Q 01/05

What was Nostradamus's real name?

A) César de Nostredame

B) Jean de Nostredame

C) Michel de Nostredame

D) Pierre de Nostredame

Answer · why

C) Michel de Nostredame

Michel de Nostredame. Scholars of his day liked to Latinise their names, though his brother Jean, a historian of Provence's troubadours, signed his ow...

Q 02/05

A fake 'Nostradamus' verse, really written by a Canadian student in 1997, spread worldwide after which event?

A) Princess Diana's death

B) The Columbine shooting

C) The September 11 attacks

D) The Indian Ocean tsunami

Answer · why

C) The September 11 attacks

The September 11 attacks. The student had invented the lines to show how vague wording can be made to fit any disaster, and emailers then passed them ...

Q 03/05

What is the title of the 1555 book for which Nostradamus is best known?

A) Les Presages

B) Traite des Fardemens

C) Les Pronostications

D) Les Propheties

Answer · why

D) Les Propheties

Les Propheties. He meant it to hold a thousand verses, but it stopped 58 short, and it has been reprinted in hundreds of editions since his death.

Q 04/05

Believers read 'Hister' in Nostradamus's verses as Hitler, but it was the Latin name of which river?

A) The Rhine

B) The Danube

C) The Tiber

D) The Elbe

Answer · why

B) The Danube

The Danube. Roman writers called its lower course the Ister or Hister, and one verse names it beside the Rhine, so the lines long sold as naming Hitle...

Q 05/05

What are the ten sections of Nostradamus's great book of verses called?

A) Cantos

B) Centuries

C) Decades

D) Epistles

Answer · why

B) Centuries

Centuries. Each was planned as a set of a hundred verses, so the name counts poems, not years, and the seventh was left well short of its hundred.