Apocalypse When?!: Three Times The World Was Supposed to End (Patreon)

If you ask the top scientists of the world, this baby is going down in 7.6 billion years. If you ask a Christian, Jew, or Muslim, the end of the world is coming when God says it is. If you ask some crazy people, it's going to happen on ________. People have long been predicting the end of the world- and many of us experienced the 2012 end of the Mayan Calendar craze first-hand. But what about other times the world was supposed to end? Here's 3.

1) DOROTHY MARTIN   AND   THE  SEEKERS (DEC. 21ST 1955)

Dorothy Martin, a 56 year old housewife living in Illinois, attracted hundreds of followers. She believed that aliens from the planet Clairon had been sending messages about a flood set to destroy earth. Many of her followers began giving away their possessions and quitting their jobs, preparing for the impending apocalypse. They gathered on December 21st at her home in Oak Park, Illinois, singing Christmas carols... and started getting impatient in the wee hours of the morning. Apparently, they were waiting on a flying saucer to gather them before the flood could start. At 4:45 AM, Martin announced that God was impressed by their noble actions and would not destroy the Earth. After the failure of the prediction, she left Chicago after being threatened with arrest and involuntary commitment. She later founded the Association of Sananda and Sanat Kumara in California. The whole debacle inspired the theory of cognitive dissonance. Read about it here.

2. THE MILLERITES (MARCH 4TH, 1843)

Former farmer William Miller was sure that the world was about to end when he began warning the masses that Jesus would return to earth in March 1843. He came to this conclusion after intense mathematical and biblical study. His fanatic ideas rose to prominence during the 2nd Great Awakening, in which Americans were fighting tooth and nail for salvation (or to at least feel like they were on the road there). Historians estimate that 1 million people received his apocalypse message through sermons and pamphlets... and around 100,000 followed him. As March 1843 closed in, many followers gave away their possessions and began donning white robes. Many sat and waited on mountain tops, hills, and roofs so that they could easily be raptured away. Nothing happened and the date was pushed back to October 1844. You can guess what happened next.

3. Y2K (2000)

If you're reading this website, you were alive when the Y2K scare was happening- but maybe too young to understand it. The idea that computer codes would crash and glitch in the year 2000 was so prominent that the US government and American corporations spent 108.8 billion dollars to fix computer software and ensure a safe new year. People were terrified that planes would fall out of the sky, the internet would swallow small children, and that nuclear bombs would detonate. In the end? A few credit card terminals were upset in Britain and some people received bills for the year 1900.