Danube
The Danube was once a long-standing frontier of the Roman Empire, and today flows through 10 countries, more than any other river in the world. Originating in Germany, the Danube flows southeast for , passing through or bordering Austria, Slovakia, Hungary, Croatia, Serbia, Romania, Bulgaria, Moldova and Ukraine before draining into the Black Sea. Its drainage basin extends into nine more countries. The Danube river basin is home to fish species such as pike, zander, huchen, Wels catfish, burbot and tench. It is also home to a large diversity of carp and sturgeon, as well as salmon and trout. A few species of euryhaline fish, such as European seabass, mullet, and eel, inhabit the Danube delta and the lower portion of the river.
Hister
This is often interpreted to be a prediction of the war against Adolf Hitler's Nazi state in the twentieth century. However, none of the reputable sources listed support this view. In fact all of them point out that the name 'Hister' (as Nostradamus himself explains in his Almanac for 1554) in fact refers in his writings to the Danube, being mentioned (as elsewhere) alongside 'R[h]in' (Rhine) – two rivers that formed the north-eastern frontier of the ancient Roman Empire. "Un bien sçavant homme dans ce dernier quart se pourmenant le long de la riviere Hister dite Danube", he writes at Prose Presage 222, "la terre se parfondant, dans ladite riviere se perdra" ('A very scholarly man during this last quarter, while walking along the river Hister known as Danube, the ground subsiding, in the said river shall be lost'). This is evidently based on a "historical" incident described by Nostradamus himself in his "Traité des fardemens" (Proem, p. 19, 1552), involving one Gaspar Ursinus Vellius "consellier à Vienne en Austriche, qui un soir soy pourmenant le long du Dannube la terre se fendit, & tumba & se nya" ('a councillor at Vienna in Austria who one evening was walking along the Danube, the ground split apart and he fell in and was drowned'). Nevertheless, it has also been acknowledged that Hitler referred to the Danube as "the river of the future" and sought to use it to affirm control of "the heart of Europe." The Nazi Government also felt the raw minerals in the Danube area were vital to their goals of conquering sufficient "living space" in the Soviet Union. In 1936, Hitler oversaw the remilitarization of the Rhineland, which is located along the Rhine River area in western Germany.