Tomorrow Never Dies Trivia Quiz

Answer: 1000 CE

There are differing stories about how the Catholic Church and Pope Sylvester II himself dealt with the coming of the year 1000, but most speak of large crowds in Rome awaiting the return of Jesus Christ at midnight, but he never came. A few decades later, a smaller craze hit the Catholic world in 1033, as it was a full millennium after the death of Jesus.

Some think that Pope Innocent III called for the end of the world in 1284, but this does not seem to be the case. In 1213, he declared some sort of 'falling '666 years after the rise of Islam, which he dated to be in 1284. However, he names Muhammed as "a certain son of destruction, the pseudo-prophet" and then claims "we trust God, who has already given us some good sign that the end of this beast is approaching, and its number... is limited to six hundred and sixty-six ..." Instead of calling for the world to end, he seemed to be predicting the end of Islam. Either way, he was wrong.

Answer: Black Death

Bubonic plague has caused multiple plagues, but the second major outbreak in the Catholic world (the Plague of Justinian being the first, killing twenty-five million people in 541-542, with its last outbreak around 750) is the most famous. The Church was constantly unable to stop any of the suffering and death attributed to the plague, leading to fear that God was punishing the world for its sins and that the religious powers were powerless to stop it.

One of the main religious movements away from the church was the Flagellant Movement, zealots who would constantly whip themselves and each other in penance. Although condemned and excommunicated by the Catholic Church, thousands joined the group in hopes their souls would be saved from the plague. Because they deemed their acts as the salvation of mankind, the Flagellants marched across Europe and unwittingly spread the disease into places previously unaffected in one of the many sick twists of fate during the time.

Answer: Christopher Columbus

Towards the end of his life, Christopher Columbus published his "Book of Prophecies," which contained many of his religious beliefs as well as his prediction for the end of the world. He determined that the world had been created in 5343 BCE and would only last 7000 years, therefore putting the end of the world in 1658.

In fact, Columbus wrote a letter that proclaimed: "God made me the messenger of the new heaven and the new earth of which he spoke in the Apocalypse of St. John after having spoken of it through the mouth of Isaiah." He died believing he had helped spread Christianity to the Asian countries, never realizing that he found a new continent.

Answer: Salem Witch Trials

Cotton Mather played a large part in the Salem Witch Trials. Although never judging the actual cases, he knew several of the judges personally and persuaded them to accept "spectral evidence" in the proceedings. (Essentially the prosecution witness could claim they saw a ghost of the defendant as "proof" of witchcraft). Having "defeated" the devil in this instance, coupled with prior events of his life (for example, seeing Halley's Comet and the 1663 Charlevoix earthquake), he was convinced the end was near.

In the end, he lived through two years he assumed would be Earth's last, and died eight years before his final prediction.

Answer: The Great Disappointment

William Miller, a Baptist minister, based his prophecy on Daniel 8:14, which states "For two thousand three hundred evenings and mornings; then the sanctuary shall be restored to its rightful state." Taking those 2300 days mentioned to actually meaning years, he put the date in 1843, and then slightly revised it to any time between March 21, 1843 and March 21, 1844. Once that failed, he began using a different calendar and put the date at April 18, 1844.

The final prediction came as the "seventh-month message," based on an unknown methodology from a meeting involving the leaders of Millerism, which stated that seven months after the original prediction Rapture would come.

After midnight on October 22, 1844, followers returned to mass humiliation, and it became known as "The Great Disappointment" for all of the attention it received.

Answer: Bible Student Movement

The Bible Student Movement was founded as a sort of offshoot from Millerism, founded by William Miller in the 1840s. Following Miller's failed predictions, Charles Taze Russell (born in 1852, after William Miller's death) was convinced by Jonas Wendell (himself a former Millerite) that Jesus would return in 1874 Russell was then convinced by Nelson Barbour, another former Millerite, that dead Christians would rise in 1878, and with that failure the two split. Russell would found the Zion's Watch Tower Tract Society with William Henry Conley.

Following two more failed predictions, the movement split, with the Watchtower Society and Free Bible Students going separate ways. In October 1914, the movement again foretold the end with the end of "the Gentile Times" following a 2520 year period after the fall of Jerusalem. With World War I, the again saw the end in 1916 (the year Russell died), 1918, and also in the aftermath of the war in 1920 with a worldwide revolution over earthly governments. In this time, two other factions split (Laymen's Home Missionary Movement and the Associated Bible Students). Eventually, it all came down to a final revision by Russell that foretold 1925 was the end times. The final failure led to the end of the original Watchtower Society, to be replaced by Jehovah's Witnesses.

Answer: Jim Jones

When Lynetta Putnam Jones gave birth to James Warren Jones (later known as "Jim"), she supposedly believed that he was a messiah. With this kind of upbringing, it should perhaps be no surprise that Jim created his own church, although mostly as a front to espouse socialism. In 1961, Jones talked about nuclear holocaust for the first time, but did not predict any such thing. He moved to Brazil, which he saw as a "safe haven," but returned to Indiana in 1965, and predicted the date of July 15, 1967, as the date of the holocaust.

The date came and went, with the only newsworthy moment coming from Danang Airbase, where eight soldiers were killed in an attack from the NVA. As the 1970s went on, Jones began to reveal to his followers that he was an atheist and had created People's Temple to teach socialism. He started building Jonestown in Guyana as a 'socialist paradise' in 1970. In 1978, the group murdered Congressman Leo Ryan and four others as they came to learn about the community, and later that day Jones led the mass suicide of the Jonestown residents by drinking cyanide-laced Flavor Aid (or injecting it into children). Jones himself apparently died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound.

Answer: Comet Hale-Bopp

Marshall Applewhite led a fairly normal life until 1970, when he left his teaching position at the University of Alabama. After his father died in 1971, he met a woman named Bonnie Nettles, and together they created Heaven's Gate based on mysticism and New Age thinking.

By the mid-1980s, the group had dozens of members and Nettles died, sending Applewhite into a "crisis of faith." All of these events led up to the events of the 1990s, when Heaven's Gate received its first publicity and also criticism. Undeterred, they built a compound in New Mexico, and upon faulty news that there was a strange object following Comet Hale-Bopp (it was a star behind the comet - an amateur astronomer had incorrect settings on his computer), he led a mass suicide to release their souls so they could board the vessel and escape before Earth's "recycling".

Answer: Nostradamus

Many of Nostradamus' predictions are incredibly vague and therefore he is credited with being "correct" more often than he should. However, this prophecy in question is strangely specific as to when and what was going to happen:

"The year 1999, seventh month
From the sky will come a great King of Terror.
To bring back to life the great King of the Mongols,
Before and after Mars to reign by good luck"

July 1999 passed without Genghis Khan returning from the grave. However, on July 8, 1999, a flash flood did hit Las Vegas. Perhaps assuming Elvis would be buried there instead of Graceland, Nostradamus foresaw the return of the King of Rock and Roll, and it was lost in the translation.

Answer: 2000

Predictions for the Apocalypse are much easier to accept if they are based around even numbers. Many of the predictions about the year 2000 had no real basis behind them other than that, as opposed to the plethora of Biblical mathematics in previous predictions.

The Y2K bug presented a somewhat realistic threat, as people feared remedial computers with only two factors in dates (19xx, so after 1999 would come 19100 or 1900, among other possibilities). Worldwide, an estimated $500 billion was spent in preparation for the bug that never seemed to bite. Still, we may never know how much of that spending actually kept a global from happening in the first place.