16th century French physician Michel De Nostre Dame predicted the end of the world on July 4th 1999. If this interpretation of this prophesy is correct then by the time I have finished writing there will be little time to read this article on the web.

Although these things pass into folk law as truth, the millennium computer bug seems to have gained more credence and I wondered why?

L'an mil neuf cens nonante neuf sept mois,
Du ciel viendra vn grand Roy d'effrayeur:
Resusciter le grand Roy d'Angolmois,
Auant apres Mars regner par bon-heur.

This is a translation of Century X-72 from early modern French:

The year 1999 seven month,
From the sky will come a great King of terror:
To bring back to life the great King of Angolmois,
Before after Mars to reign by good luck.

The answer appears simple. A swift voyage around Nostradamus web pages reveals as many interpretations as sites, although general agreement on the date ranges mid July to mid August in our current calendar. It seems the vague and ambiguous prophecies have been liberally used as coat hangers for doom merchants, obscuring the valid study of Nostrodamus' predictions.

Looking deeper I found the scholarly pages staggeringly complex despite bearing names that conjured up images of TV science fiction programmes. These are the valuable tools looking at the original French text to match past predictions to events that have actually taken place in the last 440 years. The man has been amazingly accurate as to some people and events.

So what of the Century X-72, does it predict the August solar eclipse, does it predict a spacecraft hurtling to earth, or a meteor hit? I have no idea, and neither will you until a scholar matches this verse to a past event sometime in the 21st Century.

However, just to prove this is a light -hearted look at the subject, here is a personal prediction:

D'effrayeur means of terror, remove the apostrophe and the word becomes deffrayeur meaning a payer of expenses.