and again on the 8th of March prompted religious extremist William Bell that the world was to end in another 28 days. So on April the fifth, Londoners promptly took to the Thames in boats (yet again). Pissed off that the world didn’t end, they threw Bell in the famous nuthouse Bedlam. Fundamentalism is hazardous to one’s mental health.

1763AD, February 28th. Methodist George Bell saw the end of the world in this date. Nobody else did.

1780AD, May 19th. Skies in New England darkened in the afternoon, Judgement Day had arrived! Well, Judgement Day or high atmosphere soot from large scale forest fires to the west. Religious explanations fall by the now-crowded wayside yet again.

1789AD The coming of the Antichrist according to Cardinal Pierre d’Ailly in the 14th century.

1790AD Orator Francis Dobbs confidently predicted the Second Coming in 1790.

1792AD The Shakers believed the world would end 300 years after the discovery of the New World.

1794AD The Shakers belie…you know, I have the strangest feeling of deja vu.

1794AD No less a man than Charles Wesley, brother of John Wesley the founder of the Methodist Church, predicted Doomsday in 1794.

1795AD Richard Brothers, a retired English Sailor, would lead the ten lost tribes of Israel and God would make him King of England. He ended up in Bedlam.

1795AD Campaigning for the release of Brothers (see immediately above), Nathanial Halhead proclaimed the world would end on the 19th of November. Most likely he joined the Bedlam brigade.

1800AD The French Revolution brought Catholic prophetess Suzette Labrousse out of the woodwork, confidently predicting the Millennium of Christ in 1800.

1801AD Pierre Turrel’s third shot. This time it was the “new planet” Ceres, now known to be an asteroid, which was attached to Turrel’s ramblings (he’d been dead for ages) much like how the 1999 rubbish (see its own entry) was tacked on to certain amusing translations of Nostradamus.

1804AD Father George Rapp claimed in 1804 that the Second Coming would be in the near future.

1805AD 17th Century Presbyterian minister Christopher Love claimed a worldwide earthquake in 1805 followed by an age of everlasting peace where God would be known to all. His shoulders and head were eventually divorced in 1651.

1809AD In these pages you will find asteroids, UFOs, numerous religious figures, earthquakes, floods, comets, even aliens. So get yourself ready for something crazier than them all. Mary Bateman had, so she claimed, a magic chicken. Yes, you read me right, a magic chicken. It laid special eggs, each one prophecising The End Of All Things. A minor scramble of followers hatched but one rotten egg had to ruin it all. In an unannounced visit, Mary was caught stuffing fake eggs up the chicken’s…egg laying apparatus. Her scam was poached, but she carried on with her old fortune-telling business, until she poisoned someone and was hanged, not fried.

1814AD Pierre Turrel’s fourth and final failure.

1814AD, December 25th. A minor stir was caused by “virgin prophet” Joanna Southcott who got very rich selling special certificates guaranteeing 144,000 people entrance to Heaven. From this we get our modern “ticket to paradise” phrase. Sadly, it went south. One of her tickets was found tightly held in the hand of an executed murderess and her public image took a beating.
Later, when she was 64, she claimed to be carrying the child of Christ himself. According to witnesses, she did appear pregnant. She claimed to be carrying the Christ child, and died on Christmas Day. A subsequent autopsy discovered she was not pregnant, nor virginal but had definitely poisoned herself.
It gets even better. Before her death, she gave a sealed box to her closest disciples containing the prophecy of the Apocalypse of Saint John, the secret of world peace and…well, yes. It was only to be opened in the event of worldwide crisis and by 24 bishops of the Church of England.
Well, to cut a long story short, Harry Price opened it in 1927 and found… A horse pistol, a box of dice, a purse, some commonly published books and a shawl. Of course her followers denied the box had ever been opened, it being their most holy relic, and Southcottians under the name “Panacea Society” exist today, convinced their raving loon was God’s Chosen Bitch. The parallel with the absolute veneration of religious cult leaders such as Muhammed and Jesus despite all facts to the contrary is pretty obvious.

1820AD, October 14th. Follower of Southcott, John Turner, claimed this day as the end. After it turned out like every other entry on this list, John Wroe took over leadership of the cult.

1825AD Hawaiian prophetess Hapu founded a cult in 1825, claiming she was the third member of the Trinity and the world was about to end.

1829AD The combination of Henry Drummond, John Nelson Darby and Edward Irving made a mistake. They predicted a Rapture BEFORE the Tribulation, obviously utter bullshit to anyone who’s ever read The Bible. The majority of Southern Baptist, American Catholic and other protestant denominations (except Anglicans) now accept the pre-trib Rapture and it was no more than an error in verse number writing.

1930AD Robert Owen has a legendary name as a unionist, philantropist, visionary…and Antichrist. Margaret McDonald’s prophecies showed him to be the antichrist. Well, if she hadn’t said anything, we’d have never known!

1832AD Years since the last claim of the Millennium starting, John Dilks made another one for this year.

1836AD John Wesley, creator of the Methodists, saw the Millennium as beginning in 1836 when the Beast of Revelation was to rise from the sea. Revelation, and Wesley, were both wrong.

1842AD London phrenologist John Wilson published “Our Israelitish Origin” in 1840, and “The Millennium” in 1842. Both books concluded the Second Coming was imminent.

1843AD Harriet Livermore’s Parousia prediction, the first.

1843AD, April 28th. William Miller’s followers, the Millerites, held that the Second Coming would be on this day. The cult’s leaders didn’t endorse this, but neither did they quash it. Now get ready to see MUCH more of these guys. Remnants of the Millerites eventually became the Second Adventists and Seventh Day Adventists and the Jehovah’s Witnesses, all very rich pickings for idiocy and doomsaying.

1843AD Careful calculations by William Miller revealed that Christ would return sometime between March 21, 1843 and March 21, 1844. He used “the Jewish mode of computation of time” but got something wrong somewhere, because the actual Jewish calendar numbers he quoted were Tishri 1, 5604 (September 25th, 1843) to Tishri 1, 5605 (September 14th, 1844) but how many of his audience were orthodox Jews?
He gathered a following of thousands of devotees. After the failure of Jesus to show up during this window, the cult experienced a crisis of faith and in the confusion began reinterpreting the prophecy and aggressively proselytizing – All 50,000 of them.

1844AD, March 21. The Millerite date came and went with a wonderful headline in a Boston newspaper: “WHAT! – NOT GONE UP YET? – WE THOUGHT YOU’D GONE UP! – AREN’T YOU GOING UP SOON? – WIFE DIDN’T GO UP AND LEAVE YOU BEHIND TO BURN, DID SHE?” This made Miller and his pal, Samuel S.Snow quite angry, see below.

1844AD, October 22nd. “Reverend” Samuel S. Snow, a Millerite cult leader, predicted the Second Coming on this day. The date was soon accepted by Miller himself. On that day, the Millerites gathered on a hilltop to await the coming of Jesus. After the inevitable no-show, the event became known as the “Great Disappointment.” Like the whole cult really.

1844AD Leaving crazy Americans alone for a while, we head back (1825) out to Hawaii and a crazy crone by the name of Hapu. Well, Hapu decided she was the Holy Ghost and shouting loudly about the horrible punishments she would bestow upon the heads of non-believers.Her greatest moment was declaring the end to be on us in 1844, so none of her followers needed to work. The cult rapidly became the most popular religion in Hawaii…Until, of course, The End did not come.

1845AD Back to the Millerites. Most of them went back to their more mainstream religions, some gave up on organised religion, but others found that the breakup was too hard and didn’t change a thing but their name: They became the Second Adventists. The Great Disappointment (1844) was barely forgotten when they began foaming at the mouth about 1845. Some people never learn.

1846AD Second Adventists second Second Coming. They later became the Seventh Day Adventists who, to my knowledge, do not predict the Second Coming every year.

1847AD Harriet Livermore’s Parousia prediction, second attempt.

1847, August 7th. George Rapp, a German ascetic founded a sect he termed the Harmonists, and established a utopian commune in Pennsylvania. He was certain that Jesus would return before his death. On his deathbed, he uttered “If I did not know the dear Lord meant I should present you all to him, I should think my last moment’s come.” His last moment had come indeed, and he died on the 7th of August without a second coming.

1849AD Third Second Coming from the Second Adventists.

1851AD Fourth Second Coming from the Second Adventists.

1856AD The Crimean War, 1853-56 was spun by the popular press as the Battle of Armageddon, as Russia wanted to sieze Palestine from the Ottoman Empire, and led to the “Russia Invades Israel” which is so popular with doomsayers even today.

1862AD The end of 6,000 years since Creation (Hang on, didn’t we have 7,000 years a few hundred years before this?) according to John Cumming of the Scottish National Church.

1863AD John Wroe, leader of the cult of Southcott (see her own 1814 entry), tried and failed to walk on water in 1823 then underwent a public circumcision, decided the Millennium would begin in 1863.

1863AD Not all Millerites became Second Adventists, some became Seventh Day Adventists (the two groups later merged). 1844 wasn’t a failure to them, no, it wasn’t the Second Coming for Jesus to come to EARTH, no, it was to his INVISIBLE SANCTUARY IN HEAVEN. Prove he didn’t! Miller was spot on, right on the money! Well anyway, Jesus needs to wait until things are Just Right on Earth.

1864AD Reverend Irving of Glasgow founded some silly thing called Irvingism, realised the name was silly and changed it to Catholic Apostolic Church. Well eventually his writings took on an Apocalyptic slant and he got kicked out of the Church of Scotland for claiming the end will come in 1864. He had the good sense to die beforehand, popping his clogs at the grand old age of 42 in 1834.

1867AD-1869AD Michael Paget Baxter, an Anglican minister, predicted the End for all three years over numerous dates. He was Martin Luther reborn, a Jew-hating, apocalyptic, sin hysteric antipapal.
Alas by 1889, his crackpotery was obvious even to him, so he claimed 1896 instead.

1870AD, June 28th Irvin Moore’s “The Final Destiny of Man” said the end would come after France had fallen and Jerusalem became capital of the world, which would finally happen on the 28th of June.

1870-72AD More dates from Michael Baxter

1874AD MORE MILLERITES! YAY! This group of Millerites escaped becoming Second Adventists AND Seventh Day Adventists and instead became Russellites under Millerite Charles Taze Russell. When the Sun rose and set as normal, he blatantly copied the Seventh Day Adventists in claiming Jesus came of course, but that Jesus was INVISIBLE! Only the devout could see him, if their faith was strong enough: The Emperor’s New Messiah, if you will.

1874AD The Parousia according to the Second Adventists, who had just renamed themselves to Seventh Day Adventists.

1878AD The Russellites stood in white robes on the Sixth Street Bridge, Pittsburgh on the night of the Passover to be Raptured by Jesus. In the morning, they were still there and still looking stupid.

1880AD Thomas Rawson Birks determined the end of the world in 1880 using a peculiar construct he termed “Great Week Theory” where 6,000 years pass of Man’s alloted time on Earth, then Christ comes back, has a thousand years of peace, then everyone gets wiped out by God. Great Week theory, as invented by Birks (less than successfully, it has to be added) is the cornerstone of modern protestant Rapture thinking. See here for more on Birks’ baloney: http://www.wake-up.org/daystar/ds1999/JUL99A.htm Oh, and…do try to realise that the link’s content is actually serious. They think it is, at least.

