Did Nostradamus Predict the 9/11 Attacks?????

September 12, 2001

NOSTRADAMUS, THE MOST famous astrologer who ever lived, was born in France in 1503 and published his barely scrutable collection of prophecies, The Centuries, in 1555. Each four-line verse (or "quatrain") purported to foretell world events far into the future, and ever since Nostradamus' time devotees have claimed his work accurately predicted wars, natural disasters and the rise and fall of empires.

Yet it is plain to see that Nostradamus couched his "prophetic" verses in language so obscure that the words can be, and have been, interpreted to mean almost anything. What's more, the interpreting is always done after the fact, with the benefit of hindsight, and with the concerted aim of proving the relevance of a given passage to an actual event.

If the aftermaths of past catastrophes are any indication, in the coming weeks and months we can expect a bumper crop of arcane tracts purporting to show beyond doubt that Nostradamus foresaw the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks of September 11, 2001. In fact, thanks to the efforts of anonymous Internet pranksters, the he-told-you-sos have already begun. "Spooky" quatrains allegedly foretelling the events of 9/11 with incredible specificity were circulating online within hours of the first jetliner crash in New York City — completely bogus quatrains, as it turned out. It wasn't a question of whether or not they accurately predicted anything; Nostradamus simply didn't write them.