End of the world: A history of epic doomsday fails
By Amanda Shendruk - Friday, December 21, 2012 - 0 Comments
Well, the Mayan doom-pocalypse was not as predicted. But at least it’s in good company. Since the beginning of time, humans have predicted the world’s demise. For the highlights of historic end-day prophesying, check out the infographic below. (And for a terrifyingly long list of unrealized predictions, head over to the Wikipedia page that catalogues the non-catastrophes).
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End of the world theories disproved, Australia still exists on Dec. 21, 2012
By Emily Senger - Thursday, December 20, 2012 at 12:50 PM - 0 Comments
Folks Down Under send up the good word
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Probably not the last blog entry I’ll ever write
By Colby Cosh - Thursday, December 20, 2012 at 11:39 AM - 0 Comments
When I hear of people panicking over tomorrow’s “Mayan apocalypse”, I like to imagine future archaeologists reassuring people that the quirks of the long-abandoned and poorly understood “Gregorian calendar” are nothing to be alarmed about.
“You see, the ancients had not yet realized the superiority of an octal base for numerals; they used base-10 counting because at that time the recognized ‘humans’ still had a total of ten fingers each. (Please, don’t laugh; you must remember that they had not yet admitted non-primates to the Circle of Sentience.) This naturally led them to ascribe special numerological significance to periods of 100 and 1,000 years. But their calendar doesn’t in any sense ‘end’ tomorrow, on what they would have called the first of January, 6000.” Continue…
