A NINETEENTH CENTURY PROPHET.

Waikato Times, Volume XXVIII, Issue 2322, 28 May 1887, Page 2 (Supplement)

A NINETEENTH CENTURY PROPHET.

Professor Rudolf Falb, of Vienna, it is reported, predicted to an hour the earthquakes which have occurred in France and Italy. Writing in Australian newspapers some days ago he pointed out that the annular eclipse of the sun, which commenced on Tuesday morning at 6.41 Greenwich time, was centralat 9.13 p.m., and entered on earth generally at twenty-five minutes past midnight on Wednesday morning, was likely to be accompanied with strong atmospheric and seismic disturbances. As the learned physicist and mathematician has gaiued a great reputation by previous similiar forceasts, and as these are' based on strictly rational and generally admitted principles, it may be of interest to recount some of these prognostications, and'to explain the grounds oh which they were based. Herr Falb's first and great success was the f Dretelling the destructive shock at the Bellumo, on 29th June, .1873; Nearly the whole of Northern Italy was affected, aud upwards of 50 lives were lost. Very shortly afterwards he gave warning of the probability of an eruption of Etna, which followed at the time anticipated, in 1874. Applying the same theory to tidal'waves, Falb has calculated that 4000 years before Christ there must have a great flood— supposed by some to coincide with the Noaohiasi deluge—and he predicts a repetition of a like phenomenon in the year a.r>. 6400. It is not to be assumed that Herr Falb has been uniformly successful iii regard either to the atmospheric or the seismic events : but he has been sufficiently accurate to attract the attention of scientific men to results which appear to be more than simple coincidences. —Age Special.