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Nostradamus Predicted It!!! (after it already happened)

posted 17 years ago by tmitch-1
4 replies | jump to latest

I vividly remember my first haircut after September 11, 2001.

It's not the haircut itself I remember specifically, but the conversation between my barber and an adjacent customer. Like most everyone for at least a month after the worst terrorist act in human history, they were talking about 9/11.

Several minutes into the conversation, I heard the first (though certainly not the last) inevitable reference to Nostradamus 'predicting' the WTC disaster. "I'll tell you what..." began my barber, "that Notre-Damus perdicted it." He then proceeded to recite an alleged Nostradamus quote about "Two Brothers gettin' killed by two Iron Birds," or something like that; to which the customer replied, "It's kinda spooky, isn't it?"

In addition to my barber's inadvertant transposition of a 16th-century supposed prophet with the home of the Fighting Irish, there was one other aspect of the conversation that would also have been quite amusing - had it not been in reference to a terrorist act that killed nearly 3,000 people.

Specifically, just once - why can't Nostradamus and/or the geniuses who 'interpret' his supposed prophecies make a prediction BEFORE THE EVENT ACTUALLY HAPPENS?????!!!! If - as Nostradamus's followers proclaim - N's predictions are incredibly powerful and useful prophecies - wouldn't it have been a lot more useful to all those who died a horrible death in the WTC disaster if any of Nostradamus's followers had deciphered his incredibly accurate 9/11 prediction BEFORE SEPTEMBER 11, 2001??????!!!!!

Ditto for all of the Nostradamus predictions cited in this movie. It seems that if nothing else, the N-Man was really, really good at predicting lots and lots of really bad things. The Great Depression; the rise of the Third Reich; the assassinations of Ghandi, JFK, and Martin Luther King - all shockingly predicted by Nostradamus. Only problem was that - in each case - absolutely no one interpreted any of N's muddled 'prophecies' correctly A SINGLE SECOND BEFORE THEY ACTUALLY HAPPENED!! KINDA SPOOKY, ISN'T IT??!!

Not to say Nostradamus's groupies haven't tried to predict future events. According to this 1981 movie, N predicted that WWIII - complete with a nuclear holocaust - would break out in 1999. Must've been a quiet world war. And an even quieter global thermo-nuclear holocaust. And I believe the movie also claimed N predicted that world-wide earthquakes, fires, massive famine and plague, and an alien invasion would also happen right about the same time.

Okay, I made up the part about the alien invasion - but it's only because I'm so unbelievably disappointed that the creators of this film missed out on such an obvious opportunity to throw another horrific-catastrophy-in-our-immediate-lifetime scenario into the Nostradamus pot of predictions.

[–] quahog_me-1 16 years ago

Yes, I sure do remember the global thermonuclear war that happened in 1999. Well, to be honest I heard about it the next day. You see, I slept right through it.

[–] worldofbong 16 years ago

No, Nostradamus was predicting the Prince SONG 1999! "When I woke up this morning coulda sworn it was judgment day" and "The sky was all purple there were people runnin everywhere" - quoteth Prince in the 82nd year of 1900 in the New Country - SCARY HUH!!

Dr Bong Music & Videos http://www.worldofbong.com

[–] jschillig 14 years ago

True dat. I remember being scared out of my eight-year-old wits at this show. Every so often during my adolescence/young adulthood, some new talk of Nostradamus would crop up and I'd get uneasy all over again...

Until I actually looked at a straight translation of Nostradamus' quatrains--vague gibberish that could be interpreted to mean ANYTHING!

But it's quite true that no one seems to figure out these prophecies BEFORE the events actually happened. Case in point? Something that happened during Michel de Nostredame's lifetime...the death, during a joust, of France's King Henri II. Afterward, people pointed to a quatrain of his that said something about "the young lion will overcome the old one" and "death in a golden cage" (Henri wore a golden jousting helmet). But at the time, Nostradamus was actually in with the French royal family (Catherine de Medici, Henri's queen, had summoned him to court to do her children's horoscopes). One might wonder why, if Nostradamus had really seen Henri's death, he wouldn't have gotten a message to the King: "Your Majesty, it REALLY wouldn't be a good idea for you to joust today."

Google "Cecil Adams" "Straight Dope" and "Nostradamus" together to find Cecil Adams' column on the whole business. Cecil sets the record as straight as possible on a good many things in his columns (and the Straight Dope Message board has lots of cool topics under discussion!)

Of course, with regard to this particular show...it's no wonder it scared so many people. Orson Welles has the ability to terrify with his voice alone. Just ask anyone who was around in October 1938. ;-)

[–] yusef-ghanima 8 years ago

you guys are idiots, did you even watch the film, the prediction of the famine in africa was after the movie, i remember it very well, and pop bands were making concerts to collect food.