REBEL
Posts : 570
Join date : 2009-10-07
Age : 27
Location : Australia
 | Subject: 10 Failed Doomsday Prophecies  Tue Nov 10, 2009 4:49 pm | |
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Just as some people today believe a Maya calendar pinpoints 2012 as the end of the world as we know it, some ancient Romans saw the A.D. 79 eruption of Mount Vesuvius (pictured: Pompeiians flee the city in an illustration), as a sign of a coming apocalypse.
That's because Roman philosopher Seneca, who died in A.D. 65, had predicted the Earth would go up in smoke: "All we see and admire today will burn in the universal fire that ushers in a new, just, happy world," he said, according to the 1999 book Apocalypses.
(Test your Armageddon knowledge on the National Geographic Channel Web site.)
The end never came, but that hasn't stopped people--over centuries and across cultures--from forecasting our collective doom. Click through the gallery for a sampling of end-of-the-Earth scenarios. | |
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