It never fails to amaze me how they describe things that are always happening and treat them as if they are a unique sign that can be used to mark a time period. This is such a common theme among end-times predictions.
Or as someone put it: "It was the worst of times. It was the best of times."
From "A History of the End of the World"
One of the first predictions which tried to nail down the end of the world to a particular day was given by a bishop in what is today Portugal, by the name of Hydatius. Hydatius lived in a time and place where the Roman empire had gone, and chaos reigned. His prediction for the end of the world came from the Gospel of Thomas, which is one of the apocryphal books of the bible. Those are the books of the bible that basically didn’t make the cut because they couldn’t be authenticated. Hydatius predicted the return of Jesus and the end of the world on May 27, 482. He actually died in 469, so he wasn’t around to know if his prediction came true.
Another early specific prediction came from a monk known as Beatus of Liébana, who lived in what is today northern Spain. He wrote a treatise called Commentary on the Apocalypse in 776 where he predicted the end of the world would come on April 6, 793.
On March 25, 970, the feast of the Annunciation fell on Good Friday. There were several theologians which believed this was the date that the world was created, so they figured this would be the day that it ended.
The year 1000 was a big time for end of the world predictions. Everyone was concerned about Y1K because of a line in the Book of Revelations that says After a thousand years have passed, Satan, released from his prison, will leave to seduce the nations of the four corners of the earth, Gog and Magog and, as numerous as the sand of the sea, to muster them for the war “.
Now we have over a 1000 years of more "End of the World" bullshit. It never ends. That is the predictions will never end. The world might if mankind fucks up things beyond repair.