Original subtitles

May, 1791, the height of the French Revolution.

Three sceptics have set out to challenge a legend.

The legend: Whoever shall drink from the skull of the man who is buried here

will inherit his powers.

The name of the dead man - Michel de Nostradamus.

His powers: the ability to predict the events of the future.

For 200 years, his grave has remained undisturbed.

Because the legend also said,

that whoever disturbed his grave would die.

It was not the skeleton that certainly startled the grave-diggers,

but the plaque around its neck, with the date

May, 1791.

Which could only have been placed there at the time of burial, in 1566.

Nostradamas had predicted

200 years before, the exact date

that his body would be dug up.

The shot that killed that grave-digger

was fired from the riot of the surrounding revolutionists,

a stray bullet that fulfilled the legend of Nostradamas.

Was it a coincidence?

Or a prophecy?

We're going to look at this man, this,

Michel de Nostradamas.

He was a respected French physician,

whose predictions of the future

have mystified scholars for over 400 years.

We're gonna look at his predictions of the French Revolution, of the Kennedies,

of Napoleon, of Hitler,

and of another man, who Nostradamas says is soon to plunge the world

into a catastrophic war.

Was he a quack,

this Nostradamus?

A charlatan? Or was he a true prophet, a man with a gift

to see what others cannot see?

We're going to let you judge for yourselves.

If his predictions of the past are accurate,

then his predictions of the future

could very well affect the lives of all of us.

Nostradamas made over a 1000 predictions.

There are experts who say that over half of them have already come true.

The most startling of them deals with the coming of three antichrists.

Hitler is believed to have been one of these.

Another is thought to have been Napoleon.

The third antichrist is still to come.

Nostradamus predicts he will be here within the next 20 years.

A villainous warlord will start the Third World War.

But can Nostradamus or any man see the future?

In Nostradamus' day, it was believed that only witches and warlocks,

or those who served the devil, could see through time.

To claim clairvoyancy was heresy.

And countless people were convicted and sentenced

to horrible tortures and deaths.

It's only in recent years that scholars at universities around the world

have begun to seriously study the question:

can man see into the future?

We asked scientist, Dr Edgar Mitchell, one of the first men to walk on the moon,

if it's possible to see through time.

Yes, it's possible to see into the future.

Every human being has virtually unlimited awareness

and creative capabilities.

Some individuals just have it in greater measure than others.

There've been a number of studies on this,

and they're getting better and more definitive each year.

The future is nothing but a series of probabilities,

made up of the decisions that we make right now,

that lead to certain events into the future.

But every human being has this capability, determines their own future,

some just have greater awareness than others.

Nostradamus was conscious of his greater awareness.

Even as a boy growing up in the French village of Saint-R�my-de-Provence,

for he was born in 1503,

coming from a family with roots in both Jewish and Christian traditions,

he believed his visions proceeded from the divine power of God.

His ancestors were Jewish, his family had converted to Christianity.

So with his grandfather, a doctor,

he studied the Kabbalah, as well as the Old and the New Testaments.

He also studied the stars.

Nostradamus's early education was an extraordinary one

for a French youth of his day.

His father, who was the village notary, saw to it that Nostradamus was

schooled in the classics and the sciences.

From his mother,

Nostradamus derived his love of God and his passionate faith.

He learned to respect the gift of prophecy as the power of God.

To make all time, past, present and future, become one time.

One of Nostradamus' earliest recorded visions was of a religious nature.

While still a youth, he saw a young Franciscan friar approach the well.

He was compelled to go to the friar and pay him homage.

He fell to his knees and kissed the young man's robes.

Asked why he was paying such duty to a lowly friar,

Nostradamus replied,

Because I must kiss the robes of His Holiness, the Pope.

Nostradamus' behaviour was starting to be eccentric.

But many years later after Nostradamus had died,

the young man, Felice Peretti, became Pope Sixtus V.

But Nostradamus was not yet ready to pursue a life as a prophet,

instead he attended the university, where he was trained to be a physician.

While he was still a student, a plague, the dreaded curse of the 16th century,

spread across Europe.

Medical science had no cure for the disease and so thousands died.

Nostradamus left school at the age of 22, never having practiced medicine before,

went out to try to heal the sick and dying.

Nostradamus' patients recovered.

What cure he used is not recorded.

What is recorded is that his fame as a healer spread.

From near and far, towns afflicted with the plague sent for him.

His achievements were legendary.

Had he never made a single prediction, Nostradamus would've endured in history

as a remarkable physician.

His success brought him to the town of Agen,

where he married and settled down.

There rumours of his strange powers to see into the future

provoked much curiosity.

On one occasion he was invited to a banquet,

where his host attempted to trick him.

He told Nostradamus they would be eating pig that evening.

He said he had a black pig and a white pig.

And he invited Nostradamus to predict which of the two they would be eating.

Nostradamus said the black one.

The host then instructed the cook to prepare the white pig.

