Premonition Information

Premonition refers to a situation when future events are foreknown or forecast or foretold. They are attributed by some people to the presence of supernatural or paranormal abilities. However, the distinction between precognition and ordinary evidence-based predictions is sometimes not made sharply. "Premonition" may be defined to include or exclude ordinary predictions, and this means a fallacy of linguistic ambiguity can lead to an overly supernatural explanation for the accuracy of predictions. Famous premonitions Otto von Bismarck predicted the beginning of the First World War, by saying (shortly before he died in 1898) to Mr. Ballen: "If there is ever another war in Europe, it will come out of some damned silly thing in the Balkans". Note that this is a good example of a premonition that could easily be due to a good intuitive understanding of politics, rather than being precognitive. The novelist Mark Twain predicted that Halley's Comet would be seen on the day of his death, just as it was when he was born. Twain died on Halley's 1910 appearance on May 18th. The French apothecary and seer Nostradamus is also believed to have predicted his own death and the date in which his tomb would be opened. Julius Caesar's wife Calpurnia had a dream the night before he died that he would get stabbed by a friend, and she warned him not to go.