August 31: Old Moore's Almanac, and English Fears of Apocalypse in the Late 1830s

Old Moore's Almanac, an Irish annual which has furnished meteorological data, tide tables, and agricultural information since 1764, still exists today, and prints a section of tongue-in-cheek doom-and-gloom predictions for each coming year. However, in its 1837 number (appearing in the year Queen Victoria ascended to the throne) the Almanac issued a serious threat that the return of Christ appeared to be at hand.

According to Eugen Weber's Apocalypses, this period was clustered with other eschatological predictions, including a series of speeches on Antichrist by Catholic Cardinal John Henry Newman (who had made a very public break with Anglicanism by converting to Roman Catholicism in 1845) - and also a standing Jewish belief that the Messiah might appear in 1839-40 (5600 in the Jewish calendar).