1881AD Charles Taze Russell (see the the 1870s, 1900s and 1910s for more of his fun) had problems. His followers were increasingly asking him just where their invisible Jesus was (see 1874). Russell found the answer: The pyramids of Egypt! According to the Great Pyramid of Giza, the correctly selected passages of the Bible and a bit of Millerite logic, the End was 1881! Until 1882 came along, that is.

1881AD Mother Shipton, a famous 16th century English prophetess, was accused of writing “The world to an end shall come / In eighteen hundred and eighty one”, but she never wrote anything of the kind, the “prediction” was a forgery by Charles Hindley who had published her prophecies in 1862 – this was known in 1873, but it didn’t stop some people expecting the end in 1881. Many other entries in his book have since been shown to be falsified.

1891AD Wovoka, leader of the Northern Paiutes, predicted Christ’s Millennium in 1890. He was a practitioner of “Ghost Dance”, a strange meld of the worst of Christianity with the worst of Native American mysticism. Not unlike some other religious melds it was an unstable mess of ideas with no strong leader figure to make it last.

1895AD The Millennium according to Reverend Robert Reid, Pennsylvania.

1896AD Michael Baxter (not again…) predicted the Rapture in 1896. 144,000 Christians were due to be summoned to Heaven. That 144,000 figure again? That’s the capacity of Heaven. Jesus said that when he returned (see Jesus’ own entry much earlier in this document), he would raise 144,000 of his followers to Heaven.

1899AD Charles Totten predicted the world would end in 1899.

1900AD Father Lacheze foresaw Doomsday 8 years after the Temple in Jerusalem was rebuilt in 1892.

1900AD Followers of the ascetic Antonio Conselheiro in Brazil expected the end no later than 1900. They never got to see 1900, since in 1897, 10,000 Brazilian troops descended on their tax-doding shanty town of Canudos and wiped it off the map.

1900AD, November 13th. Over a hundred members of the Brothers and Sisters of the Red Death, a cult in Russia, killed themselves as the world was to end on this day. Their world certainly did.

1901AD The Catholic Apostolic Church was founded by 12 members and Jesus would return before the 12 founding members died. The last died in 1901.

1901AD Michael Baxter (again) predicted in 1901.

1908AD, April 23. Another from Baxter. The Rapture was to happen on March 12, 1903 in the early afternoon. Armageddon was to happen on this day.

1908AD, May 18. Pennsylvanian Lee Spangler incited a mob with his claims of the world meeting a fiery death.

1910AD End of the world according to Jehovah’s Witnesses, who had been renamed from the Russellites (but Russell was still in charge) who were the Millerites who didn’t become the Second Adventists or Seventh Day Adventists. Got all that?

1910AD Halley’s Comet was to make a return in this year, and Earth would pass through its tail. The spectroscope had detected cyanide in the tail of the comet (HCN is a common organic compound in space), and doomsayers claimed it would poison the atmosphere. Most of these doomsayers were also selling “comet pills” to make people immune to the toxins. As if backwards Dark Age people were the only ones whipped into a frenzy by comets. Zoom ahead to 1997 for more cometary craziness. There’s a bit in the 1970s too.

1910AD Select Followers, a crazy bunch of Christians and…other things, including mental illnesses, decided the only way to save the planet from Comet Halley was to appease the wrathful chunk of ice and give it what it had come for: A virgin sacrifice.
Thankfully, the police heard about it before it was too late and rescued the poor girl, damning us all to a comet-wrought doom. Alas, the comet did not take this transgression to heart and mercifully spared us.

1911AD 19th Century Scottish pyramidologist Charles Smyth concluded that the Great Pyramid of Giza predicted the Second Coming of a religion which was over a thousand years yet to be even begun when it was built, between 1892 and 1911.

1914AD, October 1st. The 1910 date was more of a fizzle, THIS was the big one. Russell himself didn’t believe the 1910, but he himself brought on the 1914 date. He dropped pyramidology and picked the correct phrases from the Book of Daniel, assigned them arbitrary numbers and did convoluted mathematics on them to give a date. This date.
As World War I came around, the Jehovah’s Witnesses under Russell were rapturous (forgive me the pun) and attracted tens of thousands of followers. Well, 1914 became 1915 and 1916, but the war was still coming along as “foreseen”.

1915AD Fundamentalist John Chilembwe in Malawi said the Millennium would start in 1915.

1918AD Russell’s next attempt with the Jehovah’s Witnesses (they amazingly fell in line behind him as ordered), October 31 1918 was to be IT. A Spanish Flu outbreak the previous year has managed to take this rag-tag bunch of disaffected Millerites and make them a global phenomenon. As the world celebrated peace in 1918, the Jehovah’s Witnesses suffered yet another disappointment.

1919AD Second Coming of Christ according to the 1915 book “When Will Our Lord Return?” by Harold Norris.

1919AD, December 17th. Disgraced meteorologist Albert Porta caused mass panic by claiming a loose conjunction of six planets would cause a “magnetic current” to “pierce the sun”, causing an explosion of flaming gas which would engulf the Earth. Some even comitted suicide in the hysteria which followed. His career was ended by the quackery.

1920AD With Charles Taze Russell not being as immortal as he thought he was in his later years, cult leadership of the Jehovah’s Witnesses fell to J.F. Rutherford. High in gullubility and short on memory among JWs meant that Rutherford could perform the mother of all retcons. From every publication and every text, he removed all mention of the 1874 failure for invisible Jesus and inserted the 1914 date. Importantly, he added that the 1914 generation would not all be dead before Jesus returned properly. In his “Millions Now Living Will Never Die” tome, he made the mistake of setting 1920 as a date, which he almost immediately realised was too soon.

1920AD Alexander Bedward, an illiterate labourer gained a huge following in Jamaica in 1920, predicting he would ascend to heaven on December 31st, then return and destroy Earth. He was placed in an asylum.

1921AD Henry Adams, known as a scholar and historian, had the idea of ending history. In his 1909 publication “Rule of Phase Applied to History” and his 1910 “Letter to American Teachers of History” he had this queer idea that history separated cleanly into four ages, religious or mythological, mechanical, electrical and ethereal. While he didn’t clearly state what “ethereal” was, he did set his date for it happening in 1921. Adams himself became ethereal much sooner, dying in 1918.

1925AD, February 13th. Margaret Rowan had a vision of the Angel Gabriel, telling her that the world would end at midnight on this date. The popular conception of Friday 13th being unlucky seems to have began here. Amusingly, Robert Reidt, a decorator, spent all his savings buying billboard space to advertise this “fact”. When the time came, lots of people flocked to a hillside chanting “Gabriel!” over and over. When midnight came and went, Reidt calmed down the disillusioned doomsdayers by saying that OBVIOUSLY Rowan had meant pacific time. Three hours later and no angel from heaven. Reidt blamed the reporters’ flashbulbs for scaring off the heavenly seraph.

1925AD The Jehovah’s Witnesses under Rutherford made a lot of noise about 1925, but as 1925 was progressing, their main rag (Watchtower) was warning members that nobody had ever suggested that the End Time was to be 1925. They even reprinted articles, cunningly edited to remove all references to the failed prophecy, as proof that they’d never said anything to begin with. So began the retcon.

1928AD May 29 – September 16. Pyramidologist Basil Stewart stared at the rock piles and used cubits to measure that the Tribulation begins between May and September in 1928. Though he made a little noise during the Great Depression, he was generally ignored.

1928AD JB Dimbleby ‘calculated’ that the Millennium would begin in spring 1928, the Second Coming and Rapture being between 1889 and 1928. The true end of the world wouldn’t be until 3,000.

1934AD Chicago preacher Nathan Cohen Beskin claimed Armageddon would begin in 1931.

1935AD Wilbur Glen Voliva announced the world would go “puff” and disappear in September because Russia would invade the Holy Land.

1936AD Herbert W Armstrong, founder of the Worldwide Church of God (www.wcg.org) told his church that the Rapture was to take place in 1936 and only they would be saved since in the Bible, where it says “Jews”, it actually means “Real Jews” which are, of course, his cultists – Who were Christian. The entire thing was a racist hilarity claiming the English (and whites) were the Israelites, that Jews were corrupt and dirty and…eeesh. He changed the date three more times afterwards, settling on 1975.

1936AD September 6. George Riffert decided that Basil Stewart’s pyramid screwing was a bit screwy, so he corrected it himself. While 1936 wasn’t a good year for many, such as Jews in Germany or Spaniards at all, it certainly wasn’t the end of the world.

1938AD Gus McKey claimed the 6,000th year since Creation would come between 1931 and 1938, and the world would end. Given that 1555 (see its own entry) was meant to be the 7,000th year, Gus got his numbers screwed somewhere.

1938AD October 31. Original broadcast of The War Of The Worlds, scaring thousands of people to take to the streets in panic.

1941AD Stop me if you’ve heard this before. End of the world according to Jehovah’s Witnesses. This one, this one was epic. So great was their need to get it right THIS TIME (after five failed as the JWs, and three more as the Millerites) that they overflowed with enthusiasm. They were told to not allow their children to go to school or college, they were told to quit their jobs, sell their homes (and donate the proceeds to the Church, of course) so they were not seen as doubting God. As the war trudged on and eventually became the peace of 1945, the cult’s leadership once more had to go back and delete all references to the 1940-1941 date. To this day they confidently claim they have never failed a prophecy.

1941AD The end of the world according to Leonard Sale-Harrison. He was a “Bible scholar” of little note, but he got his 15 minutes claiming the world would end any time between 1940 and 1941. He made his original claims in Australia, but had to travel to the US to find people gullible enough to believe him.

1943AD Herbert W Armstrong’s second Rapture prediction.

1944AD War Of The Worlds in Spanish. Santiago, Chile, proved it was no smarter than the Americans of 1938 and erupted in a minor panic.

1945AD, September 21st, 17:33. A minister named Long had a vision of a hand writing 1945 and a voice saying the world would be destroyed at 5:33pm on September 21st.

1947AD America’s Greatest Prophet, John Ballou Newbrough, saw the destruction of all law and order and post-apocalyptic anarchy in 1947.

1948AD To get the Jews out of Europe once and for all, they’re set to a sort of reservation in the middle east, the state of Israel. Key in the Christian doomsday prophecies for the Second Coming, Christians gave it 40 to 100 years.

1949AD War Of The Worlds in Quito, Ecuador, who turned out to be no smarter than the Americans or Chileans. When the public learned they’d been outed as morons, they stormed the radio station, eventually burning it down. 25 people were killed in the rioting and the radio station owners charged with inciting a riot.

1950AD Henry Adams predicted the end on this date.

1952AD End of the world according to Billy Graham.

1953AD, January 9th. End of the world according to Agnes Carlson, founder of the Sons of Light cult in Canada.

1953AD, August. Pyramidologist David Davidson wrote a book “The Great Pyramid, Its Divine Message” about the Great Pyramid of Giza and how it had a message from God encoded in it. The Millennium would begin in this month. Which is rather odd, as the Great Pyramid pre-dated the first concept of the Judeo-Christian-Islamic god by a good two thousand years.

