Johannes Stöffler
German Johannes Stöffler was a man of many talents, as a respected mathematician, astronomer, astrologer, priest, professor and maker of astronomical instruments, when he predicted in 1499 that the end of the world would come in the early 16th century, people paid attention.
After extensively studying the night sky, Stöffler concluded that on the 25th of February, 1524, when all of the known planets would be in alignment and under the water sign Pisces, a great flood would cover the world just as it did in the time of Noah.
Pamphlets announcing this coming global disaster were soon produced and distributed in their hundreds, causing a panic that the end of the world was truly on its way. This was taken so seriously by one German nobleman, Count von Iggleheim, that he constructed himself a three-story ark. How many animals he planned to save has unfortunately been lost to history.
When the day eventually arrived it proved to be one of the driest on record, forcing Stöffler to revise his prediction to 1528. When that year came and went without incident, people stopped believing he could predict the future and they would be correct, as just three years later Stöffler would die of the plague, something he evidently didn’t see coming.
