Professor Falb's Predictions.

Evening Star, Issue 7187, 15 April 1887, Page 3

Professor Falb's Predictions.

Professor Rudolf Falb, of Vienna, it ia reported, predicted to an hour the earthquakes which have occurred in France and Italy. Writing in the Austrian 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 central at 9.13 p.m., and ended on the 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 gained a great reputation by previous similar forecasts, and as these are based on strictly rational and generally admitted principles (says the London correspondent of the ' Age'), it may be of interest to recount some of these prognostications, and to explain the grounds on which they were based. Herr Falb's first and great success was the foretelling the destructive shock at Belluno, on 29th June, 1873. Nearly the whole of Northern Italy was affected, and upwards of fifty 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, Fall) has calculated that 4,000 years before Christ there must have been a great flood—supposed by some to coincide with the Noachian delude—and he predicts a repetition of a like phenomenon in the year a.d. 6400. It is not to be assumed that Herr Falb has been uniformly successful in regard either to the atmospheric or the seismic events j but he has been sufficiently aoourats to attract the attention of scientific men to results which appear to be more than simple coincidences.