Later that evening,

as they were enjoying their meal,

the host challenged Nostradamus to once more state which pig they were eating.

Nostradamus replied, as he had before, the black one.

Triumphantly, the host then called for the cook

to ask him to declare which of the two they were eating.

The cook said that while he was preparing the white pig,

it fell from the table.

It was devoured by dogs.

So he was forced to serve the black one.

More and more, Nostradamus was becoming aware of his power to

predict the future.

But it wasn't until a personal tragedy struck,

that he took account of that power,

and changed his life accordingly.

When the next wave of the devastating plague took the lives of his

wife and two children in 1533,

he fell into a deep despair.

He retired to a life of seclusion and became a quiet, introverted man.

He then wandered aimlessly throughout Europe for the next 10 years.

Nostradamus was looking continually inward.

He now discovered what it was he had to do.

He returned to Salon, the south of France,

where he began to record his visions.

Seated at night in my secret study, alone,

reposing over the brass tripod.

A slender flame leaps out of the solitude,

making me pronounce that which is not in vain.

He chose to write down his predictions in a four line rhyming verse,

known as the quatrain.

He wrote in his native French, but to protect himself from the superstitious

witch hunters of the day, he confused the verse with Latin and Greek,

and even anagrams.

He wrote 1000 quatrains,

dividing them into 10 groups of a 100 each,

called Centuries.

The first edition of his quatrains was published before his death in 1566.

They continue to be published to this day.

His visions, Nostradamus wrote,

were received by a subtle spirit of fire.

By a voice coming from limbo.

These voices and visions were often fragmented.

And they were about things and events that Nostradamus himself

couldn't understand, but still, he set them down in verse, in the quatrains.

And obscure, as these quatrains are to many of us,

they were very clear to others. One quatrain for example,

the 35th of the first Century,

was quickly seized upon as, suggesting that

the reigning King of France, Henry II, would die in a jousting tournament.

Nostradamus was quickly summoned before the king to explain the quatrain.

The king said it was ridiculous.

He'd never participate in such a tournament.

Nostradamus could only reply that

he wrote what he saw.

Despite Nostradamus' warning,

the king did joust in a tournament.

His opponent was the count Gabriel de Montgomery.

The young lion will overcome the old one.

In a cage of gold his eyes will be put out.

Nostradamus wrote many quatrains about the events in his homeland.

He is said to have predicted the French Revolution of 1789,

234 years before it happened.

The republic of the great city, with great harshness,

shall not permit exit to the king.

Being called by trumpets, the ladder shall be put to the wall

and the city shall repent.

It is estimated that Nostradamus wrote about 30 quatrains

dealing with this epical moment in French history.

Despite the king,

the coin will be brought lower.

The people shall rise against their king.

Peace being made, holy laws made worse,

Paris was never in such great disorder.

Nostradamus wrote about places he could never have guessed at,

places that in his time didn't even exist.

On the night of June 20, 1791, a mob calling itself The Marseillaise 500

attacked Louis XVIth palace.

Built long after Nostradamus' death,

the palace was called the Tuileries, which in French means the tile works.

Conflict will take place at the tile works by 500.

Then there's the remarkable quatrain

in which Nostradamus wrote about the king's flight from Paris.

Louis XVI with his wife, Queen Marie Antoinette, fled Paris in 1791,

taking the odd route via the forest of Reims.

Disguised as a monk, he was dressed in grey,

and he went to Varennes.

Nostradamus also wrote about the fate of the royal couple.

The government taken over will convict the king.

The king was condemned to death.

The queen sent to death by jurors, chosen by lot.

Marie Antoinette was condemned to death by a jury of revolutionaries.

The first time royalty was tried by a jury, chosen by lot.

And the prostitute shares the fate of the consort.

Madame du Barry, mistress of kings, also met her fate on the guillotine.

Nostradamus' visions of the future of his homeland

have been described as being uncanny.

He is said to have heard the thundering footsteps of Napoleon's troops

and to have seen the cost in human lives of Napoleon's adventures.

In quatrain after quatrain he's described

the coming of three powerful and tyrannical leaders.

Men he called antichrists.

He wrote that these men would lead their people through reigns of terror

after first seducing them with promises of greatness.

Napoleon is said to have been the first of the three.

An emperor will be born near Italy,

one who will cost his empire quite a high price.

They will say that even among his supporters, he will be found

less prince than butcher.

"...take the best soldiers I can find, who are not drunk..."

Napoleon, who was an emperor, not a king of France, was born near Italy,

on the island of Corsica.

It was an unheard of place for a French ruler to be born.

And, even in his own time, Napoleon was seen as both

prince and butcher.

From a simple soldier he will attain to empire.

From a short road, he will attain the long.

Great swarms of bees will arise.

Short roads to long roads, soldier to emperor.

Napoleon adopted the beehive as his imperial crest.

For 14 years he will hold the tyranny.

