Close Calls 2: Ten More Days The World Didn't End Quiz

Answer: Norse

Ragnarok or 'Doom of the Gods' isn't identical to the Christian end of the world. It's the end of a mythological cycle which would be followed by a rebirth of both mankind and the gods. Richard Wagner used the name 'Twilight of the Gods' in the last of his Ring Cycle operas, 'Götterdämmerung'.

Answer: Smoke From Forest Fires

Forest fire smoke probably mixed with fog and heavy cloud cover made "People [come] out wringing their hands and howling, the Day of Judgment is come," according to one witness.

Abraham Davenport, a member of the Connecticut legislature, made his name that day. Legislators fearing the end of the world moved to adjourn the session. Davenport responded, "The day of judgment is either approaching, or it is not. If it is not, there is no cause of an adjournment; if it is, I choose to be found doing my duty. I wish therefore that candles may be brought."

Answer: A great flood

Stoffler ignored God's promise to Noah, "I establish my covenant with you: Never again will all life be destroyed by the waters of a flood; never again will there be a flood to destroy the earth." He apparently thought a planetary alignment outweighed the Bible.

As Stoffler's date drew near, Europe saw a boom in boat building. Count von Iggleheim built a large ark on the Rhine. When it began to rain on the appointed day, people trying to board the ark rioted. Over 100 were killed and the Count was stoned to death. Stoffler recalculated his date to 1528, but his credibility was gone and no more arks were built.

Answer: True

Painted in 1500 or 1501, 'The Mystical Nativity' is an unusual portrayal of Christ's birth. It shows several small devils wedged under rocks beneath the Holy Family. At the top is a statement written in Greek , "I, Sandro, painted this picture at the end of the year 1500 in the troubles of Italy...in the second woe of the Apocalypse in the loosing of the devil for three and a half years...and we shall see him trodden down as in this picture." This would have put the end in late 1503 or 1504.

Answer: Ti and Do

Earlier known as 'Bo' and 'Peep', Applewhite and Nettles convinced the Heaven's Gate cultists that the earth was about to undergo 'recycling'. Mankind would be wiped out, refurbished and repopulated.

The wiping out would coincide with the appearance of the Hale-Bopp comet which appeared in the sky during 1996. Hiding behind the comet was the UFO which would collct their souls to prepare them for their transformation. On March 26, 1997 police found the bodies of 'Do' and his 38 followers after they killed themselves by overdosiing phenobarbital washed down with vodka. 'Ti' had gone to the next level in 1985, when she died of cancer.

Answer: Halley's

A comet noted in 468 BC is thought to have been the first recorded appearance of Halley's. Many of the comet's appearances have come near times of important historic events. The appearance of 1066, depicted on the Bayeux Tapestry, was seen both as a bad omen for King Harold and a good one for William the Conqueror. During Halley's 1456 appearance the Ottomans moved into Hungary and besieged Belgrade. That appearance was also considered an omen of the impending death of the Sultan of Kashmir.

In 1910 the first photographs of Halley were taken and spectroscopic analysis of the comet's contents was available. When cyanogen was identified and it became known that Earth would briefly pass through the tail, the public was alarmed that life on Earth might be in danger. Gas masks, 'anti-comet pills' and 'anti-comet umbrellas' were hot selling items. Anxiety from the comet's appearance added to distress in China during the Xinhai Revolution which ended China's last imperial dynasty.

Mark Twain was born during Halley's 1835 appearance and died just as it made its nearest approach in 1910. In 1909 he had said, "I came in with Halley's comet in 1835. It is coming again next year, and I expect to go out with it". He wasn't disappointed.

Answer: The Great Pyramid

Charles Piazzi Smyth, Astronomer Royal for Scotland created the end of the world scare based upon his study of the Great Pyramid of Giza. He was convinced that the pyramid had been built by one of the Old Testament patriarchs, probably Noah, rather than by Egyptians. He also believed that the answers to many theological questions were built into the pyramid. According to a January column in the New York Times: "In the great gallery of the pyramid... there are precisely eighteen hundred and eighty-one notches...". To Smyth this meant that the world would end in 1881.

Encyclopedia Britannica noted that the 1881 end of the world prophecy was "the cause of the most poignant alarm throughout rural England in that year, the people deserting their houses, and spending the night in prayer in the fields, churches and chapels."

Answer: Pat Robertson

A few years earlier, Robertson had predicted the end would come in October or November of 1982. In September 2011, Robertson, along with several other doomsday predictors, was given an Ig Nobel Prize in Mathematics by the magazine 'Annals of Improbable Research' for "teaching the world to be careful when making mathematical assumptions and calculations".

Answer: The Y2K Bug

For years programmers had used the shortcut of a two digit year when writing dates in their software. As the new century approached, concern grew that computers might generate unexpected, possibly disastrous, results when dealing with the year '00'.

Governments, businesses, medical facilities and individuals worried about failures due to The Y2K Bug. The press warned of nuclear war, caused by glitches in early-warning systems. CNN reported that the U.S. milk supply might dry up because dairy equipment might malfunction. Billions of dollars were spent "curing" the software problems caused by the bug. Even now experts disagree on how much of that spending actually served a purpose. In the end, the world carried on into the new millenium with relatively few and mostly minor computer issues.

We can look forward to another date code issue in the future - the Unix Millennium bug or 'Y2K38'. Some versions of Unix reach the limit of their date handling ability in 2038.

Answer: Large Hadron Collider

During its construction, some scientists and much of the media speculated that the Large Hadron Collider could cause a man-made black hole when it was switched on. Even a micro black hole would be problematic for the earth's continued existence. The LHC can smash together proton beams at velocities up to 99.99 percent of the speed of light. creating conditions which existed shortly after the start of the Big Bang.