Sixteenth-century French astrologer Nostradamus is world-famous for writing vague, mystical quatrains that conspiracy theorists constantly twist to predict modern historical disasters.

A closer look

Sixteenth-century French astrologer Nostradamus is world-famous for writing vague, mystical quatrains that conspiracy theorists constantly twist to predict modern historical disasters. Before he became a legendary prophet of doom, Nostradamus literally wrote a cookbook filled with recipes for marzipan, candied orange peel, and a cherry jam that he claimed was so incredibly potent it could act as a love potion. Everyone wants to focus on the guy's supposed ability to predict the end of the world, but nobody respects his true mystical achievement of writing down a recipe for fruit preserves designed to get people aggressively laid in the 1500s. We really missed out on a timeline where Nostradamus is remembered as the mystical Martha Stewart instead of the patron saint of anxious internet doomsday preppers