Napoleon's reign of war and terror

from the time he first seized power on November 9, 1799

to his exile in Elba on April 13, 1814,

was 14 years and 5 months.

Of a name never before held by a French king.

Napoleon Bonaparte is indeed a name never before or since

held by a French king.

Napoleon, whose name in Greek means

the new destroyer,

invaded Russia in 1812.

His troops sacked and burned Moscow.

Here Nostradamus suggests that the Russian people would at last

rise up and turn back the French invaders.

He seems to have captured the image of Napoleon's retreat

across the icy steps of Russia

250 years

before it happened.

Napoleon had overextended his forces, his army was trapped

over 3000 miles from their home base in France.

He was as much beaten by the Russian winter as he was by the Russian army.

The French will come to dread the time of the north winds.

Their forces having driven too far.

Students of the quatrains find Nostradamus' predictions about

this first antichrist, the man they are certain is Napoleon,

to be his most extraordinary.

They point to a verse they say tells of Napoleon's defeat and exile

to the small island of Elba.

The great empire will soon be exchanged for a small place,

in which he will come to lay down his scepter.

A small place of tiny area, it will soon begin to grow.

Here, experts say, Nostradamus is alluding to Napoleon's escape from Elba.

It was a daring attempt to regain power.

The captive escaping great dangers, his fortunes greatly change.

Successful, Napoleon began what was to become known as the Hundred Days,

which would reach a climax on June 18, 1815, on a battlefield in Belgium.

Waterloo, in the third month, of Napoleon's second reign.

In the third month at sunrise, the boar and the leopard meet on the battlefield.

Napoleon's enemy was the Duke of Wellington, a man he called

the leopard of England.

The boar and the leopard meet on the battlefield.

All day from sunrise to evening, Napoleon's troops assaulted the English.

But it was the French flank that broke first.

Wellington, the leopard, could now take over.

The fatigued leopard looks up to the heavens, an eagle soars to the sun.

The chief adversary will win the victory.

The chief adversary, Wellington,

the loser, as Nostradamus may have predicted 250 years before,

Napoleon.

Neither bugles nor shouts will stop the soldiers.

Liberty and peace achieved only through time and death.

Incredible, yes, but there's more, much more.

Visions of war, bloodshed and death.

Visions of the future that are often bleak and terrifying.

Visions that tormented Nostradamus, who was

after all a man of peace, a man who was a physician, a healer,

for he was a prophet.

Visions that he hoped would cause his fellow countrymen

to take a long look at the destiny of France, to wonder about it,

to think about changing it.

And yet, not all of his visions were of events

to happen in his homeland.

Nostradamus also wrote quatrains which referred to British royalty,

from Queen Elizabeth I to the reigning queen.

The most remarkable quatrains dealing with the royal family

are the two that are said to deal with King Edward VIII.

Later known as the Duke of Windsor.

Edward was a popular figure wherever he travelled.

On those travels he met an American divorc�e, Wally Simpson.

For being unwilling to agree to separation

he will be recognised as unfitted to be king.

He will be driven out, and another shall rule in his place.

Believe me when I tell you

that I have found it impossible

to carry the heavy burden of responsibility

without the help and support of the woman I love.

Edward's brother was crowned king in his place in 1936.

The English people were divided in their loyalties.

The kingdom will be divided over the brothers.

One of them will take the arms and name of Britain.

The new king called himself George VI.

The other, night overtaking him, will flee for France.

Immediately upon renouncing the throne and taking Wally Simpson as his wife,

Edward went into exile in France.

An English title will be tardily conferred on him.

Edward was conferred the title Duke of Windsor.

Nostradamus also wrote about the British adventures in the new world.

Only just discovered in the years before his birth.

In several quatrains he is said to have written about the British colonies

striking out on their own, in a war for independence.

The West shall be free from the British Isles.

Nostradamus wrote that line in the seclusion of an attic room

in a small town in France, about a country

not yet born, 2000 miles away.

Now listen to quatrain 96, Century 4, written over 200 years

before the American Revolution.

The eldest sister of the Britannic Island shall be born

15 years before her brother.

This prediction many experts say not only suggest that America,

the eldest sister, will achieve independence

before France, her brother.

but actually stipulates the gap of 15 years

between the beginnings of the republic in each country.

America, in 1776.

France, in 1791.

By what is promised her, and by help of truth, she shall succeed

in the Kingdom of balance.

Here, the Nostradamus proponents say the 16th century French prophet

was predicting that the United States would one day ensure

the balance of power in the world.

There are experts who say he wrote many quatrains about future events

in American history.

In one he is said to have predicted the coming of a great lawgiver.

The Sacred Pomp shall bow down her wings at the coming of the great lawgiver.

He shall raise up the humble and defeat the rebellious.

No emulator of his shall be born.

Abraham Lincoln did give to the new nation its most important new laws.

Those which freed the slaves.

He raised up the humble and defeated the rebellious Confederate States.

In another quatrain, Nostradamus may be alluding to Lincoln's assassination.