1954 May 24. Engineers working on the Colosseum of Rome discovered cracks in the masonry which may have made the whole structure collapse if it were hit by an earthquake of a magnitude not uncommon in Italy. This was picked up by some crazy as a sign that the Last Judgement was upon us. Crowds surged into Saint Peter’s square seeking Papal absolution. The Pope, for his part, diplomatically stated that God wouldn’t end his little game without telling him first. The mob came back on the 24th of May and the Pope didn’t even show up, instead letting time do his talking for him.

1954AD August 20. George Riffert, yet another pyramidologist, gave 1954.

1954AD, December 20th. Parallel to the below shenanigans, another UFO cult headed by Charles Laughead wherein UFOs would save doomed Earthlings from a Great Flood. Proving that nervous breakdowns have no respect for credentials, this Michigan State College physician was soon convinced the voices in his head were space aliens who would save humanity from God’s wrath on the 20th of December. When the flood didn’t show, Laughing Laughead praised God’s mercy and continued his gibbering. His family, distraught at seeing a once-respected doctor go batshit insane, tried to get him committed but the hearing judge wasn’t having any of it.

1954AD, December 21st. UFO cults started becoming fashionable (much how messianic doomsday cults were fashionable in Roman occupied Jerusalem, founding what would eventually become Christianity). A notable one, founded by Dorothy Martin (aka. Marian Keech) was named Brotherhood of the Seven Rays. Among their members were George Hunt Williamson and Charles Laughead, who were interviewed by Leon Festinger for his book “When Prophecy Fails”, a classic ground breaking study of cognitive dissonance and the effect that failed prophecy has on the brainwashed.

1957AD, April 23rd. Mihran Ask, a Californian pastor, claimed the Battle of Armageddon would start on this date. She was published in Watchtower, the publication of the Jehovah’s Witnesses, and many of their following believed her. Though the JWs didn’t specifically promote it, being in Watchtower was enough for many JWs. When April came and went, the cult leaders just looked the other way and claimed nothing was said to begin with.

1958AD Insanity-gripped snake oil salesman Edgar Cayce had made his name by “curing” people of afflictions they later died from. Mr. Cayce, however, wasn’t just in the business of scams; He was a certified doomsayer of his own volition. Giant disasters, volcanoes, earthquakes, you name it, would begin in 1958 and continue until 1998, by which time there wouldn’t be much left and Earth would be upside down. Eddie’s devoted fans spent the intervening time babbling incessantly as to why not a single prophecy actually worked.

1958AD David Latimer predicted in his book “Opening of the Seven Seals” that the Second Coming would happen in 1956 or 1958, right after the Battle of Armageddon.

1959AD, April 22nd. After a disagreement with the Seventh Day Adventists, who were the Second Adventists, who were the Millerites, Victor Houteff founded the Branch Davidians (who would become much more famous when the government killed them all in 1993) and claimed the end of days was coming soon. He died before publishing a date. His widow Florence claimed this date, and hundreds of faithful gathered at Mount Carmel just outside Waco to await the big moment. The cult almost collapsed until a failed guitarist and semi-literate deadbeat by the name of David Koresh took over.

1960AD Charles Piazzi Smyth, referenced in the 1911 entry, claimed the Millennium would begin no later than 1960.

1960AD, July 14, 1:45 AM UTC. Elio Bianco was, in his previous life, an Italian doctor. Sadly he went a little deranged and founded a cult called “Community of The White Mount” convinced that the Americans were trying to blow up Earth with a giant nuke.

1962AD, February 4th. A rather impressive planetary conjunction was to destroy the world according to numerous doomsayers, most of whom would sell you a “survival kit”. Crank Jeane Dixon claimed the Antichrist would come the next day. In California, Griffith Observatory was innundated with people begging for the “real” story, the astronomers saying “Nothing’s going to happen” clearly wasn’t the “real” story. Disaffected from the anti-climax, the nutcrackers decided that something did happen after all, but that it was invisible and waiting for the right moment to reveal itself. Didn’t we have all this a scarce hundred years before?

1965-1966AD This one’s a beauty. Elijah Mohammed made a queer bastardisation of the worst of Islam and the worst of apocalyptic Christianity named “Nation of Islam” and became the black/brown equivalent of the KKK, a bunch of foaming racial supremacists. They believed that over a fantastic Allah-led war, they would reduce whites to a pathetic underclass. Sadly, none of this happens and the American Civil Rights movement finally beat most of the racism out of the institute.

1967AD Rev. Sun Myung Moon predicted the establishment of the Kingdom of Heaven. When nothing happened, he said it was a “spiritual awakening” for his Unification Church and the world wasn’t ready for enlightenment.

1967AD June. Egypt and Israel came to blows so Christians went utterly loopy. A list of all the apocalyptic doomsayers here would likely rival 2000AD’s.

1967AD Nuclear holocaust according to Jim Jones, later guru of the cult People’s Temple. See 1978 for more details as to how his fruitloop went down in history for all the wrong reasons.

1967AD, Augist 20th. A Soviet nuclear strike would destroy Florida, Texas and nearby states according to UFO cultist George Van Tassel/Alien named Ashtar.

1967AD, December 25th. Knud Weiking claimed a scientifically inept alien named Orthon was speaking to him. A nuclear war would happen by this date, which would disturb the Earth’s orbit. You’d think aliens would know basic physics. His followers built a primitive survival bunker anyway.

1968-1968AD Edgar Cayce was long dead but his believers came up with some perverse abortion where Atlantis would rise out of the Atlantic, cock up the Gulf Stream making New York and Los Angeles sink under the waves. The other thing was a predictable signature from a Cayce loony, a pole-shift. Geographic failure ensued.

1969AD, August 9th. Mormons believed the Second Coming of Christ was to be on this day. Presumably he now has six wives and lives on a farm.

1969AD, November 22nd. Robin McPherson, in contact with an alien named OxHo (Bwahahah!) claimed that Christianity was a universal religion, Christ had appeared on every inhabited planet in the universe to found his religion, and would bring about Judgement Day on this day. When it all failed to materialise, they claimed they had made some minor errors in the details. “The details” being “the whole damned thing”.

1969AD “The Family”, a Charles Manson led bunch of Christian apocalyptics believed a race war was on its way and they had been chosen to lead the charge against the blacks and such. Well it all resulted in Charles sending out his gang of crazies to do a bit of butchering. No race war, just a few brutal murders of women and children. Their mothers must be so proud.

1970AD The 450-strong True Light Church of Christ of North and South Carolina, USA, gave the end date as 1970. They made the Jehovah’s Witness mistake of being too soon and too specific. So they encouraged their members to quit their jobs, sell their homes, pull kids out of school…

1972AD Herbert W Armstrong’s third Rapture prediction.

1973AD David Berg, better known as Moses David, leader of the Children of God/Family of Love/The Family, screwed up his orbital ephemerids (if he even knew what they are) and claimed Comet Kohoutek would hit the United States in 1973. The media had hyped the comet up due to a faulty assumption by some astronomers, who thought the comet was a virgin Oort cloud object, so it was rich pickings.

1974AD, January. Davig Berg predicted the comet would strike Earth a little later.

1974 – 20??AD. Charles Meade had been blabbering on about Armageddon in Indiana for a while, starting up out of his home garage, but soon had a bona-fide cult of followers – “End Time Ministries”. Meade did the Jehovah’s Witness 1914 thing, that before he died there would be the end of the world and he taught that life is just a wait for the end.
Even by fundamentalist Christian standards, he was loopy. Evils include reading books and magazines – the only reason to be literate is to read the Bible. Make-up is a tool of the devil, being childless and single by 17 is sinful, going to a doctor or even having any form of communication outside the cult is forbidden.
These guys are still on-going, moving to Lake City, Florida in the mid-80s and taking over the town. The end (of which their version is the world being rained on by sticky white stuff and burying everyone, honestly) is due real soon now.

1975AD In a rich year for doomsayers, the Jehovah’s Witnesses were included (as usual), Herbert W Armstrong had his fourth in this year and Charles Taylor got one in. Some greedy Jehovah’s Witnesses took out high interest loans with unrealistic payment plans, to pay for worldly pleasures before the end times meant they didn’t have to repay them. Several were jailed, others are still paying back their greed today.

1975AD The Jehovah’s Witness (immediately above) one deserves its own entry really. Nathan Knorr, president of the cult, had written “Life Everlasting in Freedom of the Sons of God” stated that 1975 would be the 6000th year of creation (didn’t we have this in the 16th century?) and so OBVIOUSLY the time for Jesus to return, or de-cloak, whatever.
Having learned absolutely nothing from the 1940s mess, they once again quit their jobs, sold their homes like the obedient little sheep they were. As 1976 came around, they defected en-masse, leaving only the leadership and the hardcore gullible. What did the JWs learn? There’s plenty more where they came from! Once again they set about re-writing history and claiming they never said anything at all.

1975AD Ex-music teacher, failed opera singer and homosexual Marshall Herf Applewhite was not just cursed with a crap name, but cursed with less than the commonly ladled out quantity of brain power. Enter crazy astrologer and nurse Bonnie Lu Nettles. When Applewhite was hospitalised after a heart attack, they hit it off immediately as fellow crackpots. They convinced themselves they were aliens who’d been on earth for 2,000 years and had been, at one time or another, Jesus, Buddha, Muhammed, Napoleon, etc.
Taking the name “Heaven’s Gate”, they formed a UFO cult, convincing cultmates that they were fellow aliens who had lost their memory. Well they bundled together in a field to await the UFOs coming to take them home. When said saucers didn’t show, they re-thought doctrine… (More about these in 1995)

1976AD Notch another one for Charles Taylor.

1976AD, February 6th. On this date, a group of 25 people were entrenched in an Arkansas house keeping a vigil for the second coming of Christ to save them from doomsday.

1977AD John Wroe, the Southcottian reference in the late 1800s, set 1977 as the Battle of Armageddon. William Branham predicted the Rapture in 1977, the Vatican would become a world dictatorship, Christianity would be unified and boy bands would be outlawed. I made that last bit up.

1977AD Adam Rutherford claimed Christ’s Millennium for 1977. Who’s Adam Rutherford? Someone who failed to get the end of the world right, of course!

1977AD Salem Kirban blamed the African killer bees for bringing the end times by fulfilling Revelation 9. I read the passage in question, which involves locusts with human heads, scorpion tails and horse bodies. Obvious, isn’t it?

1978AD (See also 1967 entry) The Peoples Temple, a Californian cult based around Jim Jones, was basically a “church of Marxism” and then eventually overtly communist, not quite understanding that Marx was an economist, not a prophet. Jones had had a vision in 1961 of Chicago coming under nuclear attack. To cut a long story short, they moved to Guyana, assassinated US Congressman Leo Ryan and committed mass-suicide (almost 1,000 of them, including 270 children), believing the world was due a nuclear shakeup anyway.

1978AD Using the ever reliable sources of scripture, pyramidology, pole shift theory and young-Earth creationism (as well as various other mysticism), John Strong rambled over 300 pages in “The Doomsday Globe” about how the world would end in 1978. The book made him a tidy penny to spend after his predictions failed.

