Rensselaer Republican, Volume 26, Number 26, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 22 February 1894 — AN AUSTRIAN PROPHET. [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

AN AUSTRIAN PROPHET.

Tongh Times Ahead The Grand Finale Set For November ,13, '99. The records indicate that people have been looking for the end of the world at intervals ever since the world began, and predictions.of this character generally receive very limited credence; but when a scientific man 0 the standing of Professor'Rudolph Falb, of Vienna, makes a pi opheey of this sort, it is at least worth thinking about. Professor Falb has a reputation all over Europe for his meteorological knowledge, and particularly for his extraordinary familiarity with the habits and customs of earthquakes. His predictions of these seismic disturbances have been remarkably fulfilled. His prediction of the great earthquake at Zante last year was published in the press dispatches all over the country, the day before the earthquake occurred. An-

other example of his accurate foreknowledge on this subject is shown in the fact that on March 31, 1893, he wrote to the Tourist Club of Vienna accepting an invitation to lecture about earthquakes, but adding that he would like to defer the lecture until after April 13, as an earthquake would occur by that time, which would aid him in giving them enlightenment. As a matter of fact, an earthquake occurred on April 8, and was felt all over southern Hungary. Professor Falb’s prophecies go back over a number of years, have usually been made from nine to twenty months in advance, and have in almost every instance been correct. Now, however, the Professor's prophetic eye has shot across a space of five years and he says that on November 13, 1899, the erratic wanderer, known to astronomers as the comet of 1866, will reappear and collide with our globe; then “fireworks” and—darkness.

By way of preliminary to the main event, however.it may be mentioned that, according to the program, New York is to disappear under a tidal wave next July or August, while Florida and California will probably become islands as the results of a submarine earthquake. Sunday, January 21, the day on which the great tidal wave struck the steamship Nonnannia, was one of the dates for which Prof. Falb had predicted great elemental disturbances and phvsical upheavals. The prediction would under any circumstances be renarkable, but when it is taken as coming from the same man who tells that New York will be inundated and almost entirely submerged during the present year, then the fulfillment is of very deep and serious import to ail dwellers on Manhattan island. Had the wave continued a few miles more it would probably have washed the winows of James Gordon’s Bennett’s house on Washington Hights, which is the highest point within the boundaries of New York city, being 264 feet above the tide water. This occurrence points to the important fact that New York city is comparatively quite low-lying, and would be an easy victim to such a monstrous wave as the Normannia encountered.

The most unpleasant feature about these prophecies is, as already intimated, the fact that they are- not prophecies at all, strictly speaking, but scientific predictions based upon scientific investigations into mundane anatomy. To put his theories in as simple a fashion as possible, it may be said that Prof. Falb believes, first of all, that the deep-down interior of the earth is tilled with a molten mass, which is subject to ebb and flow, just like the waters of the ocean. Between the earth and this molten sheol, which is slowly cooling, there is only a shell of anaverage of eighteen miles in thickness, upon which we mortals live, and love and die. In some places the earth’s crust is thicker than in others. Where it is thinnest the confined terrible forces of the under world, chiefly iu the form of gas. seek constantly to escape, and when the pressure of the atmosphere around the earth is lowest the gas finds an outlet usually in well-defined districts, generally through the volcanic vent-holes. But h“vpnd the constant pressure of gas Professor Falb has the theory that the sheolic molten mass beneath us is subject to the influence of the moon, which produces waves, and occasionally great tidal waves, which sweep round the inner crust of the world with terrific force, shaking the earth in its passage. Professor Falb publishes every year a. list of the days on which he expects seismic convulsions. These he calls “critical day»” —and these days are thosj when the moon approaches close to the earth. The oritical days given by Professor Falb for 1894 are stated in the order

of maximum disturbance as fol’o vs: August 30, September 29, Feb: u ry 20', March 21, August 1, Api I 6, January 21, May 5 and October 28. Thus the most serious disturbance may be looked for on August 30 and *the slightest- on October 28. In connection with the great scientific contest between mother earth and the comet which, to use a phrase current in scientific circles, is to be “pulled off” in 1899, it is recalled that on January 14. 616, ten people were killed in China bv the fall of a meteor. In the year 823 thirty-five villages in Saxony were destroyed by the fall of a meteor and many men .and animals were killed. On Nov. 4, 1749, a meteor struck the mast of a ship that was crossing the Atlantic, killing five seamen. Each of these cases can be regarded as the fall of a small comet upon our world. It is a comfort to know that some Vienna scientists believe the comet is going to get the worst of it, and point to the fact that the comet Lexwell, when it went too near to Jupiter, was thrown off its course and sent flying out of our planetary system.

PROFESSOR RUDOLPH FALB.