Sorta like this guy. Sometimes they carry the message on a sign instead of on sandwich boards.
That is, the origin (or first reference)of them in pop culture, not the real world.
I’ve seen them in movies and on TV shows; but do they exist out in the wild?
I’ve seen them in Las Vegas, on Fremont street. But then, what *haven’t *I seen in Las Vegas?
With regards to European/Western culture:
As far as I know, Jesus Christ was one of the more popular proponents of this mind set.
ETA: I’m not joking. Jesus taught that the world would end in a few years/decennia after his death.
I would swear that Cecil once had a column discussing how people thought the end of the first millenium would be the end of the world, but after checking several terms, including, apocalypse, armeggedon and epistemology, I can’t find it.
Article? I dont know. But they indeed did burn all their possessions and started roaming around Europe.
No trip to San Francisco is complete without a Frank Chu sighting.
They? Who are “they”?
It’s possible that some tiny sects did that. It seems likely that various holy men and would-be prophets and fanatics did go around preaching apocalypse. But mainstream historians say flatly that the tales of entire populations going crazy because the year 1000 was coming are urban legends.
See Century’s End: A Cultural History of the Fin de Siecle; From the 990s Through the 1990s, by Hillel Schwartz.
I worked for a number of years in the Social Services field, working with people with schizophrenia.
For whatever reason, some people with schizophrenia have a compulsion to broadcast messages to anyone who is near. Usually these messages make no sense to anyone other than to the schizophrenic, and to the schizophrenic it is perfectly clear; when reading about Mr. Chu, I recognized a lot of my former clients.
And often, even people without mental illness simply have an axe to grind. I remember a guy walking around Daytona Beach, Florida with a sandwich board bemoaning his treatment at the hands of the local judiciary because he is a Christian nudist and prefers to visit the local beaches without clothing, as per his religious beliefs.
So, in summary: mental illness, religious fanaticism, or both, can lead a person to take to the streets with whatever their message is.
So… back to the OP. Did anyone REALLY paint an “End is Near”/“World Will End Tomorrow” sign?
I’d bet good money that it was a magazine cartoonist back in the 50s…
There was a street preacher back at my college in CA (late 90’s) who did wear such a sign. Of course, talking to him revealed that he meant your personal world - as in, you might get hit by a car, contract a disease, have a heart attack, etc. Since you didn’t know exactly when the end was, you ought to be sure you were ready for it now.
But going back into history to address the general question… how about this:
He didn’t use a sandwich board, I’m sure (literacy was not so big deal then) but the message is the same. Whether you ascribe any literal historicity to that story or not, clearly the idea of odd people going around proclaiming the end is a very old idea.
A few days ago I drove to Huger (that’s pronounced U G) South Carolina, an old and decrepit black community dating back to slave times. There, nailed to the side of what perhaps was a church, was a badly painted sign informing all passers-by of the end of the world. I believe it said March 12, 2011.
So, I should probably give all my stuff away.
Correction- He taught the “aion” would end- translated wrongly as “world” in the KJV & correctly as “age” in most every modern translation. And that aion was the aion of the Temple, which did indeed end within forty years of his death.
Can’t find Cecil’s column but AD1000 millennialism is a disputed phenomenon among historians.