"but it certainly is a coincidence that the Mayan calendar simply ends on Dec 21, 2012?"
Just like the whackos who believe the biblical code within the Bible? Some of the predictions were correct, some were not. All coincidences are just coincidences in my mind.
Past predictions since 1900:
AD 1900 Philosopher Vladimir Solovyev, eminent Russian theologian, foretold in his work, War, Progress, and the End of History, of a war with the Japanese in which the Japanese would win, conquering much of the world, but eventually being driven back by the Europeans. Then there would arise a brilliant writer and thinker who would unite the world and decree everlasting peace, ultimately summoning all religious leaders of the world, promising them everything they wanted if they would bow down and accept his sovereignty. The Jews would accept him as the Messiah, until they learn that he is not a Jew. Then would begin the revolt that would lead to the final battle north of Jerusalem, as well as the eruption of a volcano from the bottom of the Dead Sea. Said Solovyev: "The approaching end of the world strikes me like some obvious but quite subtle scent -- just as a traveller nearing the sea feels the sea breeze before he sees the sea." --TEOTW pg 221-227
AD 1901 In 1889, the Rev. Michael Baxter, editor of the London Christian Herald, announced in a book called The End of This Age about the End of This Century that 1896 would witness the Rapture of 144,000 devout Christians, and that the world would end in 1901. --TIME pg 120-121
AD 1901 Sergei Nilus, Russian magistrate, in a book titled The Great in the Small, prophesied "the coming of the Antichrist and the rule of Satan on earth." He later stated in 1905, "The king born of the blood of Zion -- the Antichrist is near to the throne of universal power." --TEOTW pg 234-237
AD 1906 H.G.Wells shows that apocalyptic fever was prevalent in his day: "Like most people of my generation...I was launched into life with Millennial expectations...it might be in my lifetime or a little after it, there would be trumpets and shoutings and celestial phenomena, a battle of Armageddon and the judgement." --TSOR pg 177
wells
AD 1908 When a terrible explosion rocked Siberia, a newspaper correspondent present reported..."All the inhabitants of the village ran out into the streets in panic. The old women wept. Everyone thought the end of the world was approaching." --TEOTW pg 274
AD 1910 In Pittsburgh, a clergyman announced that the arrival of Haley's Comet would herald Armageddon and the Second Coming.
AD 1918 Clarence Larkin, in his book Dispensational Truth, writes, "...at no time in the history of the Christian Church have the conditions neccessary to the Lord's return been so completely fulfilled as at the present time, therefore his coming is imminent, and will not probably be long delayed...If the Millennium is to be ushered in in AD 2000, then the "Rapture" must take place at least 7 years before that...It may have been 4075 years, instead of 4004 (as generally given) from Adam to Christ. In that case we are living in the year 5993 from the creation of Adam, or on the eve of the Rapture." --Disp
AD 1940 William Marrion Branham, a pentecostal faith healer declared himself to be God's end-time prophet, and urged all Christians to come out of their corrupt denominations before the Lord's return. --99R pg 115-116
AD 1945 A Protestant minister in Hiroshima upon the dropping of the first atomic bomb: "The feeling I had was that everyone was dead. The whole city was destroyed...I thought all of my family must be dead -- it doesnt matter if I die...I thought that this was the end of Hiroshima, of Japan, of humankind...This was God's judgement on man." --TEOTW pg 337
AD 1973 The "Children of God" cult claimed that its leader, David Berg, was "God's end-time prophet to the world." They fled America in 1973 due to Berg's prediction that Comet Kohoutek would destroy the country. --99R pg 117
AD 1976 Prophecy teacher Doug Clark announced that President Jimmy Carter would be "the president who will meet Mr. 666 (the Antichrist) SOON!" A flier announcing Clark's new book that year claimed, "The Death of the United States and the Birth of One World Government under President Carter." --SSA pg 24 (Personal note: I was working at a TV station in Orange County California whose manager believed the Clark prediction, and transformed the station's output into 24 hour a day warnings of the end of the Earth, even to the point of abandoning the commercials rotation. The Earth did not end but the TV station went out of business. )
AD 1980 North Carolina prophecy teacher Colin Deal has set dates for the return of Christ for 1982 or 1983, 1988, 1989, and in a March 17, 1989 radio broadcast, "about eleven years away." If at first you don't succeed... --SSA pg 38
AD 1980 Prophecy promoter Charles Taylor predicted a 1988 rapture: "This new book (Watch 1988 - The Year of Climax) is being written with the expectation that it will be the last book I will ever write ...with the millennial reign of Christ due to begin in 1995, the rapture must surely occcur in 1988 to coordinate with many other prophecies!" Not surprisingly, Taylor also made similar predictions for 1975, 1976, 1980, 1982, 1983, 1985, 1986, 1987, and, of course, 1989. --SSA pg 134-142
AD 1981 May 25. About fifty members of a group called the Assembly of Yahweh gathered at Coney Island, NY, in white robes, awaiting their "Rapture" from a world about to be destroyed between 3PM and sundown. A small crowd of onlookers watched and waited for something to happen. The members chanted prayers to the beat of bongo drums until sunset. The end did not come.