1979AD The founder of Australia’s Christian Revival Crusade, a Leo Harris, argued 1979 as the Second Coming, based on Christ having to return within one generation of 1917 for some odd reason. Some books from this cult predict 2000 instead.

1979AD, February 19th. Roch Theriault and 17 followers cramped into a log cabin in Quebec to wait for the end of the world. Because a log cabin sure helps.

1980-1989AD Stephen D Swihart predicted to end to arrive in the ’80s in his book “Armageddon 198?”. With the advent of Hair Metal, some thought it had.

1980AD Charles Taylor’s third prediction of the Rapture. These things come in threes. Idiots, that is, not Raptures.

1980AD, April 1st. Radio preacher Willie Day Smith, a Texan baptist, claimed this day would be the day of the Second Coming. Texans flocked to a site he gave en-masse to stand there wondering what to do. They should have paid more attention to the date.

1980AD, April 29th. Leland Jensen, founder of the Bahá’ís Under the Provisions of the Covenant, a perverse abortion of Bahá’í (which in turn is a corruption of Zoroastrianism), pyramidology and apocalyptic Biblical beliefs, predicted a nuclear holocaust on this day. When said mushroom clouds failed to materialise, Jensen claimed it was merely the beginning of the Tribulation.

1981AD A hot year for the world to end. Charles Taylor got one in (his fourth), Rev. Sun Myung Moon another, Pastor Chuck Smith, founder of Calvary Chapel, wrote a book saying the Lord would come in 1981. His group members suffered a small scale version of 1844’s Great Disappointment.

1981AD, June 28th. Rev. Bill Maupin, leader of a small Tuscon, AZ, sect named Lighthouse Gospel Tract Foundation preached that the world would come to and end on his self-named Rapture Day. Fifty gullible idiots gathered in a field, only to have their dreams of death dashed against the rocks of reality.

1981AD, August 7th. Bill Maupin revised his prediction to be 40 days later, just as Noah’s Ark was supposedly raised in 40 days to safety in mythology.

1982AD Charles Taylor’s Rapture prediction number five.

1982AD In a frightening display of physics not of this universe, the Jupiter Effect would pull Mars out of its orbit and send it crashing into Earth. The Jupiter Effect has happened over fifty million times in the lifetime of Earth, four thousand times in the history of humanity and twelve times in the history of Christianity. The Jupiter Effect was merely another name for a loose alignment of the planets. But it sounded better. The actual forces involved are real, but are well over a thousand times smaller than the difference in the effect of the moon between its greatest distance and its nearest distance. Credit to Emil Gaverluk of the Southwestern Radio Church for this wonderful ignorance of reality.

1982AD Canadian prophet Doug Clark preached that Jesus would return and rapture his Christians away from the tribulation in 1982. He also used the Jupiter Effect, ley lines and pyramidology.

1982AD, March 10th. A poor astronomical confluence (way inferior to the ones in 1962 and 2000) would destroy Earth via various means. “The Jupiter Effect” by John Gribbin and Stephen Plagemann “documented” this. Gribbin’s professional scientific career was destroyed by his crackpot claims.

1982AD, June 25th. British artist Benjamine Creme, founder of Tara Center (www.shareintl.org) took out an ad in the LA Times claiming “THE CHRIST IS NOW HERE” on April 25th, referring to the Second Coming within two months. Some quipped that he made a typographical error and meant to place “THE CHRIST IS NOWHERE”.

1982AD, Autumn. Pat Robertson, ever the bastion of truth, justice and bombing third world countries, predicted the end of the world would happen in late 1982. With his typical professional integrity in 1980, he enthused “I guarantee you by the end of 1982 there is going to be a judgement on the world.”

1983AD The End Times News Digest predicted nuclear holocaust caused by the USA attacking the USSR (various religious reasons, namely the USSR’s state atheism), and the USSR retaliating, in this year. Charles Taylor’s sixth Rapture prediction also failed in this year.

1983AD In his 1968 book “The Population Bomb”, Paul Ehrlich predicted ecological catastrophe from overpopulation in 1983.

1984AD, October 4th. The end of the world according to Jehovah’s Witnesses. High interest loans, etc…see the 1975 entry.

1985AD. Lester Sumrall spent over 200 pages in “I Predict 1985″ explaining why the world ended in this year. He never explained why he was wrong.

1985AD. Chalk up number 7 for Charles Taylor.

1985AD. The Neo-Nazi group Socialist National Aryan People’s Party were founded on the ‘fact’ that Jesus would return in 1985.

1985AD, March 25th. World War III begin, according to the doomsday cult Family of God. The cult was a small splinter cell of the Urantia Foundation, a strange group who have a tedious, rambling 2,000 page tome as their scripture. Rather like Christianity.

1985AD, August. Retired NATO General Sir John Hackett wrote a well written and well thought 1977 bestselling book as a warning to world leaders wbout what could happen based on world developments at the time. His book is self-admittedly a slippery-slope fallacy but on no one stage does it seem outlandish or unreasonable. This was, after all, during the USA’s very aggressive foreign policy times and shortsighted USSR leadership, leaving the West to see the USSR as vulnerable. George Bush, US president in the late ’80s, had once considered an invasion of the USSR “inevitable, my God-given task is to purge the world of the tools of evil”. His son wouldn’t be much saner. This entry is only included because, while a work of fiction, it was based on actual events and made an actual (if conditional) prediction.

1986AD. Charles Taylor makes it an octet.

1987AD, April 29th. Leland Jensen of the…read the 1980 entry. This time it was Comet Halley.

1987AD. Charles Taylor’s ninth.

1987AD, August 17th. New Age author José Argüelles claimed that the Battle of Armageddon was certain unless 144,000 (that number again…) gathered in set places on Earth to “resonate in harmony” and be spirited to Heaven. We’re still here, thanks to their brave sacrifice.

1988AD A puppet state of the USA, Israel, had existed for 40 years (a Biblical generation), so the Rapture would take place. That and fighting proxy wars for control of oil.

1988AD Charles Taylor scores ten.

1988AD Doug Clark (see 1982) wrote another book, hoodwinked more people, earned more money, claimed the Rapture “possibly 1987 or 1988″.

1988AD Yet another doomsayer in 1988, TV prophet JR Church claimed that each Psalm in the Bible referred to a year in the 20th century, so Psalm 1 was 1901. He used a bizzare to anyone not Christian “pick and choose” method to pick only those events that supported his views, and ignore all the others. Of course, Christians have been using this method for years to filter the Bible according to what they want it to mean, from massacring Aztecs to supporting slavery.

1988AD The spectacularly bad selling book “Christ Returns by 1988: 101 Reasons Why” is only notable because of a PR campaign aimed at the Bible Belt in the USA which sent sales flying. Colin Deal covered his costs, and then some, and laughed all the way to the bank.

1988AD, September 13th. The bestselling book “88 Reasons Why The Rapture Will Be In 1988″ from the quill of Edgar Whisenant eased a load of many a Christian wallet by predicting 11th or 13th of September using a perfectly logical odd-numbers Bible scheme where the numbers that didn’t support him were ignored and explained away over several pages. When his prediction failed, he released another book “The Final Shout, Rapture Report” and the same gullible idiots bought that one too, proving that an idiot never learns and a fool doesn’t deserve to keep his money. Over 90 radio stations advertised the imminent end and caused minor panic in the USA.

1988AD, September 15th, 10:55am. Whisenant’s failed prediction two days prior led to him being adamant that the Rapture would occur on this day and time.

1988AD, October 3rd. Whisenant didn’t know when to quit, gave another date.

1988AD, November. British “witch” Dot Griffiths predicted a world holocaust for this year.

1989AD Charles Taylor’s eleventh.

1989AD In the 1968 book “Guide to Survival”, Salem Kirban used Bishop Ussher’s calculations to discover that God intended the Rapture to be in 1989.

1989AD Oklahoma City’s Southwest Radio Church published a pamphlet in 1978 entitled “Timetable for the 1980s” with all sorts of Christian apocalyptic mythology scheduled. The gap between mythology and reality remained a gap.

1989AD, September 30th. Whisenant gave another date. Also for this date Hart Armstrong, president of Christian Communications, was convinced and would try to convince anyone who’d listen, that this day would be the Rapture.

1990AD Influential Baptist preacher Peter Ruckman got quite a few Baptists in a panic frenzy when he predicted and preached the End Times in 1990.

1990AD Crackpot prophecy writer Kai Lok Chan of Singapore foresaw the Second Coming no later than 1990.

1990AD The book “The Survival of Civilization” by Hamaker & Weaver predicted the end of the civilization in 1990.

1990AD, April 23rd. Elizabeth Clare Prophet, the leader of the Church Universal and Triumphant (www.tsl.org) foresaw the well known nuclear armageddon that happened on this day, and bravely convinced all her followers to sell their worldly goods and move with her to a ranch in Montana, giving her most of their money.

1991AD Fundie author Reginald Dunlop predicted the Rapture this year. Some things never go out of style.

1991AD Louis Farrakhan claimed the Gulf War was the War of Armageddon.

1991AD, March 31st. A pretty crazy Australian cult believed Jesus would walk through Sydney Harbour as he arrived on this day.

1992AD Charles Taylor. ‘Nuff said.

1992AD, April 26th. Doug Clark, mentioned twice already in this list, rambled on Trinity Broadcasting Network’s “Praise The Lord” that World War III would begin within 3 years. He made these claims on April 26th, 1989.

1992AD, April 29th. When the LA race riots broke out after the Rodney King trial, the white supremacist group Aryan Nations thought it was the apocalyptic race war they’d been waiting for. Which just proves that nothing quite makes a man stupid like religion or racism and when you have both, you have real entertainment.

1992AD, September 28th. Dorothy A Miller wrote a rambling tome about the Second Coming arriving on Rosh Hashanah, 1992.

1992AD, September 28th. Deserving of its own entry, Rollen Steward, insane born-again Christian who climbed to his 15 minutes of fame by holding up “John 3:16″ signs at sporting events, was convinced the Rapture would happen on this day. When it inevitably didn’t like any other prediction made by a Christian, he went absolutely insane. He set off stink bombs in churches and bookstores, wrote apocalyptic letters in his one man mission to make people believe in his version of his God. Before his life sentence for kidnapping, that is.

1992AD, October 28th. Yet more Christian crazies in Korea went bonkers in a mass Hyoo-Go (Rapture) movement. One cult, led by Lee Jang Rim, took it even more seriously. Rim was convicted of fraud when his predictions didn’t happen.

1992AD, October 28th. The Mission For The Coming Days cult may have had up to 10,000 members. They gathered in houses and on bridges in over a dozen countries. Any link with Hyoo-Go is unknown, except in membership of the stupid club.

1993AD David Berg, leader of the Children of God, claimed the Second Coming would take place in 1993.

1993AD November 14th. Soviet authorities saved the world by arresting many of the cult members of the Great White Brotherhood, who intended follow Maria Devi Khrystos to Kiev to celebrate God’s ending of the world.

1993AD, December 9th. By adding 51.57 years to the date the UN recognised Israel, then subtracting 7, James T Harmon derived the date of the Rapture. Because the UN is God’s authority on Earth. He also gave 1996, 2012 and 2022 as alternative dates.

