TV Psychic Criswell: 'The World as We Know It Will Cease to Exist' on Aug 18, 1999. It Was His Birthday

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The quote is from the book's space-stations prediction (Criswell Predicts: From Now to the Year 2000, 1968, scan on the Internet Archive). The book's closing chapter, 'The End', repeats the date: 'The world as we know it will cease to exist, as I have stated previously in this volume, on August 18, 1999.'

It continues: 'And if you and I meet each other on the street that fateful day, August 18, 1999, and we chat about what we will do on the morrow, we will open our mouths to speak and no words will come out, for we have no future . . . you and I will suddenly run out of time!'

Another chapter says visitors to other planets 'will escape the doomsday that will come on August 18, 1999.' 'As we know it' is the only hedge, and the passages around it are not hedged. The book's preface says he was born on an August 18th; The New Yorker confirmed the date was his birthday.

Outcome: The New Yorker reported fans gathered at Boardners, a Hollywood bar, on the evening of Wednesday, August 18, 1999, and that the bar was still standing when the last revellers left at 2 a.m. Another 1999 doomsday on file: rabanne-mir-paris-1999.