Albrecht Dürer's dream

While watching "Art of Northern Renaissance" again last night, I came across two very interesting little stories.

First was the identity of St.Barbara - an early martyr whose story was very highly respected and painted in medieval times but later Vatican decided she is probably just a fiction and Barbara was removed from liturgical calendar altogether. St. Barbara was often painted as patron saint in many masterpieces mentioned in this documentary and she can be recognised as always having a tower somewhere near by (she was imprisoned in tower, according to story). St.Barbara was also a protector of everybody working with explosions, navy and explosives of any kind. Now, what was really strange was that her feast day is December 4, which is exactly the day I read about her and find this spooky, I mean what were the chances I would discover this obscure Saint from 7th century exactly on her day?

Second story is about great German artist Albrecht Dürer who lived in 15th century - he left some truly magnificent paintings and metal engravings that gained huge success trough whole Europe thanks to invention of print. His prints were done with such skill that he completely overshadowed everybody before him - he was truly genius. Now, what I find interesting is that at the very end of his life Dürer had apocalyptic dream about end of the world - this dream was very disturbing and he couldn't help but making a painting of it, with clear explanations bellow the painting as to point at his vision. Where usually Dürer was very skilled painter of panorama and often would add lots of carefully detailed animals, in his dream the earth was empty and lonely with some huge foreboding smoke-tower in a distance that rains down on everything. Looking at it now in 21 century it looks very familiar and I can only gasp in awe that a painter in 15th century had such a vision in his dream. Is this a premonition of the end of the world?