1994AD R Riley in “1994: The Year of Destiny” predicted the Rapture. Charles Taylor got one in too. Om Saleem, arabic Christian, prophecised the antichrist coming before 1994, and the Rapture in 1994.Aad Verbeek, Jan Westein and Pier Westein predicted the Second Coming in their book “Time for His Coming”.

1994AD May 2nd. Neal Chase of the Bahá’ís Under the Provisions of the Covenant (where have we heard those before?) claimed New York would be nuked on March 23th and the Battle of Armageddon would take place 40 days later.

1994AD, June 9th. Pastor John Hinkle was told by God that the Apocalypse would take place on this day. God said he’d “Rip the evil out of this world”. When the prophecy failed, Hinkle claimed it’s only the beginning and the happenings are invisible. Either he’s telling falsehoods or God is.

1994AD, July 25th. Brian Marsden announced Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 was on a course to collide with Jupiter. Sister Marie Gabriel Paprocski “prophecised” two months later that a comet would hit Jupiter, causing the “biggest cosmic explosion in the history of mankind”, and bringing an end to Earth. She even got the date wrong, Marsden predicted the comets motion from rather more accurate orbital elements the 16th and, indeed, it ended up bruising Jupiter.

1994AD, September 23rd. Reginald Dunlop claimed that this was the last date “encoded” in the Great Pyramid of Giza, so naturally the world had to end.

1994AD, September 27th. Harold Camping, head of Family Radio in Oakland and host of the station’s Christian talk show, wrote a tome over five hundred pages long explaining why the Tribulation would end on the 6th of September, the Second Coming being on the 27th. He also predicted the 29th and the 2nd of October as being possible and didn’t publish a five hundred page rambling apology when he got it completely wrong.

1995AD Armageddon according to the Watchers In The Wilderness cult. The Second Coming according to J R Church, using his strange Psalms theory.

1995AD, March 31st. Harold Camping’s fourth date. He quit setting dates after this one, but he’s probably still foaming about doom real soon now.

1996AD, James Harmon’s second date.

1996AD, September. Preacher Marvin Byers of Guatemala expected the Second Coming.

1996AD, November. The Second Coming according to the wonderfully named Salty Dok’s book “Blessed Hope 1996″.

1996AD, December 13th. Branch Davidians, what was left of them, predicted the resurrection of David Koresh.

1996AD, December 17th. Magician, psychic and general crank Sheldon Nidle predicted the Earth would be destroyed by millions of space ships. Presumably to make way for a bypass.

1997AD Mary Stewart Relfe spoke to God in her dreams. America “will burn” in 1993 and 1994, followed by the Second Coming in 1997.

1997AD Superdave The Wonderchemist, in a parody of numerology, predicted the end of the world in 1997 through amusing and firmly tongue-in-cheek numerology.

1997AD, April 26th. Robert Wadsworth, editor of “Biblical Astronomy”, creationist, geocentrist, flat-earther and Biblical literalist predicted the beginning of the Tribulation. These people still exist?

1997AD, March. The first really bright comet in nearly 30 years brings with it a wave of hysteria. Richard Michael Schiller widely claimed an asteroid trailing the comet would destroy us all. Then 9 months later. Then maybe not at all, but we’re all dead by the end of 1997 anyway.

1997AD, March 26th Heaven’s Gate cult suicides. They believed a UFO trailing Comet Hale-Bopp would save their souls from Apocalypse. Note the similarity to the above entry? Amateur astronomer and crackpot Chuck Shramek mistook a common star in a photo of the comet he made for a “Saturn-like object” associated with the comet because he had his software set to hide stars fainter than a certain brightness, but his equipment was able to go beyond it – The software did not show the star, but his telescope did. With the help of Art Bell and the Internet, he spread this myth around the world. Computers don’t make mistakes, Chuck Shramek does.

1997AD, May 5th. The Solar System will enter the magical Photon Belt, a mystical energy field floating around in space. Depending on who’s making the claim, we may all die, all become superhuman, be enslaved by aliens…etc. etc. Some crazies still believe we’re doomed by this magical field any time soon, which may or may not include Vogon poetry.

1997AD October. Brother Kenneth Hagin noticed we hadn’t had any Rapture prophecies for a few months, so supplied one for October 1997. How thoughtful.

1997AD, October 11th. Anonymous Internet-based prophet flooded many Usenet newsgroups with a lengthy rant about the Bible, the Equinox and numerology, giving this day as the end of times.

1997AD, October 23rd. 17th century Irish Archbishop James Ussher’s delve into the nonsensical gibberish of the Book of Genesis gave us a Creation date for the world, assuming everyone used to live for exactly 200 years until Yahweh got angry then shortened everyone’s life to exactly 70. 1997 was 6,000 years later so naturally we were all going to die. Religious whackos worldwide made various Armageddoraptureapocalypticsecondcoming predictions for 1997.

1997AD, November 27th. According to the Sacredotal Knights of National Security, a space alien interrogated by the CIA confessed that an alien army would attack Earth. Hyperspace bypass construction would begin shortly afterwards.

1998AD Larry Wilson of “Wake Up America Seminars” predicted the Second Coming around 1998, and between the Tribulation starting in 1994 and the Second Coming, an asteroid would hit Earth.

1998AD The Centro cult in the Philippines predicted the end of the world in 1998.

1998AD Donald Orsden’s book “The Holy Bible – The Final Testament: What is the Significance of 666?” has this gem of perfectly sensible knowledge to share “Take your super computers, you scientists, and feed the number 666 into them. The output will be the proof God gives that 1998 is the year Jesus will take the faithful with him….”. What? He wrote his own one-liner to end the entry with.

1998AD Mental institute escapee (alright, I made that up) Henry Hall wrote a book of very strange religious fundamentalism laced with xenophobia and bigotry. In it, he derides atheists and liberals as the causes of all suffering in the world, while praising Ronald Reagan as the “wisest of all men” or even a messiah, sent by God to supervise the cleansing of Earth. He predicted the Rapture in 1991 and using the reliable method of “666+666+666=1998″ predicted the end in 1998. He was assumably medicated not long after.

1998AD, January 8th. 31 members of the Solar Temple cult, headed by Geman psycho…logist Heide Fittkau-Garth were arrested by police on the island of Tenerife. They were planning a mass suicide because the world would end at 20:00 on that day, but their bodies would be picked up by a space ship and revived.

1998AD, March 8th. An Indian doomsday cult claimed the world would be destroyed by earthquakes on this day, the Indian subcontinent would sink into the ocean and Lord Vishnu would appear on Earth. It’s about time we had some Hindus on the list.

1998AD, March 31st. Hon-Ming Chen of the Taiwanese cult God’s Salvation Church claimed God would appear in a flying saucer at 10:00 on this date. Moreover, God would look exactly like Hon-Ming Chen and would have made an appearance on TV, channel 18, every set in the world. Even those that don’t have a channel 18. He based his cult in Garland, Texas because he thought “Garland” sounded like “God’s Land”. More proof that Texas is filled with crackpots.

1998AD, May 31st. Marilyn Agee, author of several doomsday books proclaimed TWO seperate Raptures in the same sentence! From her “The End of the Age” she, in the midst of very odd Biblical calculations, proclaimed “I expect Rapture I on Pentecost [May 31] in 1998 and Rapture II on the Feast of Trumpets [September 13] in 2007.” Hedging one’s bets is better left to horse racing.

1998AD, May 31st. Tom Stewart’s “1998: The Year of the Apocalypse” agrees with Agee’s prediction.

1998AD, May 31st. Peter Hader, proving that most people have no idea what probability and statistics are, used “Bible Codes” to come up with the date of the Rapture.

1998AD, June 6th. Eli Eshoh (http://www.ishipress.com/worldend.htm) uses all kinds of numeric trickery to show the Rapture took place on this date.

1998AD, June. Marilyn Agee “corrected” her date numerous times. 6th, 7th, 14th, 21st of June and 20th of September are known examples. There are probably more to a granularity of minutes.

1998AD, July 5th. Disappointed that they had no End Times prediction, the Church of the SubGenius (www.subgenius.com, a highly amusing form of Discordianism) decided that the 5th of June was X-Day. Xists from Planet X would arrive in flying, and landing, and swimming, and floating saucers, destroy humanity but only ordained clergy of the SubGenius who’d paid their dues to the Church would be “ruptured” away. When that didn’t happen, the Church made XX-Day in July 5th 1999, where the same would happen again.

1998AD, September 30th. Using Edgar Cayce’s propecies (which worked so well), Kirk Nelson wrote a long tedious book “The Second Coming 1998″

1998AD October 10th. Monte Kim Miller, leader of the Denver cult Concerned Christians, formed his group as he was convinced that the Apocalypse would occur on this date, with Denver the first city to be destroyed. The cult members mysteriously disappeared afterwards; but later resurfaced in Israel, where they were deported on suspicion of planning a terrorist attack at the end of 1999. Miller had also claimed he will die in the streets of Jerusalem in December 1999, to be resurrected three days later.

1998AD, November. Ron Reese had “overwhelming evidence” in his writing that November was the month of the Second Coming. I’m overwhelmed, really.

1998, December 12th. Insane Linda Newkirk (www.prophecies.org) was told by God that “USA will be invaded by Russia, China, an Arab Alliance, and even the UN and NATO. It will take place at around 1:45 AM on this date, and 75 million people will die immediately. Huge cities will be nothing more than potholes. Places like San Francisco will be eradicated immediately. Millions more will die of starvation and all kinds of diseases brought about by chemical, nerve and biological warfare.” When the date passed, the quote vanished from her site and was replaced by drivel about the world ending in 2000, which was a convenient bandwagon. Now the site is blathering some mountain junk. And selling a book.

1999AD George Washington (yes, that one) saw a beautiful woman in a vision, who showed him America being destroyed in 1999, where after it was reduced to ashes and smoke, an angel sprinkled water on he world and peace reigned eternal. This shows that recreational drug use is not a modern thing.

1999AD After a break of a few years, both the Seventh Day Adventists and the Jehovah’s Witnesses claim the end for 1999. They were probably feeling left out of the Y2K bandwagon.

1999AD Astrologer (hehe) Jeane Dixon’s book “The Call To Glory” predicted 1999AD as being the peak of the Antichrist’s power, where Russian armies would capture the Middle East and then obliterate all the coastal cities of the USA with a nuclear strike. The Antichrist, of course, was born on February 5th 1962.

1999AD Edgar Cayce appears again, this time with a pole-shift causing various disasters as well as World War III.

1999AD Charles Berlitz had a little following with his book “Doomsday: 1999 A.D.” where he claimed any one of a number of disasters would strike us in 1999.

1999AD Internet crackpot Dore Williamson, incarnation of Christ, God’s representative on Earth and raving lunatic, claimed the world would end in 1999 repeatedly, due to a biological war started by President Clinton.

http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=ptqubskqmlcksd94c8v5lvug80c6h75jlj%404ax.com

1999AD March 25th. 18 months before, Hal Lindsey on the TV show “International Intelligence Briefing” claimed that Russia would invade Israel within 18 months. Fundamentalist Christians, such as Baptists, Methodists and some Catholics believe that Russia’s invasion of Israel is predicted in the Bible, and will be the Battle of Armageddon. Some Muslims also believe this, though they don’t have a problem with it.

