I think you're thinking of Nostradamus. The Mayan Calendar predicts that the end of this 'age' will be December 21 2012, and many other native american legends foretell of this age ending when mans greed becomes too great, ect. Many other religions predict sometime around now, give or take ten years, for some apocalyptic event.
Theres also some other facts, like how overdue we are for a major impact (dinosaur scale, happens every so often), a major eruption (like yellowstone sized), flipping of the earths magnetic field (we're overdue, very) and increased solar activity (peaking around 2012 as well). Just a chaotic year I guess.