A conspired death shall come to an effect.

Charge given and a journey to death.

Elected, created, received by his own defeated.

Blood of innocents before him by remorse.

They've killed the president!

A conspired death, Nostradamus wrote.

Lincoln's murder was the result of a vast conspiracy,

the exact details of which are still not fully understood.

By his own defeated, Nostradamus added.

Lincoln was killed by those he vanquished in the civil war.

The researchers and scholars who've been analysing and interpreting the

quatrains of Nostradamus over the last four centuries,

have reached some rather startling conclusions.

And none more startling than the predictions

of the assassination of not one,

but two American presidents.

Besides finding the quatrain alluding to

the killing of Abraham Lincoln, experts point to a quatrain which suggests

the assassination of John Kennedy.

The same quatrain also suggests that a modern day prophet

would predict the tragic event

and would try to warn the president.

The great man falls by lightning in the day.

An evil foretold by the postulant one.

I, John Fitzgerald Kennedy, do solemnly swear.

That you will faithfully execute the office of president

of the United States.

That I will faithfully execute the office of president

of the United States.

January 20th, 1961,

John Kennedy becomes the 35th president of the United States.

Ask not what your country can do for you.

Ask what you can do for your country.

November 22nd, 1963, Dallas, Texas.

The great man falls by lightning in the day.

An evil foretold by the postulant one.

The postulant one could be the modern day psychic Jeanne Dixon,

who publicly foretold the assassination of president Kennedy.

I remember that day

of August 1952, it was pouring down rain just as it was when you came.

And I felt this person so close to me, very close to me,

as I went into Saint Matthews.

I was kneeling in prayer in front of the Holy Mother.

There he showed me, it was a film, everything that would happen.

And he even showed me that the president would be seated, he'd be Democrat

and assassinated in his first term.

Now that was a revelation, that was a prophecy, that would not change.

And then when I got the name of the assassin

that it would be a plot, that was a prediction.

That was picking the thoughts, like when you turn on radio or television,

and pick up a certain channel.

So I picked up the channel and I got the name of Oswald,

and that's documented before it happened.

And as I recall, I tried many ways to get to the president.

And I thought well, the best way, the easiest way, was to go to Kay Halle.

Key Halle was a very, very close friend of the presidents'.

In fact, knew the father long before Jack was born.

And I asked her, would she go up to the White House and intercede for me

and ask the president not to go to the south-west.

And his trip had not been announced publicly.

She said Jeanne, what trip?

I said he pays a trip to the south-west of Texas.

And she promised go to the White House and to intercede for me and she did go.

Some say that Nostradamus also wrote with incredible detail

about the controversy that would follow.

Much controversy still surrounds the arrest of Lee Harvey Oswald

as Kennedy's assassin.

This is the basement floor of the Dallas City Hall.

And that's a scuffle on the basement floor.

It's been... concerned photographers...

He has been shot.

Oswald has been shot.

We think Oswald has been shot...

Being dead, they will accuse an innocent of the deed.

Oswald was reported to have shot Kennedy in the back from the 6th

storey of this building.

But two bullets hit the president, one was clearly from behind.

But some say that the second, the fatal shot,

came from the front.

The only possible position for an assassin to be concealed in front of the

car at that moment was this clump of bushes, known as the grassy knoll.

Some people believe that this film shows the outline of a man and a rifle

concealed in the bushes.

The guilty one hidden in the misty woods.

President Kennedy was killed almost 20 years ago.

Still a controversy rages.

The Warren report failed to clear the air.

A congressional commission and subsequent FBI reports

have still left questions unanswered.

Is it possible that Nostradamus, four centuries ago,

could've had an insight into these strange events?

According to the forecast, another falls in the hours of the night.

June 5th, 1968.

My thanks to all of you and now it's on to Chicago and let's win there.

Robert Kennedy has just won the California primary.

Would Robert Kennedy win the election? Will he be our next president?

My reply was no. That Senator Robert Kennedy

will never be president of the United States

unless he withdraws his candidacy.

And does not run again until 1976.

Because 1976 is his timing, that he's rushing it.

And that he would be assassinated. And I said it would be right here,

in this room, as he would be carried away in his own blood.

Get that gun, get that gun...

Stay away from the gun.

Get a hold of his thumb, and break it if you have to! Get his thumb!

Senator Kennedy has been shot, is that possible?

Is there a doctor in the house? Please, it's very important.

We need a doctor immediately!

Is there a doctor in the house?

Quiet, please.

Quiet please. The best thing everybody can do here is, in an orderly way, leave.

Would you please do that?

Just in an orderly way clear the room.

Can we do that, please?

He saw a wrong and tried to right it.

Saw a suffering and tried to heal it.

Saw a war and tried to stop it.

Those of us who loved him,

and who take him to his rest today,

pray that what he was to us, what he wished for others,

will someday come to pass for all the world.

There's still another Kennedy.

Has Nostradamus written about him?

About Senator Edward Kennedy?

