- We’ll all be dead soon, you just wait.
It’s all over! The world is coming to an end, any minute now!
Any minute now…
Well, we’re all still here, despite the probably thousands of predictions of the imminent end times. While you might think anyone prophesizing about doomsday is a looney, some predictions are decidedly more bizarre than others.
Well, we at Oddee did what we do best and put them together for your amusement. Here are seven strange prophecies about the end of days that quite obviously didn’t come to pass.
7. Stöffler’s Flood (1524)
In his almanac, written in 1499, German astronomer Johannes Stöffler predicted that great changes would take place on February 20, 1524. As the Earth would be in the sign of Pisces, at the time, he suggested the events might appear as flooding.
Public pamphlet printers seized upon Stöffler ideas and created what’s possibly the earliest example of a media frenzy. People flew into a total panic, with documents from the time showing that boat sales skyrocketed before the prophesied date.
One German governor even took a page from the Bible and constructed a giant ark (or at least that’s what records claim). This all happened despite Stöffler himself stating that he never meant to say the world would end.
Then, February 20 came — and it started raining. The shower passed soon, though, and the weather for the rest of the day was reportedly pretty nice.
6. The Egg Prophecy (1806)
In 1806, a miracle happened in the city of Leeds, England. A chicken owned by one Mary Bateman laid three eggs bearing the inscription “Christ is coming.”
People found that a bit unsettling, to say the least. People convinced that the world was ending flocked to Bateman to see the eggs, ready to pay the penny per visitor that Bateman was asking for.
However, when the Prophet Hen of Leeds (as the chicken came to be called) was moved elsewhere, it stopped laying the prophetic eggs. It turned out that Bateman had used a corrosive ink to write the messages herself.
She had then, uh… Shoved the eggs back into the chicken so it would seem like the poor bird laid them.
5. The Southcott Cult (1813)
Mary Bateman didn’t have to look far for gullible people worried about the doomsday, as she was part of the weird cult surrounding Joanna Southcott. The self-professed “Woman of the Apocalypse” claimed she heard the voice of God predicting future events.
Unsurprisingly, most of them had to do with doom and destruction, such as famines in 1799 and 1800. Well, the famines never happened, but Southcott didn’t let that stop her.
Finally, in 1813, she proclaimed that although she was a virgin, she had become pregnant, despite being 62 years old. The next year, she stated, she would give birth to a second Messiah who would bring about the world’s end.
And then she died a few weeks later. Oh, and she was never pregnant.
4. Halley’s Comet Craze (1910)
Halley’s Comet passes Earth every 72-80 years and has been observed for at least 2,000 years. In 1910, however, things were supposed to be different, thanks to advances in science that detected cyanogen gas in the comet’s tail.
French astronomer Camille Flammarion predicted that the gas would “impregnate the atmosphere,” potentially wiping out all life on Earth. It had never done so before, but hey — this time…
People in the U.S. and elsewhere freaked out, to say the least. They began panic-buying anything to survive the upcoming gaseous doom, from gas masks to bottled clean air, “anti-comet” pills, and umbrellas that were somehow supposed to protect them.
One group in Oklahoma even tried to sacrifice a virgin to save the world before the authorities stopped them.
Well, Halley’s Comet passed Earth in 1910 like it always has and there was no horrible gas catastrophe.
3. Clarion Call (1954)
In 1953, Chicago housewife Dorothy Martin began claiming he was receiving telepathic messages from Planet Clarion (whatever that is). She said a flood would destroy the world on December 21, 1954, but the faithful would be carried to Clarion on a flying saucer.
Martin’s prophecy attracted enough followers that she founded a religious movement called the Seekers. She urged them to show their faith by giving away all their possessions, relationships, and jobs in the face of the doomsday.
Then the prophesied date rolled around and nothing happened. But here’s the kicker — up to a third of the Seeker membership actually consisted of reporters and psychologists who wanted to study how the real faithful would deal with the botched prophecy.
Their findings were published in the book When Prophecy Fails. However, the researchers’ methods have been criticized for influencing the Seekers and fueling their apocalyptic fervor.
2. God on TV (1998)
Hon-Ming Chen is a Taiwanese-born professor who moved to the U.S. in 1997. Despite having been a self-professed atheist, Chen fell in with various religious groups until he founded his own.
That’s because he claimed to have received a revelation that God himself would appear on TV. On March 31, the Almighty would make his television debut on Channel 18.
If you watched TV on that date, though, you may have noticed a significant lack of heavenly broadcasting. Chen’s group, called the Chen Tao or True Way, fell apart shortly afterward.
You can’t blame Chen for not owning up to his mistakes, though — he admitted he had misinterpreted God’s signs and offered to be crucified or stoned to death for his folly. Fortunately, nobody seemed interested in doling out the punishment.
1. Pat Robertson’s Endless Prophecies (1982, 2006, 2010)
The late Pat Robertson was a lot of things. He was a media magnate, a Southern Baptist minister, an ultra-conservative firebrand, a 1988 presidential candidate, and a serial doomsday prophet.
Oh yes, the man loved to predict the end of days.
First, there was supposed to be “judgment on this world” by the end of 1982. That didn’t happen, so he pushed the doomsday back to 2006 when tsunamis were supposed to devastate America for its sins.
Well, there were no tsunamis. So, in 2008, Robertson stated 2010 would be a year of an American stock market crash and “a year of worldwide violence.”
That’s vague enough that somebody could claim it came true. Then again, the Great Recession kicked off in 2008, so he was still a couple of years late.