2012 - Encyclopedia

2012 (MMXII) is a leap year starting on Sunday of the Gregorian calendar.

The year 2012 in the Gregorian Calendar corresponds to the years 5772 and 5773 in the Hebrew Calendar.

• 23rd - Chinese New Year and scheduled new moon. [1] This time of year is associated with the Water-Dragon in Chinese astrology. [2]

• 25th - Summer Time Begins on the last Sunday this month at 2:00 (CET). At this time clocks are set ahead one hour. [3]

• 7th - Jewish Passover (Pesach)
• 15th - 100th Anniversary of the sinking of the RMS Titanic

• 20th - Annular solar eclipse, a Sunday
• French Presidential election, also occuring on May 20th

• 6th - Second and last solar transit of the planet Venus of this century; the next pair is predicted to occur in 2117 and 2125.

• 1st - The first possible government in Hong Kong elected by Universal suffrage take office.
• 27th - Opening ceremony of the 2012 Summer Olympics in London, United Kingdom.

• 12th - Closing ceremony of the 2012 Summer Olympics in London, United Kingdom, a Sunday

• Tues, 13th - Total solar eclipse (visible in northern Australia and the South Pacific).

• 21st - Marks the beginning of the Winter Solstice at 11:11 UTC. [4]
• 21st - End of the twelfth, final baktun in the long count of the Maya calendar and Aztec calendar. (This is believed by some to signify the apocalypse.)
• 21st - Striking planetary formation along the Ecliptic involving 7 planets, the Sun, and the moon above the Giza pyramid complex (coordinates 29° 58' 33" N 31° 07' 49" E).[5]

• India's 11th Five-Year Plan (2007-2012) ends and the 12th one (2012-2017) starts.
• 2012 Summer Paralympics in London, United Kingdom.
• LISA will be launched to probe the Universe.
• The United Kingdom plans to complete 5-year process to cease analog television broadcasts region-by-region, with Channel Television in the Channel Islands being the last area to switch off.
• One of the Royal Navy's new aircraft carriers will enter service, possibly named HMS Queen Elizabeth.
• The longest bridge in the world, the "Strait of Messina Bridge" ("Ponte sullo Stretto di Messina" connecting Sicily to mainland Italy is expected to open.
• The F-35 Joint Strike Fighter project expected to be complete.
• This is the year when California's ban on the production of foie gras is scheduled to take effect.

The following predictions are theories based upon sources of varying origin and credibility. Many of these theories rely upon a decent amount of conjecture, and should therefore not be considered to be facts, but instead as theories.

• The Olduvai cliff will begin and permanent blackouts will occur worldwide, according to "The Peak of World Oil Production and the Road To The Olduvai Gorge" by Richard C. Duncan.
• Terence McKenna's Novelty Theory claims that time is a fractal wave of increasing novelty that ends abruptly in 2012.
• December 21 - End of the great cycle of the Maya calendar's Long Count and a 26,000 year planetary cycle in the Aztec calendar, and thus the end of this Baktun(the end of the cycle is dated December 22 or December 23 by some calculations).
• According to the 1997 book The Bible Code a meteor, asteroid or comet will collide with the Earth. Some believe this means the world will end. This event was supposedly prophesized by John the Evangelist as Wormwood in the Book of Revelation.
• Tibetan Monks specialising in remote viewing predict that divine extra-terrestrials will intervene at a point where the world's governments are about to deploy weapons of mass destruction. Adding to this, the Tibetan Monks say that the world is not ready to be destroyed and that our Earth is blessed and being saved continuously from all kinds of hazards that Mankind is not even aware of.[6]
• The Prophecy of the Popes, attributed to Saint Malachy, speculated that Pope Benedict XVI would reign during the beginning of the tribulation which Jesus spoke of, and sometime later a future pope described in the prophecy as "Peter the Roman", the last in this prophetic list, would appear, bringing as a result the destruction of the city of Rome and the Last Judgement. [7]. It is possible that Benedict XVI and Peter the Roman are the same person, according to some interpretations. [8]
• Reverend Dr, Sun Myung Moon of Korea, is talking extensively about the End of Restoration in 2012, and beginning of a New Sinless Time for Mankind. [9][10]

• According to the Doctor Who episode Dalek, on this year a Dalek breaks loose under the Utah salt plains and plans to kill every living thing on Earth. The episode also predicts that by this year a billionaire named Henry van Statten will be the most powerful man on Earth, claiming to own the Internet itself.
• In the X-Files universe, the colonization by the aliens will finally occur on December 22, 2012; this is possibly linked to the Apocalyptic beliefs of Mesoamerican peoples.
• The Notion Club papers will be discovered at Oxford by Mr. Howard Green.
• Grant Morrison’s The Invisibles concludes. All the events in the comics series may be a fiction created in virtual reality by a woman living in 2012.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "2012", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page