Watch Out

11: Dec 25, 1814: In Devon, a self-styled prophet named Joanna Southcott averred that she was the expectant mother of a new Christ-child to which she would give birth on Christmas Day 1814. That she was a virgin and well over 60 did not appear to weaken her faith that this would come to pass. She was at least correct that something momentous would occur on the fateful date: she died. Despite this disappointment, a large cult continued to believe in Southcott and, as late as 1927, a sealed box said to contain an important message left by Joanna was opened in the presence of the Bishop of Grantham. It contained a lottery ticket.

12: 1836. Notwithstanding his brother's erroneous estimate, the Methodist leader John Wesley expected the End Times to commence in 1836, with the appearance of the Great Beast of Revelation.

13: Aug 7, 1847. The leader of a small, largely forgotten German religious cult called the Harmonists, "Father" George Rapp was convinced that Jesus would return before his death. To his credit his faith in this event was unshakeable right up to the end of his life: "If I did not know that the dear Lord meant I should present you all to him, I should think my last moment come," he said. Only the latter assumption proved to be true.

14: 1874 : Memorable for being the first of a long line of dates posited for the End of the World by the Jehovah's Witnesses.

Times Archive, 1815: Joanna Southcott, her funeral

After dissection, the body was put in a plain coffin, and pitch applied to the edges and rim

• Death and dissection of Joanna Southcott

• 1927: "Joanna Southcott Box" opened

Related Links

• Millennium by Tom Holland

15: 1881 : Another estimated apocalypse by the Jehovah’s Witnesses, and also by pyramidologists who used the peculiar geometry of the Great Pyramid to extrapolate various world events using a form of numerology. The renowned 16th century seer Mother Shipton was also said to have predicted: “The world to an end shall come, in eighteen hundred and eighty one” That this verse was subsequently proven to be fraudulent did not deter the credulous few from engaging in the now fully-fledged custom known as millennial panic.

16: May 18, 1910: Despite a number of previous documented appearances having caused no deaths, the 1910 return of Halley’s Comet was widely perceived as a threat to mankind – allegedly due to noxious vapours emanating from its tail. This may be the first apocalyptic panic founded on a scientific, rather than religious misapprehension. Interestingly, the American author Mark Twain who was born in 1835 – another Halley’s Comet year – and correctly predicted that his own death in 1910 would coincide with the dirty snowball’s return.

17: Dec 17, 1919. Albert Porta, a meteorologist, averred that a rare conjunction of planets would create a powerful gravitational or magnetic flux drawing draw a giant solar flare out toward the Earth, incinerating the atmosphere. Some credulous souls, on hearing this, apparently chose suicide rather than be killed. Which is rather odd once you think about it. Another failure for the scientific method.

18: 1967 : A banner year for apocalypse: Jim Jones, Sun Myung Moon, and UFO contactee George van Tassel all independently arrived at the conclusion that the Summer of Love would be the end of us all.

19: Apr 29, 1980. Leland Jensen, leader of a splinter group from the minority Bahá'í faith, announced that this day would see a nuclear exchange between the superpowers resulting in the deaths of millions. In fact 1979 and 1983 would have been the two most likely years for this to have happened, with nuclear strikes averted by sheer fluke on both occasions. Finding himself alive on April 30, the prophet fell back on the traditional "This is [only the] start of the Tribulation" excuse.

20: Mar 10, 1982. In a near repeat of the erroneous 1919 prophecy, a popular "science" book, The Jupiter Effect, expostulated that a planetary conjunction would cause earthquakes, or a solar flare, or both. In fact, the only appreciable effect of the gravitational pull of all the planets combined was a possible higher tide measured in some places – peaking 0.04mm above average. Two years earlier, the televangelist Pat Robertson had also predicted this, saying: "I guarantee you by the end of 1982 there is going to be a judgment on the world".

21: Apr 29, 1987: The irrepressible doom-monger Leland Jensen was back with more portents of extinction, this time as a result of a collision between the Earth and that old favourite Halley’s Comet.

22: 1988: Another rash of predictions nominated this year as our last, chiefly influenced by best-selling 1970 book The Late, Great Planet Earth, which interpreted a passage from the book of Matthew as indicating the return of Christ within 40 years of the founding of the state of Israel.