7 times people thought the world was going to end

Jean Philippe Arles/Reuters

• People thought Halley's Comet would crash into Earth in 1910.
• Various conspiracy theorists and religious leaders have incorrectly predicted the date of the Rapture.
• People thought the world would end when the Mayan calendar "ended" on December 21, 2012.
• So far, no theories or predictions about how the world will end have proven true.

Thankfully, no conspiracy theories or predictions about how and when the world would end have proven true so far, though many have caught our attention worldwide. But many people still find doomsday predictions intriguing, even if they don't really believe that a hidden alien planet is going to crash into Earth and herald the apocaplyse. 

Here are seven times that theories about the world ending became the subject of public fascination and pop culture.

French astronomer Camille Flammarion thought that Halley's Comet would "snuff out" all life in 1910.

Professor Edward Emerson Barnard/Wikimedia Commons/Public Domain

The Library of Congress reports that mass hysteria branded Halley's Comet "the evil eye of the sky" in 1910, prompting the sales of anti-comet pills and gas masks in the event that it hit the planet and triggered an apocalyptic explosion. It harmlessly passed between Earth and the sun in May of that year.

A "periodic" comet that appears about every 75 years, it passed by again in 1986 and is slated to return in 2061.

 

Chen Hong-min founded the Chen Tao movement, deemed himself a prophet, and said that God would appear on channel 18 on March 31, 1998.

Ron Heflin/AP

The founder and leader of the Taiwanese religious group Chen Tao (meaning "True Way") moved to Garland, Texas, where he said God would appear and bring him and his followers away in spaceships disguised as clouds on March 31, 1998, according to Encyclopedia Britannica. He also said that God would appear on channel 18 to announce this plan on March 25.

When that didn't happen, he said at a news conference that his predictions "can be considered nonsense," AP reported.

The "Y2K bug" caused widespread concern that computers around the world would fail and cause the collapse of civilization in 2000.

Lee Jae Won/Reuters

Stores sold Y2K emergency kits with nonperishable food before New Years Day in 2000, when people thought computers that operated government records, utility systems, banks, and anything containing some kind of computer chip would crash and cause apocalyptic chaos. 

According to Encyclopedia Britannica, about $300 billion was spent upgrading computer systems to withstand the supposed millennium bug. While it didn't prove necessary, it did result in better computer systems.

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from Business Insider https://read.bi/2sJrRJz