Under "Exorcising Poor Last Judgement" - http://alma-geddon.com/lastjudgment.html
First four entries:
633 BCE - These days, people tend to associate apocalyptic hysteria with extremist Christian cults, Dark Age ignoramuses and assorted dorks who think that The X-Files was a documentary. But, in fact, the history of numerical nuttiness goes back much further than that. The Sumerians, Babylonians and Zoroastrians also shared an unfortunate proclivity for doom-by-numbers. As did the ancient Romans, who were apparently obsessed with the idea that twelve magic eagles had revealed to Rome's fratricidal founder, Romulus, the date for the city's ultimate downfall. Seeing twelve as a portentous value, the Romans had a tendency to get all farklempt over almost every municipal anniversary that fell on a multiple of the fowl dozen. The first big dread-fest occurring when the city was but a tender 120 years old. When that date failed to produce the promised arrivaderci Roma, the idea wasn't scrapped, just modified a bit, so that the eagles now represented the months in a year. Nevermind that there were only ten months to a year back in Romulus' imagined day. And since there were 355 days in a year (Republican Calendar), the end was now supposed to arrive promptly on...
398 BCE - After 355 years of eagle-iconed months had passed away into the history scrolls. Far from being a downer year, however, 398 fell smack-dab in the middle of the Roman Republic's Golden Age. Clearly, if Armageddon fans were going to get any better mileage out of these kinds of prophecies, they were going to have to set their sights on a whole 'nother mythology.
167 BCE (time approx.) - Setting the stage for craziness to come, the Book of Daniel hit the best-seller lists amongst the put-upon and seriously pissed-off Jews laboring under Greek (soon to be Roman) rule. With their homeland reduced to Helenism on earth, these were people in serious need of a change in management. Wishful thinki... excuse me, prophesying the end of their oppressor's reign, the Book of Daniel goes into lip-smacking, lurid detail over the gruesome, God-ordained ends of the Chosen People's enemies, who are naturally portrayed as Evil Incarnate. And it goes without saying that the Chosen are all paragons of Goodness who wind up happily tra-la-la-ing through eternity in Paradise. The trouble with the BoD is that it's very, very vague about the due date on all this revenge fantasy stuff. The result is that ever since, it's tended to be used as a kind of theological booster rocket for the even wilder, bloodier and more cosmologically ambitious Final Countdowns that followed.
Early ? CE - Of course, the earliest known failed apocalyptic prophecy of the Common Era came straight out of the New Testament's eccentric little Book Of Revelation, which states under no uncertain terms that the Final Curtain would be ringing down while there was still at least one Apostle left to give a standing O. Unless anyone reading this knows of any 2000 year-old social security recipients who were personal pals o' Jesus, we can assume that this particular claim has gone well past its expiration date. Still, like all claims based in the Never-Neverland universe of the True Believer, the fact that nothing ever came of it has not diminished its popularity with the Faithful one iota. Instead, it has merely spurred on legions of Casandra-come-latelies throughout history who always insist that the End is, indeed, nigh and that they are the only ones to whom the Lord gave the proper party directions... kind of like a really good rave.
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or in strategic buy-bull belt cities and towns...