Some students of the quatrains believe that he has by a series of predictions.

About a family of distinguished brothers.

The youngest son shall be slandered by a detractor.

When enormous and martial deed shall be done,

the least part shall be doubtful to the eldest.

Soon after, they shall be equal in government.

Here, Nostradamus is said to be referring to John Kennedy

as the eldest son,

and Edward as the youngest.

The youngest son shall be slandered by a detractor.

Although cleared of all charges in the death of Mary Joe Kopechne in July 1969,

senator Ted Kennedy continues to be slandered by his detractors.

According to a statement given to the police by Kennedy,

he was heading for a ferry to the mainland with Mary Joe Kopechne,

a former secretary to the late Robert Kennedy, and she was a passenger.

Kennedy said he took the wrong turn and his car went off a narrow bridge into

8 feet of water.

Kennedy managed to escape, but Ms Kopechne drowned.

According to police, 8 hours elapsed before Kennedy showed up at the

police station to report the accident.

This last line of the quatrain could suggest

that 1984 may be Ted Kennedy's year.

It's no longer considered prophetic to say that

Ted Kennedy may become president of the United States, but

consider, as many do, that Nostradamus may have

predicted it 400 years ago.

Nostradamus wrote in considerable detail about revolutions and civil wars.

Consider this one.

One of the greatest shall flee into Spain,

which afterwards shall cause a wound to bleed long.

Destroying all, he shall reign in peace.

Spiritual wounds inflicted in the Spanish Civil War in the 1930's

did bleed long. Festering even after the end of the Second World War.

The line, they shall reign in peace,

could refer to the fact that the victorious

fascist regime remained neutral, even during the Second World War.

Nostradamus went further. He named the leader of this fascist regime.

From Spanish Franco shall come the assembly.

With those of the Riviera, there shall be a struggle.

From Spanish Franco...

Experts point to this quatrain as being one of Nostradamus'

most remarkable achievements.

To actually record a real name

of a participant in a future historical event.

This is not the only real name Nostradamus wrote in his predictions.

In Century 1, quatrain 25, he wrote,

the lost thing is discovered hidden for many centuries.

Pasteur will be celebrated as a demigod when the moon completes her great cycle.

Now here he names Louis Pasteur.

It actually gives the date of one of his greatest scientific discoveries, 1889.

The exact year the cycle of the moon was completed.

In another quatrain he names Montgolfier.

The inventor of the air balloon.

The 16th century earth bound Nostradamus

clearly foresaw that man would take to the skies.

Everyone shall go safely by air.

He predicted the coming of the space age.

After a great human change, another is at hand.

The great engine reneweth with the ages.

In the heaven shall be seen a running fire with long sparks.

They will be propelled in contraptions of flying fire, he wrote.

And they will go to the moon.

He will come to take himself to the corner of Luna,

where he will be taken and placed on a strange land.

Eagle, we got you now, it's looking good. Over. - Roger, copy.

Contact light? - Okay, engine stop.

We copy you down, Eagle.

Tranquility base here. The Eagle has landed.

He saw man exploring the universe above, into the great space of the heavens.

He also saw man exploring the world below him, deep in the sea.

He shall go out in an iron fish.

By lightning on the arch, gold and silver melted, the fleet can swim under water.

It shall be as a barn under the sea.

He foresaw the periscope.

The eye of the sea watches like a greedy dog.

He foresaw that man would use this new invention to make war.

In an iron fish, he will make war.

Nostradamus wrote that man would escalate the way in which he waged war,

as he improved his technology.

He wrote about man's seemingly insatiable desire to refine the art of destruction.

He wrote specifically about three men,

who would twist this technology to serve their own megalomania.

Three infamous and evil tyrants, antichrists,

as Nostradamus called them,

would alter the course of the world's history.

The first of these antichrists was to have been Napoleon.

The second, Nostradamus wrote,

is a man stained with murder.

The great enemy of the human race, worse than any who had gone before.

Bloody and inhuman.

Scholars are unanimous in agreement,

the 16th century prophet here was writing about Adolf Hitler.

From the Aryan height, there shall arise one who is both elevated

and obscure.

Of him who rules from the most horrible throne ever known.

Out of the deepest part of the west of Europe,

from poor people, a young child shall be born,

who with his tongue shall seduce many people.

Charlatanism,

combat, anti-socialism,

hate to the Jews...

treachery... murder... race insanity.

I am the leader of the German people.

A great squawker, proud without shame, shall be elected governor of the army.

A captain of great Germany shall come to yield himself by false hope,

so that his revolt will cause great bloodshed.

They shall subjugate the borders of the Danube,

they shall pursue crosses of iron, topsy-turvy.

Under the feigned shadow of freeing people from slavery,

he shall usurp the people and city for himself.

He came to power in 1933.

The German people surrendered to him their hopes.

European nations surrendered to him their liberties.

He shall come to tyrannise the land,

he shall raise up a hatred that had long been dormant.

