History UsefulNotes / Nostradamus

* In Part 2 of ''Manga/ChainsawMan'', Yoshida discusses sudden public interest in an exert from ''The Prophecies'' quoted as "In the seventh month of 1999, a great king of terror will descend." The series is set in 1998 at that point, [[TwentyMinutesIntoThePast but written decades later]]. [[spoiler:Public Safety tested this by having dozens of people ask [[{{Seers}} the Future Devil]] when they would die. It said '''three quarters''' of them would indeed die in July 1999, while the rest would die ''the week Yoshida is talking''.]] Because fear in this universe [[{{Tulpa}} empowers]] and [[ClapYourHandsIfYouBelieve creates]] devils, a common interpretation of Nostradamus' writing could be a SelfFulfillingProphecy, no matter how baseless both were.

* In episode "Recap/TheSopranosS4E1ForAllDebtsPublicAndPrivate", Bobby Baccalieri mistakenly attributes his prophecies to [[Literature/TheHunchbackOfNotreDame Quasimodo]].

* TheEndOfTheWorldAsWeKnowIt: He predicted the end of the world in 3797.

Michel de Nostredame (December 14 or 21, 1503 – July 2, 1566), a.k.a Nostradamus, was a 16th-century French physician who was well respected in his day,[[note]]It's speculated that his success as a physician was largely attributable to an obsession with cleanliness; without realizing it, he was killing germs in the process.[[/note]] but [[PopCulturalOsmosis has become more famous in the centuries after]] as a soothsayer. All due to a little book called ''The Prophecies'' (1555), in which he made predictions for future historical events. Believers and so-called experts believe that this man could really see into the future and predicted many factual historical events. Skeptics point to the fact that Nostradamus wrote all his work in very cryptical quatrains that are open [[EveryoneIsJesusInPurgatory to all kinds of interpretations]], even before accounting for the vagaries of translating them from French into other languages. Thus one can easily shoehorn in any historical event one wants.