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Nostradamus hoaxitude

 
 
Mister Snee
23:21 / 18.09.01
I'm sure you've all had this sent to you in various forms dozens of times...

quote:
"In the City of God there will be a great thunder,
Two brothers torn apart by Chaos,
while the fortress endures,
the great leader will succumb,
The third big war will begin when the big city is burning"

Nostradamus 1654


Well, guess what? Nostradamus never said that. No surprise, I suppose.

quote:
Nostradamus did not write the quatrain now being attributed to him. (One wonders how a guy who died in 1566 could have written an item identified as being penned in 1654 anyway.) It originated with a student at Brock University in Canada in the 1990s, appearing on a web page essay on Nostradamus. That particular quatrain was offered by the page's author, Neil Marshall, as a fabricated example to illustrate how easily an important-sounding prophecy can be crafted through the use of abstract imagery. He pointed out how the terms he used were so deliberately vague they could be interpreted to fit any number of cataclysmic events.


It's always sort of vindicating to see spam so professionally shot down. Now, forward to everyone you know!
 
 
CameronStewart
23:28 / 18.09.01
Last week, I think Thursday, there was actually a story on the national evening news here in Canada that explained the Nostradamus hoax/misunderstanding and told people to stop panicking over it.

I got it in my mailbox more than a dozen times, each a slightly different version.

Apparently the Brock University student who penned the quatrain has received hundreds of emails since the bombing ranging from rabid death threats to people proclaiming him a prophet...

[ 19-09-2001: Message edited by: CameronStewart ]
 
 
moriarty
00:28 / 19.09.01
We touched on this briefly here.

Also, this is a copy of the original website the prediction was taken from. Probably too stressful to keep the original up and running.
 
 
Mister Snee
01:29 / 19.09.01
Woops.
 
 
moriarty
02:34 / 19.09.01
No woops needed. I should have posted it here in the first place.
 
 
gentleman loser
18:18 / 19.09.01
I didn't get spammed.

I feel so left out!

I remember everyone quoting Nostradamus. . . during the Gulf War! The problem with his predictions or prophecies or whatever you want to call them is that they are so vague that you can interpret them in whatever way you care to spin them. Kind of like the Bible and many other religious texts. . .
 
  
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