The child of Germany observes no law.

Cries and tears, fire, blood, and battle.

It reads like a Grimms' fairytale,

till you remember how hideously real it was.

In all of these quatrains,

Nostradamus is accurately describing the horror that was Adolf Hitler.

There are three other quatrains we should mention here in which

some experts believe Nostradamus actually mentions Hitler by name,

missing by just one letter.

These quatrains contain the name of the man called Hister - H i s t e r.

Now the expert asks, given the task of seeing 400 years into the future,

isn't it possible that Nostradamus could make such a mistake?

No matter, they say.

There are enough quatrains that do suggest Hitler without naming him.

The Premier worse than ever did Nero see the spilling of brave human blood.

He shall cause the furnace to be rebuilt.

Brothers and sisters shall be slaves in various places.

They shall go in heaviness, witness their chin, forehead and nose.

The bloody emperor by battle

shall make a speech and roast the tongue, the flesh and the bones.

It's claimed that Nostradamus attributes the rise of Hitler

to the failure of the League of Nations, which met at Geneva.

The faults of Geneva will be laid bare.

Once the League of Nations failed to stop aggression

in Ethiopia and Manchuria, Hitler responded by launching his own war.

The Nazi blitzkrieg rolled against its European neighbours.

The great leader of Germany will incorporate into great Germany

Brabant, Flanders, Ghent, Bruges,

and Wallonia.

He will assail Vienna and Cologne.

Tours, Orleans, Blois, Angers, Reims, cities vexed by sudden change.

Land and sea shall tremble.

Hitler took his war into the skies, in the battle of Britain.

What followed was one of the greatest air battles the world has ever known.

Hitler committed his entire arsenal to breaking England's will.

The British people fought back with startling courage.

In the island shall be such horrible tumults

that nothing shall be heard by a war-like surprise.

So great shall be the assault of the robbers that everyone shall shelter

himself under the great line.

There's a remarkable verse in which he implies

that the whole population of London will take refuge in the great line,

under the city.

Which of course is a very good description of the London Underground.

In all 10 of his books, Nostradamus writes about

what could be the Second World War.

He suggests not only the rise of Hitler but the rise of Mussolini.

Born in a hovel, elevated to power is he who is empty and vain,

a treacherous brute.

He will tyrannise Italy.

Other quatrains experts say predict the Nazi invasion of

Belgium and their occupation of Norway.

So extensive in fact were the visions of Nazi victories in the quatrain that

they were actually used as propaganda weapons by the Third Reich.

Frau Joseph Goebbels, wife of Hitler's propaganda minister,

read the quatrains and, elated at their predictions of victory,

showed them to her husband.

Goebbels agreed with his wife.

Nostradamus' predictions could serve as a propaganda weapon.

With clever selection and manipulation,

they could be used to help break the French Resistance.

He ordered Nazi planes to bombard France with leaflets

bearing Nostradamus' predictions of Nazi victories.

France did fold, the Nazis marched into Paris

on June 14th, 1940.

The French nation, they will believe in rash things.

They will be in great grief.

The Allies were quick to respond to Hitler's exploitation of

Nostradamus' prophecies.

Winston Churchill, with the aid of an astrologer,

published those quatrains that he felt forecast Hitler's defeat.

The Roman power will be defeated,

then a great neighbour also, then they will turn about in confusion.

A great country perverted will be vanquished.

And the Americans also used Nostradamus' predictions

in a homefront propaganda effort.

MGM Studios, under producer Cary Wilson, produced a series of shorts

about Nostradamus for the movie theatres.

Beyond exploring the mysteries of prophecies,

the films served the national interest.

But Nostradamus made some predictions about us too.

Yes, the people of the 13 colonies chose freedom as the protector of this land.

For endless years freedom has and will hold up the famed torch.

In freedom's name we have struggled, we shall continue to struggle

and shall finally triumph. Not without the sacrifice and not without the pain

that must forever make mankind free.

Nostradamus wrote those words almost 400 years ago.

Nostradamus scholars say the war ended as the French prophet had predicted -

with the defeat of Germany,

and with the invention of a new weapon.

Satin of gold will be changed into iron.

The contrary of the positive ray shall exterminate all.

The contrary of the positive ray...

This is thought to be a reference

to the chain reaction involved in nuclear fission.

Fire, the colour of gold, from heaven to earth shall be seen.

Great murder of mankind, great loss of infants.

All this has been about the past.

A conjecture of how Nostradamus viewed history from his time to ours.

What about today, the present, the here and now?

Well, if you keep one eye on your daily newspaper,

and one eye on the quatrains,

I think you can pretty quickly see why so many of his partisans

continue to insist on his relevancy in modern times.

Even more remarkable is how Nostradamus may have foreseen the events in Iran.

The ancient name of which was Persia.

Nostradamus scholars insist that this is a startling prediction

about the fate of the Shah of Iran.

Too great a faith shall betray the monarch,

a secret omen that he shall die.

