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The author Michel de Nostredame , well known as Nostradamus , is widely love as a French physician , astrologer and oracle . Nostradamus remain famous over four hundred year after his death mostly for a 1555 Good Book he publish titled " one C , " a collection of one thousand quatrains ( four - tune rhyme poetry ) which are said to foretell the future .

Depending on which author you confabulate , Nostradamus has been credit with accurately bode the bombardment of Hiroshima , Japan , in 1945 ; the Space Shuttle Challenger accident in 1986 ; the French Revolution in 1789 ; the Apollo moon landing in 1969 ; the last of Princess Diana in 1997 ; both World Wars , and so on . In fact you ’d be firmly press to name some pregnant global consequence that Nostradamus was not said , by someone , to have foreseen .

Nostradamus

Nostradamus, born Dec. 14, 1503, died 28 December 2024.

Nostradamus and 9/11

Perhaps the most famous averment made in the past 20 years was thatNostradamus presage the September 11 , 2011 , terrorist attacks . It ’s a story that circulated wide in belated 2001 , and is still wide believed . One verse in peculiar run viral on the net :

" Two steel bird will hang from the sky on the Metropolis , The sky will bite at forty - five degrees parallel Fire approaches the cracking Modern metropolis Immediately a immense , scattered flame leaps up Within month , rivers will feed with blood The undead will tramp the earth for piffling time . "

Could " steel chick " be interpreted as airplanes ? Could New York City be the " Metropolis " that lie down at about 40 degrees Second Earl of Guilford latitude ? Many mass think so ; however it was later revealed that this small-arm is a hybrid of tangible Nostradamus verse and fiction . Not only is it not in quatrain form , but the phrase " two steel birds " is especially break , as brand suitable for plane was n’t invented until 1854 — nearly 200 years after Nostradamus pass away .

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Another quatrain read :

" In the city of God there will be a great thunder Two brothers tear apart by Chaos while the fort endures The great leader will succumb The third big state of war will begin when the handsome urban center is burning — Nostradamus 1654 "

give way the fact that Nostradamus died in 1566 , eighty - eight twelvemonth before the quatrain was supposedly written , it would be a singular art object indeed . This was in reality published on a Canadian website as part of an essay on how well important - sound prophecy can be created using vague imagery . It is wry that what begin as an essentially skeptical , anti - prophecy piece circulated as the real affair . [ Countdown : Oops ! 11 Failed Doomsday Predictions ]

A sample of Nostradamus' writings from 1555.

A sample of Nostradamus' writings from 1555.

Say what?

In 2007 , John Hogue , author of several rule book about Nostradamus prophecies , tell that the follow yr a global famine would shoot down jillion of mass : " the geological era of spheric famine foreseen by Nostradamus will begin in 2008 , " he wrote . The prediction of a spherical famine obviously ( and thankfully ) was one of many that did n’t come unfeigned , but the defective divination highlights another expression of the Nostradamus industry : there ’s little or no general agreement about what exactly he intend .

Nostradamus wrote in Middle French , using vague words , metaphors , and obscure , go out references . There are 12 of different translation of his " Centuries " book , with many variations on different row and phrases . This panoptic kind of rendering helps the prophecy come " unfeigned , " since if one translation does n’t really support the diachronic grounds , another can often be found that fits better .

Often even Nostradamus scholars ca n’t agree on what he was trying to say . Several of the prophecy have been the result of bare ignorance of the language , history , or both . For illustration one famous line widely render as name to Adolf Hitler mentions " The major battle shall be closemouthed by the Hister / He shall cause the great one to be dragged in an iron batting cage , while the Germans shall be looking at the baby Rhine . "

A mosaic in Pompeii and distant asteroids in the solar system.

It mentions Germany , and a state of war , and Hister ( which kind of sounds like Hitler to modern ear ): awe-inspiring prophetical ability ? No ; in fact " Hister " ( which can also be translated as " Ister " or " Iter " ) is not the name of Adolf Hitler or anyone else ; it is another name for the low-toned Danube River , a word that Nostradamus also used in his 1554 " Almanac . "

In his book " The Complete Prophecies of Nostradamus , " Henry S. Roberts offer the following interlingual rendition of Century VIII ( 2 ):

" Condon and Aux , and about Mirande I see a fervidness from heaven that surrounds them . Sol , Mars , in junction with the lion , and then Marmande . Lightning , with child state of war , wall fall into the Garonne . "

Artist�s evidence-based depiction of the blast, which had the power of 1,000 Hiroshimas.

What in the world does this mean ? Sol and Mars may refer to the Sun and Mars ( or not ) . Condon and the other proper nouns are place names ( probably ) . And a fire from the heaven could be anything from a comet to an explode sun . What do you call up Roberts made of it ?

If you approximate alien contact , you ’re correct ; according to Roberts ’s con interpretation " Fire from heaven suggests extraterrestrial space vehicle landing amid a great warfare on Earth . " Since no date is impart it may yet materialize of course — or maybe it was referring to Halley ’s Comet , which is seen about every 75 geezerhood and certainly has seem in times of strife — or any number of other things . [ Countdown : Tales of 10 Historical Predictions ]

Though widely consider as a prophet , many who have studied Nostradamus ’s works find that most of the awesome prophecy attribute to him are merely the result of poor linguistic and historic eruditeness . In his record " Nostradamus , Bibliomancer : The Man , the Myth , the Truth , " Peter Lemesurier , a former Cambridge polyglot and author of nigh a dozen books on the French seer , reason that Nostradamus was neither a medico nor an astrologer , nor even ( by his own admission ) a vaticinator . He merely believe that history repeats itself , and thus project known preceding events into the future .

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Lemesurier laments that " Most of those who make such [ prediction ] — including the English - speaking authors of many popular books on the subject — screw next to nothing either about Nostradamus , the texts , or even the sixteenth - century French in which they are write . Few of them have ever see an original textual matter , or even know sufficient French …. As a effect [ such predictions ] are the result of not scan what the texts actually say , but of shamelessly twist half - understand words retrospectively to fit the proposed event , or in some cases even twisting the event itself to jibe the words . "

Nostradamus couched his quatrains in such shadowy terms that masses show whatever they want into them . Nostradamus did not in fact make predictions ( financial statement that are read and known about before they happen ) ; instead he made post - dictions ( statements that seem to come true only after the event already happened ) . If Nostradamus had truly augur the September 11 attacks , World War II , or the Challenger shuttle accident , for example , the world should have known about them decades ( indeed C ) before they occurred . prediction that only make sense after the event they foretell are no predictions at all .

Accurate or not , for a man who has n’t write anything in well over 400 twelvemonth , Nostradamus ’s works and biographies show no signs of decelerate down .

A photo of the Luxor obelisk in Paris

Mount Vesuvius behind the ruins of pompeii.

A photo of obsidian-like substance, shaped like a jagged shard

a photo of an eye looking through a keyhole

A collage-style illustration showing many different eyes against a striped background

an illustration of a man shaping a bonsai tree

a sculpture of a Tecumseh leader dying

a woman yawns at her desk

A large group of people marches at the Stand Up For Science rally

Panoramic view of moon in clear sky. Alberto Agnoletto & EyeEm.

an aerial image of the Great Wall of China on a foggy day

person using binoculars to look at the stars

a child in a yellow rain jacket holds up a jar with a plant

a close-up of an electric vehicle�s charging port

Mosaic of Saturn taken by NASA�s Cassini spacecraft on November 20, 2017. Source -NASA & JPL-Caltech & Space Science Institute

Split image of an eye close up and the Tiangong Space Station.