wasabiroots
Year 1910
An astronomer in 1881 found that comet tails contains a deadly gas called Cyanogen which is related to Cyanide through spectral analysis.
It was an okay discovery at the time, it wasn’t really interesting but this information was suddenly scary when someone realized that Earth would pass through the tail of Halley’s comet in 1910.
Then you know what happened? The media happened.
On front pages of newspapers, speculations of “would the planet be covered in toxic gas” was everywhere. Widespread panic was occurring across the United States and even abroad.
People believed humanity would be wiped out, some believed the Second Coming was near and some saw it as an opportunity to make money. Comet pills were sold with a guarantee to protect against the toxic gases.
Finally the head scientists had to explain that there was nothing to fear.
Year 1997
There was a cult in the United States called the Heaven’s Gate cult. They believed that the destruction of Earth was imminent and it would come in 1997.
The cult leader Marshall Applewhite was a former singer and believed himself as the reincarnation of Jesus Christ. Weirdly enough the cult believed that Earth will be wiped clean by aliens for recycling and the only way for them to not be wiped clean was by being a “level of existence above humans”.
Apparently, the only way to achieve this was by suicide where their souls would then board on the spacecraft that was said to be on the comet Hale-Bopp. So yes, 39 people died that day from mass suicide while all wearing the same black attire and the same Nike Decades sneakers.