In an odd story, it appears that the urban grapevine had created a legend, which was that the late seismologist Raffaele Bendand (who died in 1979), had predicted that the city would be devastated by an earth quake on 11 May 2011. Consequently, and despite special programmes having been run on state TV calling for calm, reports suggested that as many as an additional 18% of city employees planned to stay away from work to avoid the city on that date.
Bendandi, who was knighted by Mussolini in 1927 for his prophetic meteorological skills, after he apparently used his theory that the movement of the planets caused seismic activity, to accurately predict a 1923 quake that killed 1,000 people. He was also banned from making public predictions, on pain of exile .... and he never actually made any further predictions about the future. Paola Lagorio the President of the the foundation that honours Bendandi said "I can say with absolute certainty that in the papers of Raffaele Bendandi there is no provision for an earthquake in Rome on the 11 May 2011". Needless to say, Rome wasn't even ruffled by a tiny tremor on the day .... but oddly, in one of those coincidence that fuel these urban myths, the town of Lorca in Spain was hit by a large earthquake on the day.
So, be prepared for more such stories next year, as the same urban myth suggested two more such catastrophic events in May 2012.
