Paco Rabanne: 'Mir Will Fall From the Sky on August 11 at 11.22 am.' At 11.22, Paris Applauded

The fine print

The prediction ran in his book 1999, le feu du ciel (published in English as 1999: Fire From Heaven), based on his reading of Nostradamus. Ouest-France, citing the INA archive, says he set out the date on the TV show 'On s'occupe de vous' broadcast May 10, 1999: « Paris sera détruite. Mais aussi d'autres villes du Sud-Ouest comme Mirande, Auch, Condom, qui seront frappées par la chute de la station Mir » (Our translation: 'Paris will be destroyed. And other towns in the south-west too, like Mirande, Auch, Condom, which will be hit by the fall of the Mir station.'). The English quote is from an interview with La Dépêche du Midi in late May 1999, as reported by The Guardian (May 31, 1999), so date_made is the month. He told the Guardian he would give his staff leave and close his shops: 'My personal conviction is total.' Ouest-France reports he promised: « Si je me trompe, je m'engage alors à me taire pour toujours. » (Our translation: 'If I am wrong, I promise to keep quiet forever.') The Irish Times put the forecast debris on the Château de Vincennes and the Gers. On the day, a crowd of perhaps 1,000 outside his rue du Cherche-Midi boutique chanted down from 60 to one at 11.21; at 11.22 it applauded. The boutique was shuttered, with a sign saying it would reopen on August 24. Mir burned up in the atmosphere in 2001 and came down far off Fiji (Ouest-France). The general Nostradamus-1999 belief has its own entry (nostradamus-1999); the forecast is mocked here, not the man.