Oh my!!!!
In Chicken Little ( a story that dates back over 2000 years) there is a hen who thinks the world is about to end, and a phrase that translates roughly into "The Sky is falling" is in that story. However for hundreds of years now in the English language "The Sky is falling" has become a phrase that people use to make fun of irrational or hysterical beliefs about possible dangers.
...added later.
Wiki:
Chicken Little, is a
folk tale with a moral in the form of a
cumulative tale about a
chicken who believes the world is coming to an end. The phrase
"The sky is falling!" features prominently in the story, and has passed into the English language as a common idiom indicating a hysterical or mistaken belief that disaster is imminent. Versions of the story go back more than 25 centuries and it continues to be referenced in a variety of media.
("idiom" what a great descriptive word, wish I had thought of that)
Traditional:
Chicken Little likes to walk in the woods. She likes to look at the trees. She likes to smell the flowers. She likes to listen to the birds singing.
One day while she is walking an acorn falls from a tree, and hits the top of her little head.
My, oh, my, the sky is falling. I must run and tell the lion about it, - says Chicken Little and begins to run.
(old but still good)
1940s
Chicken Little: Listen to me, everybody! I'm your new leader! I'm gonna save your lives! I'm gonna tell you what to do!
Cocky Locky: Don't listen to that pipsqueak. The sky isn't falling.
Chicken Little: I tell ya it is too falling!
Cocky Locky: And I tell you it isn't.
Chicken Little: Is too!
Cocky Locky: All right, if the sky is falling why doesn't it hit me in the head?
[Foxy Loxy hits Cocky Locky with a piece of wood]
Narrator: Hey, wait a minute! This isn't right. That's not the way it ends in my book.
Foxy Loxy: Oh, yeah? Don't believe everything you read, brother!
(Don't believe everything you read..... indeed!!)
2003:
Rumsfeld: Let me say one other thing. The images you are seeing on television you are seeing over, and over, and over, and it's the same picture of some person walking out of some building with a vase, and you see it 20 times, and you think, "My goodness, were there that many vases?" (Laughter.)
Q: Do you think that the words "anarchy" and "lawlessness" are ill-chosen?
Rumsfeld: Absolutely. I picked up a newspaper today and I couldn't believe it. I read eight headlines that talked about chaos, violence, unrest. And it just was Henny Penny -- "The sky is falling." I've never seen anything like it! And here is a country that's being liberated, here are people who are going from being repressed and held under the thumb of a vicious dictator, and they're free. And all this newspaper could do, with eight or 10 headlines, they showed a man bleeding, a civilian, who they claimed we had shot -- one thing after another. It's just unbelievable how people can take that away from what is happening in that country!
(I wouldn't say Rumsfeld is talking about the end of the world there. He's instead stated (with condescension) that reporters were being hysterical, or mistaken, when they talked about the then potential problems in Iraq. They questioned whether a disastrous breakdown of social order was imminent, as displayed by rioting and looting, and Rumsfeld in response confidently made fun of what he saw as their irrational beliefs)