And what of the next line...

Being ended there, it shall commence in France.

Until last year the majority of people

did not know who the Ayatollah Khomeini was.

Let alone that he would launch his coup against the Shah from Paris.

Yet Nostradamus wrote this quatrain over 400 years ago.

All too much?

Well, let's pause for a moment.

That's the past and the present. What about

the future?

This brings us now to the very essence of the mystery.

How accurate is he?

Can we dismiss old Nostradamus, and all we've just seen as

coincidence? Or facile interpretation? Or...

Is there just possibly

some real substance and credibility to what he's written?

If we accept past evidence as proof of his accuracy,

then there's a fair chance that what he said about our future

might also be true.

And if so, then we must listen very carefully.

Do we really want to know about the future?

Maybe so.

If we can change it, if by heeding the warnings,

we can alter our destiny for the better.

But,

can we change the future?

Of course it's possible to change the events of the future.

Since the future is nothing but the summation of our decisions

made now, that project the future.

When we don't like what we're seeing,

if we're aware of what those events are going to lead to,

we simply change our minds about what we want.

The future is determined by our decisions.

And if through great awareness,

we do not like the trend that is taking place,

we change our mind and thus change the course of history.

Nostradamus also believed that the future can be changed.

In an epistle to his infant son, Cesar,

in which he dedicated his life's work to him,

he wrote that the tragedies he predicted could be averted.

William Shakespeare, born two years before Nostradamus died,

also wrote that man, if he chose to, could be the master of his fate.

What of the idea then, that we do still have it in our power

to affect the future...

Let's go ahead and look for the signs as Nostradamus wrote about those signs. Let us

now encounter the events still to come.

But before continuing,

let me warn you now that the predictions of the future

are not at all comforting.

I might also add that these predictions of the past,

these warnings of the future,

are not the opinions of the producers of this film.

They're certainly not my opinions.

They are interpretations of the quatrains as made by scores of

independent scholars of Nostradamus' work

during the last several hundred years.

These scholars tell us that Nostradamus foresees

a great worldwide drought and famine

within the next decade.

When the comet shall run...

Halley's comet, that most spectacular of comets,

shall run again in 1986.

Distress from fire in the sky, there is a very great drought.

Fish in the sea, river and lake boiled hectic.

A great famine do I see drawing near.

Turning from one way to another, and becoming universal.

A famine so great and so long that man shall become a man-eater.

Nostradamus also predicts great natural disasters like earthquakes.

His proponents say that he actually gives the months

and year of a cataclysmic quake.

He predicts it will begin after a series of volcanic eruptions,

not unlike those currently exploding in the American north-west.

So Nostradamus has given us the month, May, of a great earthquake.

And more he has given us the year.

Astrologists tell us the conjunction of Saturn, Capricorn, Jupiter and Mercury

will occur again in 1988.

May, 1988.

But where does Nostradamus say this great earthquake will strike?

According to many scholars, whenever Nostradamus wrote about new cities,

he was referring to cities in the new world of America.

Here he could've been referring to the new cities of San Francisco, Los Angeles,

both of which sit on an earthquake fault line.

The San Andreas fault comes up from the Mexican border

and goes up past San Francisco, very close to San Francisco.

And on up to the north.

The crust of the earth is broken up into plates,

which are moving with respect to each other.

Normally it doesn't occur smoothly.

Strain builds up like

the energy you store in a rubber band when you stretch it.

Until the rubber band breaks,

and the plates, the rocks along the edge, snap back into line.

The vibrations that are caused by that sudden motion

radiate out and are felt and recorded as an earthquake.

There was one of about magnitude 8 in 1906

that destroyed San Francisco.

It's been determined that the recurrence rate between

great earthquakes is about 160 years.

The last one was in 1857, that was 122 years ago.

We're getting up into the time period where we have to think about

such an occurence.

Fire from the centre of the earth shall make an earthquake in the new city.

Nostradamus foresees that these disasters will be worldwide.

I bewail Nice, Monaco, Pisa, Genoa, Savona, Sienna,

Capri, Modena, Malura.

Fire and earthquake. There will be great floods, unhappy endings.

The deluge will be so great and sudden

there will be no spot of earth for a firm foothold.

Nostradamus, like the Bible, predicted that these natural disasters

will precede a great war. A war far worse

than all the other wars put together.

Nostradamus not only predicts the Third World War, but he even predicts

when and where it will begin, and who will be fighting.

He tells us too,

how long the war will last and who will survive.

First we ask, when?

In one quatrain he tells us

that the war will begin when the sun, Mars and Mercury

conjunct in the sign of Aquarius.

And this conjunction is an infrequent one.

It happens again in 1994.

So this could be the year in which the Third World War begins.

In another quatrain, he gives us

an actual date when the war will be well under way.

Out of the country of greater Arabia shall be born a strong master of

Mohammedan law.

This king will enter Europe wearing a blue turban.

