Category: Astronomical Fears

• The "1900" Death Ray

  This theory held that the arrival of the new century would coincide with a lethal light from the sun, sometimes described as a purifying beam, a poisonous radiation, or a fatal change in the heavens that would strike the Earth all at once. The idea was not a single organized prophecy but part of a larger fin-de-siècle climate of millennial anxiety, apocalyptic interpretation, and fascination with newly discovered forms of light and radiation. In later retellings, these threads were woven together into a belief that 1900 would begin with a cosmic death ray from the sun.