- PARIS (AFP) - Watchers of
the French soothsayer Nostradamus were up in arms Friday after two hoax
e-mails circulated around the world declaring he had predicted the terror
attacks on the United States and that these presaged World War III.
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- "There are a number of spurious and bogus prophecies
of Nostradamus surfacing," John Hogue, author of numerous books on
the 16th-century doctor and astrologist, said on his website.
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- "These frauds are mixing lines out of context from
several authentic Nostradamus quatrains with phrases that are complete
fabrications. Do not believe them," he said.
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- Nostradamus -- Michel de Nostradame -- is believed by
some to have predicted many great events in history, including the rise
and fall of Napoleon and Hitler, the bombing of Hiroshima and the
assassination
of US president John F. Kennedy and his brother Robert.
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- But critics of Nostradamus say his writing is so woolly
that the predictions can be interpreted whichever way one cares.
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- Even Nostradamus supporters admitted Friday that one
of the e-mails going the rounds was a selective mixture of his writings,
while hoax-monitors said the other e-mail was palpably bogus.
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- One version going the rounds says this:
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- "In the year of the new century and nine months,
From the sky will come a great King of Terror... The sky will burn at
forty-five
degrees. Fire approaches the great new city..."
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- "In the city of york there will be a great
collapse,
2 twin brothers torn apart by chaos while the fortress falls the great
leader will succumb third big war will begin when the big city is
burning"
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- The idea being, according to the anonymous originators
of the e-mail, that the "twin brothers" are the World Trade
Center;
that 45 degrees gives the latitude of New York; and that the "third
big war" is a global conflagration.
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- However, the lines are a "collage" of two
different
Nostradamus quatrains, Victor Baines, director of the Nostradamus Society
of America, said on the society's website. A quatrain is a four-line
section
of verse.
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- Not only that, but the original quatrains said the
"Great
King of Terror" would come in July 1999, rather than September 2001,
and in any case the latitude of New York (at Central Park) is 40 degrees,
47 minutes, not 45 degrees.
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- The second e-mail "prediction" is this:
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- "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
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- On the day of the 9 month that two metal birds would
crash into two tall statues, in the newcity, and the world will end soon
after.
-
- -Nostradamus 1654."
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- The website about.com, in its column Rumorwatch, which
tracks the creation of urban myths, said this version was even more
bogus.
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- Not only had Nostradamus died in 1566 -- which made it
unlikely that he wrote this prophecy in 1654 -- the whole thing was
concocted
a few years ago by a student, Neil Marshall, and placed on the web, it
said.
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- "Marshall made up the quatrain to demonstrate --
quite ironically, in light of how it is now being misused -- that the
writings
of Nostradamus are so cryptic that they can be interpreted to mean almost
anything," about.com's columnist David Emery, said.
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