I have been watching the History channel all week also, some of the shows have been very interesting.
I have known about the 2012 Mayan calendar for some time now. What I didn't know is how accurate that calendar has been thru history. They predicted every solar and lunar eclipse from their time on earth up until 2012. They predicted the exact day that the spanish would arrive in central america (they got it all correct also). The day (winter solstace) Dec 21, 2012 is the first day the sun will be in the Great Celestrial Alignment - which some astronomers say could be a really bad thing for Earth as there is a large black hole in the center of the Milky Way and this gravitational alignment may cause a huge Gamma Burst from the Sun
When you combine that with, I ching, Nostradamus (he specifically drew pictures that talk about the year with 3 eclipse events (only year that happens in recorded history is 2012) things are going to be interesting