1999AD April 3rd. HJ Hoekstra’s website (sadly no longer online) was perhaps one of the more entertaining of all crackpot websites. He believed we live on the inside of a hollow Earth and used numerology to calculate the Rapture on April 3rd, 1999. Nothing more sinister than this author’s 18th birthday transpired.

1999AD, May 8th. Mass panic in India due to an astrological pamphlet (disguising itself as bona-fide astronomy when it was nothing of the sort) claiming severe natural disasters on this date.

1999AD, May 22nd. Another date from Marilyn Agee.

1999AD, June 20th. Another date from Marilyn Agee.

1999AD, June 30th. The Art Bell radio show has always been a gathering house for fringe lunatics. Charles Moore raved on this show about the Third Secret of Fatima and how the prophecy showed an asteroid would kill us all on the 30th of June.

1999AD, July. Michel Nostradame, 16th century French soothsayer:
The year 1999, seven months,
From the sky will come a great King of Terror:
To bring back to life the great King of the Mongols,
Before and after Mars to reign by good luck.

He’s better known by his latinized name.

1999AD, July. During the weekend of 3-4 July 1999, the Stella Maris Gnostic Church, a Colombian doomsday cult, went into the Sierra Nevada mountains to be picked up by a UFO which will save them from the end of times at the turn of the century. They disappeared and haven’t been seen since. Maybe the UFO did beam them up?

1999AD, July 4th. Some baseless rumour on the Internet (always quoting Nostradame, above) circulated about this being the date of the end.

1999AD, July 5th. Not to be out-done, the Church of the SubGenius held XX-Day on this date. Then predicted XXX-Day in July 2000. The end of the world is an annual event! http://www.subgenius.com/newdevivals.html

1999AD, July 7th. According to Eileen Lakes (http://www.utopia-net.org/English/intro1.html) the world would tip over 90 degrees and give everyone a “water baptism”. After it didn’t she deleted all references to it.

1999AD, July 24th. Popular date for Nostradame’s “King of Terror”.

1999AD, July 28th. Using the clear messages in crop circles, meteor showers, eclipses and Nostradame’s gibberish, Gerald L. Vano confidently predicts the Tribulation, then the destruction of Rome during November.

1999AD, August. The total solar eclipse of this month sparked off quite a few lunatics. The Universal and Human Energy Cult predicted an end in August.

1999AD, August 6th. Branch Davidians believed David Koresh would return 2,300 days after his death. He didn’t.

1999AD, August 11th. During the week between August 11 and August 18 a series of astronomical events took place: the last total solar eclipse of the millennium (Aug 11), the Grand Cross planetary formation (Aug 18), the Perseid meteor shower (Aug 12), the swingby of NASA’s plutonium-bearing Cassini space probe (Aug 17-18), and Comet Lee’s visit to the inner solar system. Add to this the fact that some of these events are taking place before the end of July according to the Julian calendar, and you have a recipe for rampant apocalyptic paranoia. Fashion designer Paco Rabanne claimed that Mir would crash into Paris on August 11. It didn’t. Others said that a monstrous asteroid or comet, previously unseen, would become visible during the eclipse and strike the Earth thereafter. Nothing happened.

1999AD, August 14th. A crackpot website (www.escape666.com, don’t bother, it’s been taken over by squatters, try the Wayback Machine) predicted a comet would hit Earth between the 11th and 14th of August.

1999AD, August 18th. Charles Criswell King, in his 1968 bestseller “Criswell Predicts: From Now to the Year 2000″ claimed the end of time was on this day. He made a lot more predictions in the book too. None of them worked.

1999AD, August 18th. Many alarmists were convinced that the Cassini space probe would crash into the Earth on August 18. Some even went so far as to say it would poison a third of the world’s population with its plutonium, fulfilling the prophecy of Revelation 8:11 concerning a star named Wormwood (“Chernobylnik” is the Ukrainian word for a certain subspecies of the wormwood plant). But as expected, Cassini passed by the Earth just fine and dandy.

1999AD, August 19th. Professor Hideo Itakawa predicted the end of the world.

1999AD, August 24th. Astrologer Valerie James wrote that the configuration of the planets which predicted the coming of Christ will once again happen on August the 24th. She then rambled on using various Astrological sleights and feints to arrive at no real conclusion.

1999AD, September. According to Escape666.com, Nostradamus’s King of Terror was to descend on Earth in September, heralding the beginning of the Tribulation and the Rapture. Escape666 said, regarding Nostradamus’s infamous quatrain 72: “now we know EXACTLY when he meant: SEPTEMBER 1999.” However, as the end of September approached, they changed their date to October 12. We’re submitting the new definition of “EXACTLY” to the Oxford English Dictionary.

1999AD September 3rd. Judgement Day according to the Japanese cult Aum Shinrikyo. Only members of the cult would survive. They did.

1999AD September 9th. “9/9/99″ according to some Y2K doomsayers, would crash computers. Not a single machine crashed.

1999AD, September 11th. Rosh Hashanah 5760 (this date) is the date of the Rapture according to Bonnie Gaunt’s Bible studies.

1999AD, September 11th. Jason Hommel spammed Usenet with claims that the Rapture was to take place on this date, and used a plethora of over-imaginitive numerology and unorthodox scriptural interpretation to arrive at this conclusion. He used the famous “know not the day nor the hour” verse to paradoxically pinpoint the date of the Rapture. But in a bit of honesty rare among doomsayers, Hommel actually admitted he was wrong and apologized “…the associative thought processes that lead one to accomplish rational thinking and figuring were completely absent from this process” and thus making his own witty one-liner to end the entry on.

1999AD, September 11th. Michael Rood also jumped on the Rosh Hashanah bandwagon. He claimed that this day is the first day of the Hebrew calendar year 6001, and after it failed, he changed the date to April 5, 2000. In reality, this day was the first day of 5760, but Michael claimed that there was a mistake in the calendar.

1999AD, September 23rd. Using the ever reliable methods of Nostradame’s writing, the Bible and astrology, Stefan Paulus wrote a book on why a comet would hit earth on this day. What a mix.

1999AD, October. The Korean cult Hyoo-Go (see October 1992) remaining members predicted the demise of us all in October 1999.

1999AD, October. Jack Van Impe, an enthusiastic and highly entertaining utter lunatic, predicted the Rapture and Second Coming.

1999AD, October 12th. Escape666.com rescheduled their King of Terror to this day. Sadly their website was taken over by squatters years ago.

1999AD, November. Wholesale obliteration, according to Richard Kieninger’s 1963 book “The Ultimate Frontier”.

1999AD, November. Kevin Brent Pryor, in a glorious case of absolute raving idiocy, prophecises that Jesus will be reborn in California in the form of a girl called Uni. This is because Jesus’ real birthday is July 4th and Kevin himself was John the Baptist.

1999AD, November 7th. Complete crackpot Richard Hoagland (www.enterprisemission.com) is another of the highly entertaining “People don’t take this seriously, do they?” kook variety of nutcase. He predicted three objects to strike the Earth on this day before moving to more metaphysical quackery involving global conspiracies involving the US and USSR secretly co-operating to hide…Seriously, go visit his website. It’s pure hilarity.

1999AD, November 29th. Dumitru Duduman was told that America would be destroyed on this date, by a vision he recieved in 1996. Those mushrooms are pretty potent.

1999AD, December 6th. Cutting Edge Ministries (www.cuttingedge.org) describe how those evil Illuminati people are planning to kickstart the End Times by crashing Galileo into Jupiter, where physics not of this universe will cause the plutonium of the RTGs will explode like a nuclear bomb, turning Jupiter into a second sun and roasting us all. People, you can’t buy this sort of entertainment.

http://www.cuttingedge.org/news/n1260.cfm

1999AD, December 25th. Second Coming according to Martin Hunter, a doomsayer of little note.

1999AD, December 31st. Hon-Ming Chen’s cult, upon missing their appointment with God’s UFO, relocated to New York and claimed that a nuclear holocaust would destroy Europe and Asia in the final months of 1999.

2000AD (Ohhhh boy) End of the world according to Hal Lindsey (another entry in 1988), Mormons, Madame Blavatsky (founder of Theosophy), Sir Isaac Newton, Ruth Montgomory, Rev. Sun Myung Moon, Edgar Cayce, Ed Dobson’s book, Lester Sumrall’s book, Shoko Ashara’s lectures, Petrus Olvi (in 1297!), Sun Bear (an American mystic), Jonathan Edwards (an 18th Century fire and brimstone preacher), William Kamm (aka Little Pebble, leader of Australian doomsday cult), Texe Marrs (Fundamentalist conspiracy theorist), The Convulsionaries (18th century French radical sect), Timothy Dwight (President of Yale University), Martin Luther (changed it to 1600 from 2000), Sukyo Mahikari (Japanese cult), Ca Van Lieng’s Vietnamese cult (Shame they comitted mass suicide in October 1993)…and many, many others.

2000AD January 1st. Planes fell from the sky, as did Jesus, Clinton declared himself US dictator, Nuclear missiles flew, civilisation collapsed, the tax rate doubled and Barry Manilow sang in concert. One of these terrifying events actually did happen.

2000AD In 1917, the Virgin Mary appeared to three children in Portugal. She claimed Satan would rule the world in the year 2000. Call Clinton whatever you like, but Satan?

2000AD The End of Days according to many Mormons, but the splinter group Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints pulled their kids out of school and prepared for the big day in a big way.
http://archives.cnn.com/2000/US/09/12/polygamists.schools.ap/ is in reference to it, but seems to ramble more about polygamy than it does about the subject at hand.

2000AD January 1st. Very old computers stored the date with two digits, so would believe 2000 was 1900. This “Y2K bug” was to bring civilization to its knees. But it didn’t, because any old systems that would be affected by it were simply replaced by modern equipment. This didn’t stop fools from being parted from their money by people selling “survival kits”, analogous to the “comet pills” of 1910.

2000AD January 1st. Christian apocalyptists House of Prayer expected Christ to descend onto Mount Olive on this day. The Israeli government deported them all.

2000AD January 1st. Philippine cult Tunnels of Salvation dug a warren of tunnels where their leader, Cerferino Quinte stockpiled a year’s supplies for 700 people. Bet they looked a sight on the 1st of 2001.

2000AD January 1st. Jerry Falwell: “God may be preparing to confound our language, to jam our communications, scatter our efforts, and judge us for our sin and rebellion against his lordship. We are hearing from many sources that January 1, 2000, will be a fateful day in the history of the world.” This, people, is what happens when you take history lessons from the Bible. For what it’s worth, he was refering to Yahweh’s destruction of the Tower of Babel and confounding of languages. Apparently nobody told him that Alexander the Great destroyed the Tower of Babel a few centuries later because it was nearing collapse and Alexander wanted a bigger tower in his own honour.

2000AD January 16th. Dr. Marion Derlette, a religious scholar, claimed the world was to end on this day following a series of natural and manmade disasters starting in 1997.

2000AD February 29th. This day was the exception to the exception to the four year leap-day rule, so Y2K Bug types were hoping that maybe some programmers didn’t account for it. Nothing happened.

2000AD March. The Rapture took place in March 2000, three and half years after the Second Coming, according to Marvin Byers. Just so you all know.

