By Brian Hodges - (The homeless guy who lives in the woods behind our office)

By now, everyone knows that the Mayan calendar is set to end in 2012, which means either A) the world is going to end or B) Roland Emmerich will get to destroy even more famous buildings in yet another over-the-top doomsday movie.

But lest you be freaking out over the possibility of option A, rest assured, we’ve been here before. Here are some of the standouts in come-and-gone apocalyptic predictions.

2800 B.C.

The world was only 1,000 years old for Pete’s sake (at least according to Young Earth Creationists) and already the end was near! According to an inscription on an almost 5,000-year-old Assyrian tablet, society was in moral decay with all signs pointing toward the world “speedily coming to an end.”

The doomsday prediction likely came as a result of Assyrian Idol being the number one show seven years running. But that’s just one man’s guess.

January 1, 1000 A.D.

When it comes to apocalyptic theories, the various sects of Christianity have been saying “the end is nigh” pretty much nonstop since their homeboy got nailed to the cross. But for the Year 1000, doomsday finally got the full might and marketing of the church behind it.

Because, ya know, years with three zeroes are a whole lot scarier than others. Capitalizing on millennial hysteria, the pope waged war on pretty much every pagan country in the known world and encouraged believers to give all their possessions to the church as a way of preparing their hearts. Then after Y1K came and went without incident, the church kept everything it took… and burned all whiners as heretics.

1525

Convinced that Jesus would return only after the high and mighty had been brought down, Thomas Muntzer led a fleet of German peasants into an uneven battle with government troops. Figuring this would be the prophesied battle of Armageddon, Muntzer assured his soldiers that God would “catch the cannonballs in the sleeves of His cloak.”

I imagine being decimated by cannon fire that day taught the peasants an important (though for them, tardy) lesson: in matters of prophecy, it’s always best to get a second opinion.

December 17, 1919

When six planets aligned on this date, meteorologist Albert Porta made essentially the same mistake as every astrologist who has ever lived: assuming the gravitational pull from tiny rocks millions of miles away could in any way affect anything that anyone does anywhere on earth. Actually, he took it a step further by saying the alignment’s combined gravity and magnetic flux would cause the sun to explode.

The lack of an apocalypse and Porta’s resulting lack of reputation didn’t seem to faze two NASA scientists, because they made the same prediction when a similar alignment happened in 1982. Oh, and did I mention these two weren’t religious nutjobs, but NASA scientists? I did? Well, I’ll say it again. They were NASA scientists!

1874, 1878, 1881, 1914, 1918, 1920, 1925, 1941, 1972, 1994

Even though the religion isn’t even 150 years old, Jehovah’s Witnesses have distinguished themselves with their almost gluttonous monopoly on doomsday predictions. And as each date arrives and passes with nary a glorious appearing or worldwide cataclysm, the leaders of the faith are forced to blame the false prophecies on overzealous members or misinterpretation of Scripture (i.e. “Jesus did come back… but he was invisible.”).

Finally, in 1995, after their most recent prediction failed to produce a Messiah, the Watchtower Society made an official announcement that they would stop wasting time on arbitrary dates and focus their attention where it was most important: namely bugging the crap out of homeowners during Saturday morning cartoons.

1998

Y2K hysteria couldn’t hold a funeral pyre to Hon-Ming Chen’s Christian/Buddhist/UFO cult’s doomsday prediction. Not only was everything going to go down in nuclear holocaust, but God was going to reveal Himself by coming to Earth in a flying saucer and running an infomercial on channel 18 in Garland, Texas (if only the book of Revelation were that specific).

Hon-Ming further believed that if he could bring together a reincarnated “Jesus of the East” with a reincarnated “Jesus of the West,” who looked like Abraham Lincoln (I swear I’m not making this up), it would spare 100 million lives… sort of like a Ghostbusters “Key Master/Gate Keeper” thing, I suppose. When none of his predictions came true, Hon-Ming did what any respectable cultist would do: he offered to be crucified.