He is one that shall cause the infernal gods of Hannibal to live again.

He will be the terror of mankind, never more horror.

This king, this warlord, Nostradamus says, will wage war against the West.

A kingdom of the fez shall come to the throne of Europe.

When?

Starting between 1994 and 1999.

Where?

From the Middle East, an invasion of Europe

spreading across the entire world, a war lead by a great king of terror,

third antichrist, after Napoleon, after Hitler.

A leader so terrible he will bring the world, according to Nostradamus,

face to face with final annihilation.

The great one of the east by land, sea and air with a great army will cross

with death.

The kingdom of the church will be overcome by the sea.

From Persia, very nearly a million.

From Persia, from greater Arabia, from the kingdom of Mohammed.

Nostradamus clearly suggests

that the Middle East will play a central role in the trouble to come.

There are few contemporary foreign policy experts

who could quarrel with him.

World attention is now focussed on that part of the world with its

oil deposits and its growing population of devout Muslims.

There are over 750 million Muslims in the world,

most of them in the Middle East.

Recently they have been rediscovering their Islamic roots.

Long suppressed by the superpowers,

they are now beginning to reassert themselves politically.

They can do this because they have the oil that the West needs.

They can become, experts agree, a threat to world peace.

But are they capable of waging a nuclear war against the West

within the next 20 years?

Nostradamus would seem to say yes.

Through an alliance with Russia.

The Moorish law will be seen to fall,

followed by another that is more pleasing.

Boristanis will be first to give way.

Nostradamus experts agree that here the French seer

is suggesting that Islam will spread through Russia.

Starting in the south, near the river Boristanis.

They foresee Soviet nuclear capacity combining with Islamic manpower,

to wage war by 1999.

The sky will burn at 45 degrees, fire approaches the great new city.

Nostradamus names the first nuclear target,

a great new city near 45 degrees latitude.

Experts agree that that could only mean New York.

By fire he will destroy their city.

An inhuman cruel heart, cold. Blood will pour, mercy to none.

Nostradamus is also said to have written of the American response.

The trumpet shakes with great discord.

An agreement broken, lifting the face to heaven,

the bloody mouth will swim in the blood.

Overcome, the great nation is uncertain.

Shortly before the sun, a battle is engaged.

Then will come the great tumult, warfare on a greater scale than ever before.

Explosions. There will be a great onslaught.

There will be terror...

Garden of the world, the new city in the way of the man-made mountains

shall be seized on, and plunged into ferment.

Again Nostradamus suggests New York with its skyscrapers,

its man-made mountains,

will be a nuclear target.

Nothing, the prophet says, will keep the city from dying.

From hidden fires, a great place burns with heat.

A hot wind.

War.

The great city will soon be quite deserted.

Not a single one of the inhabitants will remain.

Nostradamus tells us how long the war will last.

The war shall last 7 and 20 years.

The earth trembles,

pushed into the air and falls again.

The herald is sent out to call for surrender.

The barbarian shall be driven back.

And all the kingdoms of Christianity,

and all the unbelievers shall quake for the space of years.

There shall be more grievous wars and battles.

Towns, cities, castles and other buildings

shall be burnt, desolated and destroyed.

Married women and widows ravished,

sucking children dashed against the walls of towns.

So many evils shall be committed, that almost the entire world

shall be undone and desolate.

Antichrist...

Three times will he be annihilated,

7 and 20 years will blood be shed in war.

Century 8, quatrain 77, Nostradamus tells us that the war

will end 7 and 20 years after it begins with the death

and the defeat of the antichrist.

And it shall end due to an unexpected alliance.

When those of the Arctic Pole shall be united together,

there shall be in the East great fear and trembling.

Those of the Arctic Pole could mean the Soviet Union,

the United States.

As we see here.

at the Bering Straits, the two

countries are at their closest point in the Arctic Circle.

One day, Nostradamus wrote, the two great masters will be friends.

Their great powers will be increased.

The Eastern ruler will be vanquished.

The sun and the eagle will appear to be victorious.

Peace, prosecuted by death, it shall be achieved.

In one night, the tree that has been long dead and withered,

shall grow green again.

After this war shall have lasted a good while,

there shall be a renewed reign of Saturn,

and a golden age.

Here shall begin an age of universal peace, a peace of a thousand years.

And after a peace for a thousand years,

Nostradamus tells us next to nothing.

He does however tell us in what year the world will finally come to an end.

The year: 3797.

He wrote about the end of the world in a letter to his infant son.

You know, it's at such times that each of us looks at the long road ahead,

contemplating not only our own future, but the future of our children.

Not many of us can see the future, but none of us need be Nostradamus or

have his gifts for seeing through time.

To sense that we are at a crossroads, that our immediate future could hold,

the worst war man will ever know. So we must each of us in our own way

do something to make sure that that war will never happen.

Perhaps if we heed Nostradamus, if we face up to the challenges of the future,

it need not be too late.

Not for us, not for our children...

or our children's children.