2000AD April 5th. Michael Rood’s September 11th 1999 prediction was rescheduled by him to this date.

2000AD April 6th. Second Coming according to the Church of Jesus Christ of Saints of The Last Days, a Mormon sect.

2000AD May 5th. Richard Noone, archaeologist and crackpot claimed in his book “5/5/2000 Ice: The Ultimate Disaster” that ice was building up in Antarctica and would “unbalance” the world, and the planetary alignment that took place over 1999-2001 was centred on this date, so the Earth would tip up and ice would come crashing down on all the continents. Because that’s how gravity works, duh.

2000AD May 5th. Being the date of the closest conjunction, most of the planets appeared quite close to each other in the sky. Many crackpots made up all kinds of ideas about this one.

2000AD May 9th. Toshio Hiji, having analyzed the ramblings of Nostradame, announced that the world would flood on this date. As if his predicted alien attack on October 3rd 1999 wasn’t enough.

2000AD June. A Ugandan cult “World Message Last Warning Church” claimed the end was ready to come in June. After they changed it from 1999.

2000AD June 10th. Marilyn Agee’s ninth Rapture date.

2000AD August 20th. Marilyn Agee’s tenth Rapture date.

2000AD July 5th. XXX-Day from the Church of The SubGenius. “THIS time there WILL be saucers!”

2000AD September 17th. A bunch of questionably sane pyramidologists derived this date as the end of times or whatever based on the dimensions of the Great Pyramid of Giza.

2000AD September 19th. Phil Stone expects his self-named “Coastlands Disaster” to happen on or around this date. He took his reasoning from that great bastion of truth and accuracy, you guessed it, the Bible.

2000AD September 29th. Jewish cult Love The Jew claimed the world would end on Rosh Hashanah, when Russia decides to nuke everyone.

2000AD October. Elizabeth Joyce, crackpot, fraud, insane woman and purveyor of far too many words (http://new-visions.com) said, in hundreds of words, that nuclear war was to happen in October 2000. She’s predicted so many different things that it’s hard to keep up. The Sun splitting into two was one of my personal favourites.

2000AD October 9th. Christian prophet Grant Jeffrey considered this date as “termination point for the last days”.

2000AD December 31st. After Joseph Kibweteere’s first doomsday prediction a year earlier failed, 600 members of the Ugandan Movement for the Restoration of the Ten Commandments of God cult sealed themselves in a church and burned it down, them inside, on March 17th 2000. Most people prefer to roast lesser life forms only before eating them.

2001AD May 5th The New Age doomsday cult Aquarian Concepts Community in Arizona gave this date as the last possible date for everyone except them to die.

2001AD May 28th. Marilyn Agee quit trying to predict the Rapture and moved on to the Tribulation.

2001AD July. End of the world according to the Seventh-Day Adventists.

2001AD July 5th. XXXX Day.

2001AD September 11th. Strange omission from our prophetic community, don’t you think? This didn’t stop post-hoc prophets from claiming they predicted it in the following months, presumably to cash in on a morbid bandwagon.

2001AD September 18th. A Rosh Hashanah Rapture by the King of Doomsayers, Charles Taylor.

2001AD November 3rd. Marilyn Agee gives us another Rapture prediction. She’s competing with Charles Taylor.

2001AD December 19th. Yet abother Marilyn Agee date, this time the Tribulation starting on this day.

2001AD Pyramidologist Georges Barbarin used the Great Week concept to predict Christ’s Millennium in 2001.

2001AD The Unarius Academy of Science, a quasi-religious cult, believed “Space brothers” were going to land their UFOs in California. When they didn’t, the cult responded that Earth isn’t ready so they went home. Presumably to smoke a blunt with their spaced brother homies.

2001AD Islamic numerologist Tynetta Muhammad claimed 2001 would be the year for Allah to end his little game.

2002AD, April 4th. Another website that has to be seen to be believed. Mike Keller, the same one who claimed Y2K would bring Martial Law to the USA, then claimed some “doomsgate” would open half a second before midnight, Israeli time, then followed immediately by the Second Coming then nuclear war.

http://www.zianet.com/titanic/option%201.htm#option1

2002AD The Church Universal and Triumphant cult leader Elizabeth Clare Prophet claimed 2002 was the end of the world, after the 12 year nuclear war that ended in 2002.

2002AD July 5th 5X Day.

2002AD July 19th. Marilyn Agee’s n-th rapture prediction.

2003AD, May 5th. Nuwaubian cult, in Georgia, believed a UFO would drop by to beam up true believers.

2003AD May 13th. Nancy Lieder of ZetaTalk.com believed some Planet-X would pass by Earth this day causing a pole-shift. Later she got all mythologically inclined, renaming her planet “Nibiru”, publishing Galileo images of Jupiter’s moon Io as her “Nibiru”, and generally losing the plot entirely.

2003AD May 15th Pana Wave, a Japanese cult (and the inspiration for Lieder’s nonsense) believed a 10th planet would pass Earth on this date, doing the same thing.

2004AD July 5th 6X Day.

2004AD Taoist prophet Ping Wu believed that major world events in 1999 would lead to WWIII in 2000 followed by a rebirth from the ashes in 2004.

2004AD Pyramidologist AT Mann predicted the end of times within three years of 2004, earlier or later.

2005AD October 18th. Beginning of Christ’s Millennium according to Tom Stewart’s “1998: Year of the Apocalypse”.

2006AD An atomic holocaust started by Syria was to take place between the years 2000 and 2006, according to Michael Drosnin’s book The Bible Codes (O’Shea p.178). Here’s an excerpt from Drosnin’s masterpiece: “I checked ‘World War’ and ‘atomic holocaust’ against all three ways to write each Hebrew year for the next 120 years. Out of 360 possible matches for each of the two expressions, only two years matched both – 5760 and 5766, in the modern calendar the years 2000 and 2006. Rips later checked the statistics for the matches of ‘World War’ and ‘atomic holocaust’ with those two years and agreed that the results were ‘exceptional.’”

2006AD, September 12. A Kenyan cult calling itself “The House of Yahweh” believed the world was to end in a conflict between the USA and North Korea becoming the Battle of Armageddon. Mosheh Sang took his followers into a cave and blamed a difference in time zones for the war not starting. “Yahweh” is the stated name of the featured deity in the Old Testament/Torah.
This cult is a worldwide thing, but it seems only the Kenyan sect held doomsday beliefs. They were founded in Abilene, Texas according to their website (www.yahweh.com) which just proves yet again that no good can come from Texas.

2007AD September 13. More Rapturous Marilyn Agee Prophecies. With an asteroid this time.

2010AD End of the world according to the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. (www.golden-dawn.org)

2012AD, December 21st/23rd. According to some early scholars who discovered fragments of the Mayan calendar, it all came to an abrupt end on the 21st or 23rd of December 2012. However, that’s about it. Ancient cultures weren’t too good with numbers and most of their calendars eventually ended and we know very little about the Mayans since when the Christians “converted” them (the conversion being mostly from “living” to “not living”), they burned pretty much every written record. What we do know is summarised as the whole span of time being “Long Count” and each calendar being a “Great Cycle” since every few hundred years the calendar ran out and had to be reset to zero. There were five of these Great Cycles and each ended with some mythological disaster, such as the end of the first the whole world being eaten by a jaguar. In 2012, the fifth and last will expire, according to some generous “interpretations” of ancient timekeeping.
That’s pretty much the end of the story. The cosmological “event” (there’s no known astronomical event that matches) according to the Mayans would happen every 25,800 years, so it’s already happened to Earth 150,000 times already and the last six of those times were within human history.
A moderately successful disaster movie in 2009 “chronicled” the event and sparked even more madness.

2012AD James T Harmon’s second.

~2020AD Saint Malachy prophecised that there would only be 112 more Popes after 1143. Pope Benedict XIV is the 111th. The last Pope will be named Peter of Rome.

2022AD James T Harmon’s third.

2033AD Doomsayers whose 2000 predictions didn’t work are starting to target 2033, the 2000th anniversary of the Crucifixion.

2060AD In 1704, Sir Isaac Newton penned a curious letter based on Biblical numerology, verses in the Book of Daniel and the principles of alchemy to predict that the world would end in 2060. He did not give a method, nor is one suspected to be behind his madness. Newton, like many of his time, believed that all metals were the same base substance and should be able to be transmuted from one form to another, the principles of Alchemy, turning base metals to gold.

Now led by B-list actress and fringe lunatic Jenny McCarthy, “Antivax” has become a spiritual movement rivalling Scientology for lawsuit hilarity and anti-truth beliefs.

It’d be easy to go light on them and point to a simple misunderstanding fifty years ago or something like that, but it’s not possible. The whole thing started, simply, as fraud.

In 1990, a crooked researcher falsified some data to publish a strong correlation between the MMR vaccine with autism. Why? Wakefield never told anyone, but the fact he was taking money from malpractice lawyers who were suing vaccine makers may be relevant.

The “autism link” just wouldn’t go away, even after numerous follow-up studies failed to find any correlation. Eventually someone pointed out that thimerosal, a preservative used in vaccine preparation, contained mercury and the whole thing went to hell. This reached a crescendo in 1999 and doctors asked the pharmaceutical industry to replace thimerosal, which they did.

This is taken as solid proof by the anitivax faithful that something, somewhere was wrong.

It breaks down into two facets. First is the mercury containing thimerosal, surely this has to be harmful in some way, right? Mercury is toxic stuff! However, toxicity is all about the chemistry. For example, chlorine was used as a poison gas in the first world war, yet you have no problem using table salt, which contains extremely high levels of chlorine – 60.7% by mass to be precise, with the other 39.3% being sodium, a flammable alkali metal which catches fire on contact with water.

With mercury again it is the chemical form of it which is important. Thimerosal contains ethyl mercury, while the toxic form is methyl mercury. The difference is that methyl mercury is soluble in fats and tends to accumulate in the body, where ethyl mercury is not soluble in fat, doesn’t accumulate and is rapidly excreted.

If thimerosal is so harmless, then, why did they remove it in 1999? This is the second facet of the antifax faithful’s argument. Doctors were scared of a health-craze meaning babies wouldn’t get their immunisations – They feared it would (and, sadly, eventually did) mean dead babies.

The antivax cult was without a leader, a charismatic high priest, until the early 2000s when Jenny McCarthy’s child was diagnosed with autism. Immediately she went, to a word, batshit insane. Not a scientist and without any healthcare background, she saw the fraudulent 1990 study and blamed anyone, everyone, who made vaccines for her kid’s autism. The cult snapped up their new messiah without delay and there you have it today, busy killing babies to further their agenda.

An eight minute long video titled “Muslim Demographics” warns Europe that Islam will take control of the whole place. Now usually, right wing fearmongering has little truth in it so let’s take a look.

