Thousands of people are fleeing Rome amid rumours that a dead seismologist has predicted a devastating earthquake will strike the city on Wednesday.
Scholars poring over the works of Raffaele Bendandi, who died in 1979, inferred that he had calculated a massive earthquake would rock Rome on 11 May 2011, though the date is not explicit.
The Bendandi Foundation has tried to quash the rumour, saying there is no trace of a quake prophecy in any Bendandi documents.
The BBC reports that has not stopped people from panicking, notably because Mr Bendandi is credited with having correctly predicted earthquakes during his lifetime on the basis of planetary alignments.