AD 1982 Full-page advertisements in many major newspapers for the weekend of April 24-25, 1982, announced: "The Christ is Now Here!" and predicted that he was to make himself known "within the next two months." That date passed, but the Tara Centers that placed the ad said that the dalay was only because the "consciousness of the human race was not quite right..." --99R pg 154-155
AD 1980 Psychic Jeanne Dixon predicted a world holocaust for the 1980s, and the rise of a powerful world leader, born in the Middle-East in 1962. --99R pg 120-122
wise
AD 1988 Edgar C. Whisenant, in his book 88 Reasons Why the Rapture Will Be in 1988, gave a three day period in September for the saints to be "caught up with the Lord." When this failed, he issued another book claiming that he was a year off, and urging everyone to be ready in 1989. --SSA pg 28-33, DOOM pg 134
AD 1991 Reginald Dunlop, end-times author, stated that "The Antichrist would be revealed" around the year 1989 or 1990, perhaps sooner." The Rapture he predicted for 1991. Says dunlop, God verified this "through many prayers...I am MORE than positive that this is THE YEAR that the Rapture will occur." --SSA pg 36
AD 1990 Southwest Radio Church's David Webber and Hoah Hutching's book, "Prophecy in Stone" contained a chart which set dates for the rebuilding of the Jewish Temple in 1974-1978, and the Great Tribulation for sometime between 1981 and 1992. A later book, "New Light on the Great Pyramid," had another chart which revised these figures, tentatively setting dates of 1988, 1992, and 1996, for the Tribulation, the abomination of desolation, and Christ's return, respectively. --SSA pg 37
AD 1990 Elizabeth Clare Prophet predicted the end of the world by nuclear war in 1990. Her church has since seen a decline in membership.
AD 1992 "Rapture, October 28, 1992, Jesus is coming in the Air." Full page add in the October 20, 1991, issue of USA Today, placed by followers of the Hyoo-go (Rapture) movement, a loose collection of Korean "end-times" sects. When the prophesied events failed to pass, much turmoil broke out among the sects. Some believers were distraught, while others tried to attack their doomsday preachers with knives. The founder of one church was later charged with swindling four million dollars from his parishoners. --99R pg 11, 168-169
koresh
AD 1993 David Koresh, self-proclaimed little lamb of Isaiah 16, and the Second Coming of Christ, dies in a fiery conflagration with some 80 of his followers. These members of the Branch Dividians, an offshoot of the Seventh-Day Adventists had faced a botched ATF raid on their compound near Waco, Texas, and a subsequent 51-day siege by the FBI. A devastating fire broke out when the FBI attempted to fire gas into the group's buildings. --99R pg 122-124
AD 1994 Arab Christian prophet Om Saleem claimed that the antichrist was born November 23, 1933, that his unveiling would come in 1993 and the rapture in 1994. --99R pg 149
AD 1994 Harold Camping, a radio evangelist, wrote a book entitled "1994?" In it, Camping says, "if this study is accurate, and I believe with all my heart that it is, there will be no extensions of time. There will be no time for second guessing. When September 6, 1994, arrives, no one else can be saved, the end has come." Thousands believed Camping's distorted biblical teachings, but again, the end did not come as Camping had wished. --99R pg 12, 48-50
AD 1997 Mary Stewart Relfe wrote in 1983 that she had been praying to " know the year" of the Lord's coming, and that subsequently she receied detailed "divine revelations" from God. She relaeased a chart showing World War III beginning in 1989, the Great Tribulation starting in 1990, and that Jesus Christ will come back in 1997, just after Armaggeddon." --SSA pg 35
AD 1998 Larry Wilson, a former Seventh-day Adventist pastor, predicted four massive global earthquakes beginning around 1994 and ending in 1998 with the Second Coming. --99R pg 77
Also, there have been hundreds upon hundreds of other apocalyptic theories, and I think this is just another one. But I could be wrong O.o which would suck lol.
Anyway...erm, how bout them CPUs, GPUs, pixels, and such?