90% of population growth in Europe over the last 20 years has been Muslim immigration.
There’s the claim, what’s the reality? The reality, according to EU statistics, is that the 90% figure is accurate for all immigration. 90% of Europe’s population growth comes from immigration but Muslims are only a small percentage of that immigration.
Truth 0, Lie 1

30% of everyone aged 20 or below in France are Muslim
According to the video, a typical French family has 1.8 children while French Muslims have 8.1 children. The video gives no source and the French national office of statistics does not collect statistics by religion. It would appear this claim is plain invented. The main source of French immigration is Morocco (as well as Algeria) but their fertility rates hover around 2.4 (UN estimate, 2008). No nation on Earth, not even Islamic republics like Saudi Arabia or Iran, have that kind of fertility rate
Truth 0, Lie 2

France will be an Islamic republic within 39 years
Correlated with the last claim, neither method nor reason is given for this one. Again, it would appear to be simply made up.
Truth 0, Lie 3

Half of all newborns in the Netherlands are Muslim, making half the entire population Muslim in 15 years
According to the Dutch Office of Statistics, Muslims are 5% of all Dutch. Now according to my working here, this means that Dutch Muslim women have to have a birth rate fifteen times the national fertility rate, which is 1.9. This means that every Dutch Muslim woman has thirty children! This is obviously completely invented. Assuming a woman starts at 16 and has menopause at 45, she can possibly have 38 children if she’s always pregnant. So unless every Muslim woman in the Netherlands is constantly pregnant, this claim cannot be even close to accurate.
Truth 0, Lie 4

A quarter of all Belgians are Muslim
The actual figure is 6%.
Truth 0, Lie 5

British Muslim population has grown thirty times over in the last 30 years
This claim is that the Muslim population has doubled every year, from 82,000 to 2.5 million. The 2001 census had 1.6 million Muslims so I don’t think 2.5 million is unreasonable. But 82,000 thirty years ago? The 1981 census had no question on religion but a baseline minimum can be taken from it: Immigrants who were born in Pakistan or Bangladesh numbered 300,000. This is, of course, not at all close to every Muslim in 1981, most would estimate closer to 700,000. Using the firm figure from the 2001 census and the estimate of 700k from 1981, the Muslim population has just over doubled in 20 years, hardly a great rate of growth.
Truth 0, Lie 6

“The fall in German population can no longer be stopped. Its downward spiral is no longer reversible. It will be a Muslim state by the year 2050.” – Walter Radermacher, vice president of the German Federal Statistics Office.
Radermacher indeed said the first two sentences. He did not say the third.
Truth 0, Lie 7

The German government believes the numbers of Muslims in Europe will double to 104 million
The German government believes no such thing and population projection isn’t terribly exact. 1930s models of British population gave us 20 million by 2000, yet we actually numbered 60 million.
Truth 0, Lie 8

The truth of this matter is that Muslim birthrates have been falling for some time now. Increased education access among Muslim women, especially in Europe, and their acceptance of the social standards and mores of Europe has meant that (as with all immigrants) the Muslim birthrate in Europe is almost identical to that of their host nation. Even in Arabic countries, births among women under 20 are plummeting as more women take education and take employment.

Islamic countries are indeed experiencing a drop in fertility rates, but another shift is going on. Remember how 90% of all Europe’s population growth is from immigration and that most European countries have a fertility rate of only 1.8 or so? A stable population needs a fertility rate of 2.1 (one child to replace each parent, and an extra tenth to cover infertility or infant mortality) and so the population of Europe is actually expected to decline a little by 2050. Women are holding careers, more of them are reaching menopause without any children at all. Britain’s population is expected to be around 55 million by 2050, then remaining steady. And no, they won’t all be Muslim, the Muslim population is also expected to remain steady at a mere 5%, slightly up from the 2.6% it was in the 2001 census.

A child in a local school (which is bam next to my girlfriend’s place) has been diagnosed with the H1N1 “swine flu” and so the local talk is of panic.

The facts, however, don’t add up that well. Almost all cases of H1N1 are no different to seasonal flu which goes around every winter (also a strain of H1N1). Of those who get it bad enough to seek medical care, the fatality rate is 0.5%. That’s one in two hundred. So far only 17 people in the UK have died from it.

We don’t know how many people have had swine flu in the UK, the latest estimate is 40,000. There have been 10,000 confirmed (via laboratory testing) cases and due to the mildness of the virus, we estimate that only one in fifty people seek medical care and of those, half of them don’t even know they have had it!

17 people died, 40,000 were infected (likely a huge underestimate) giving a combined fatality rate of 0.0004% or 1 in 2,400. This is less than the fatality rate of common seasonal flu. Someone infected with swine flu is more likely to die from other causes (such as a road accident, a home accident, another disease) this year than they are from swine flu and this is someone already infected.

It has to be stressed that swine flu is not a very dangerous flu. Most people who get it simply stay off work for a few days with a “head cold” or “sneezes” and never even know they’ve had swine flu.

So why all the media coverage? Mostly because it’s a pandemic, which means its spreading very rapidly. Other than that, swine flu is a very mild flu. It evolves (“mutates” if you’re a creationist) slowly, doesn’t attack the respiratory system as much as other flus do and all it’s really good at is spreading itself.

There’s been a lot said lately about generating your own power at home and so it’s time to do an analysis. The average home uses about 3,500 kWh per year (purely electricity – add gas and you get to 4,500 to 5,000). One kWh is enough energy to run a device needing one kilowatt (such as a kettle or a microwave) for one hour or a device needing half a kilowatt for two hours and so on. The going rate is £0.15 per kWh.

Wind Turbines

The basic idea is spin a rotor in the wind via a gearbox to an electrical generator. £1,100 (including a 30% grant) gets you a 1,000 watt turbine (A Windsave WS1000) with a rotor length of just over four feet – quite imposing (and noisy) on a mast. They need 20 mph winds to even start and cannot operate with winds over 55 mph. Peak efficiency is usually at 40 mph. For ours, the manufacturer claims it will provide 500 kWh per year.

The average wind speed for most parts of Britain is merely 20 mph and to make matters worse, wind turbines operate at the cube of the wind speed, doubling speed gets you 3x the energy. As 20 is half of 40, most wind turbines in Britain, certainly residential, would operate at a third of their design efficiency over the course of an arbitrary length of time.

Now if we take the manufacturer’s 500 kWh figure (usually a very optimistic sum) and work out what we’d get if it were running constantly at peak efficiency:
8,760 hours in a year
Generation rate of 1 kW
Peak possible of 8,760 kWh.
Actual generation 500 kWh
Efficiency is then 5.7% which is about right for an urban or suburban area (winds are very poor due to buildings causing drag). An exposed hilly area will do substantially better, but shorten the life of the turbine accordingly. The manufacturer says the turbine is good for 10 years, so we’ll use that figure to see how much money we save.

Most people pay an average of £0.15 per kWh, so if we make 5,000 kWh over the life of the unit, we’ve made £750 worth of electricity. However, we paid £1,100 for the unit! The net loss is £350 over ten years, or £35 per year. Put another way, each kWh made by the wind turbine has cost £0.22, or 68% more than the going rate. To say that’s a bad deal is putting it lightly.

A wind turbine is just like adding £35 a year to your energy bill!

Solar Photovoltaic Panels

Solar panels have been around forever, usually living in desk calculators. They’ve gotten a bit better over the years, so let’s take a look at one. For £874 we can get a 150wp panel capable of 9.72 amps in full sunlight (at just over 15 V). An overcast day, but still bright enough for shadows, will net us just under half that, about 4 amps. Of course direct sunlight isn’t always possible (the sun moves!) and the sun is weaker when it is lower in the sky. On a partially cloudy day, many solar panels operate above their maximum rating, since clouds are brighter than blue sky, so light from the clouds and sunlight combines.

Crunching the numbers, however, shows a sad tale. 15 hours a day is too dark for a solar panel to work in Britain. For 40% of the time, we’re clouded out – I’ll assume the panel operates at 25% efficiency to account for light cloud and heavy cloud. The remaining 60% of the time I’ll consider the panel works at peak efficiency.

So, we have 8760 hours in a year, we have to subtract 5,475 of those as too dark, giving us 3,285 hours to work with. 40% of those hours are only 25% effective, so we can divide them by four to simplify the mathematics.

3285 – 1314 = 1971
1971 + (1314/4) = 2,299.5; Call it 2,300.

We have the equivalent of 2,300 hours of full sunlight over the course of a year. It’s a huge overestimate, since it doesn’t at all account for the sun being lower in winter or the panel not being able to track the sun, but it’ll do.

At 10 amps and 15V (15V DC is normal), we are back to our 150 W rating for the panel, which gives us a grand total over a year of 345 kWh. That’s even worse than our wind turbine managed and we used extremely optimistic assumptions. The solar panel would provide us with £51.75 of energy per year, so taking an ungodly seventeen years to pay back what it cost to buy, which isn’t even including price for an inverter (so you can actually use the thing!) or fitting, all of which could very easily bump the cost to beyond that of the wind turbine above. The only saving grace is that a solar panel could well last upwards of 20 years, so produding a profit of about £160 if it is not replaced.

Just for the fun of it, if this panel were in direct sunlight constantly (e.g. on a spacecraft) it would make 1,320 kWh per year or about a third of your total electricity demand for that year. It would also make £197 worth of electricity per year, so paying for itself in just four years and five months. Sadly we are yet to get personal space programmes.

A solar panel is a bit better in terms of price effectiveness than a wind turbine, even in Britain, but only in the very long term. Will you really be using the same out-dated solar panel in twenty years time? You won’t be. If we replace it ten years down the line, we’ve only made 3450 kWh out of it, working out to be £517. The solar panel over ten years has cost £357, representing almost exactly the same as the wind turbine: £35.70 more on your electric bill every year.

Solar Thermal

For £2,000 you can install a system which would provide half of your hot water. You use around a third of your total household energy budget each year for heating water, which works out to be around 4,500 kWh (electricity and gas combined) – hence 1,500 kWh per year is used to heat water.

An indirect solar water heater can provide 40% to 50% of all hot water you’ll need, so we’ll take the 50% figure – 750 kWh per year. In 2008, British Gas customers paid £0.073 per kWh of gas. 750 kWh costs, then, £54.75 (which jives well with the yearly energy that most people use to heat water of £120).

Our solar thermal heater saves us £55 (we’ll round up) per year. Or, put another way, it will take over thirty six years to pay itself back. For our ten year comparison, the solar thermal heater generates 7,500 kWh which certainly improves on the figures for wind and solar electrical, but then the thing cost us twice as much! It saved us £550, but cost us £2000 per year, resulting in a net cost of £1,450 or £145 per year. That’s awful!

You know what else can cut your energy use in half for hot water? A £12 jacket around your hot water tank. That saves the same £55 per year, but pays itself back in under three months! The same calculations done, we’d save 7,500 kWh (which costs £550) and spent just £12, a net SAVING of £53.8

Is There Hope For Us Yet?

The bottom line, then, is that you need something capable of at least 300 watts for at least 6 hours per day (1.8 kWh per day or 660 kWh per year) and costing no more than £500. Does such a thing exist?

No. Unless you can get huge amounts of subsidy (and you can’t, the best is a 30% grant, we’d need closer to 70%) then microgeneration is extremely bad fiscal sense. It isn’t “green” due to the materials used to make these things essentially going to waste, it’s basically setting twenty pound notes on fire.

Until we get systems paying themselves back in the ten year timeframe, microgeneration is a fad. A dangerous waste of resources fad.

In summary:

Method         Cost per year (10 years)
Wind           £35
Photovoltaic   £36
Solar Thermal  £145
Tank jacket    £-54