The end is near, more or less. It depends on how you keep time.

In 1925, a larger-than-usual number of Americans believed the fateful moment had arrived, so they hunkered down and waited for the apocalypse. Others refused to just sit idly by and took their own lives, fearful that a great beam of light was to announce their annihilation. 

The source of these beliefs appear to have been a pair of doomsayers preaching on opposite coasts, Margaret Rowen of the Seventh Day Adventists in California and Robert Reidt of Long Island. The parallel prophecies caused panic until their announced arrivals passed without incident.

Several stories in the February 6, 1925 Brooklyn Daily Eagle marked the madness.