The most famous of all nonbiblical prophets, Michel de Nostredame, or Nostradamus, was born at St. Remy in the south of France in 1503. . . . Like most prophets, Nostradamus seems to have had a particular talent for predicting disasters and falls from power. He is held to have described the fate of Napoleon, whose rule over the French Empire ended with his imprisonment on the tiny island of S. Helena in 1815, and to have predicted the abdication of King Edward VIII of Great Britain in 1936.
In two quatrains Nostradamus came close to naming Adolf Hitler and described his calamitous activities with some accuracy. According to the first one:
Liberty shall not be recovered, a black, fierce, villainous, evil man shall occupy it, when the ties of his alliance are wrought. Venice shall be vexed by Hister.