Nostradamus predicted the September 11 attacks
| Nostradamus predicted the September 11 attacks | |
|---|---|
| FALSE | |
| "Nostradamus wrote a 16th-century prophecy describing the destruction of the twin towers in "the City of God" in 2001." | |
| Domain | Paranormal & Supernatural |
| Tactic | Fabrication Imposture |
| Era | Current |
| First seen | September 2001 |
| Origin | Emails and web posts in the days after the September 11, 2001, attacks |
| Last reviewed | 2026-10-29 |
| Further reading: books on Paranormal & Supernatural | |
After the September 11 attacks, a "prophecy" attributed to Nostradamus spread rapidly, describing "two brothers torn apart by chaos" and a great thunder in "the City of God." The verse was not written by Nostradamus. Part of it came from a 1997 essay by a Canadian university student, Neil Marshall, who wrote a fake quatrain to show how vague prophecies can be read to fit any event.
The claim
The verse was presented as a quatrain from Nostradamus's Les Prophéties (1555).
What the evidence shows
- Not in the text. The lines do not appear in Nostradamus's published work.
- Student essay. Marshall's essay at Brock University invented a quatrain as a demonstration; others added lines and invented a source.
- Pattern. Nostradamus's real quatrains are vague and are usually "matched" to events after they happen.
Sources
- Snopes, "Nostradamus Predicted 9/11?"
- Wikipedia, "Nostradamus."