Setting the Record Straight - Did Nostradamus Predict 2012?

Many web sites seem to be claiming doomsday will come in the year 2012, to be more specific, December 21st, 2012. Why? The ancient Mayan civilisation, world famous for their astronomical work, had a ancient calendar system, and the calendar ends on that date.

Not only do these sites claim the world will end in 2012, they also blindly claim, that Nostradamus predicted the end of the world in 2012. Do not ask me how they came to that conclusion, because honestly, I haven't the slightest idea. It is most likely that they are misinformed or just money-hungry webmasters, feeding their visitors with crap to keep them coming back.

Firstly, Nostradamus, in an extract from a letter to his son, wrote:
"They would condemn that which future ages shall find and know to be true...(quatrains) are perpetual prophecies from this year to the year 3797, at which some perhaps will frown, seeing so large an extension of time..."

Since when did the year 3797 translate to 2012 from ancient French to English? It did not.

Nostradamus did not specify any time, date or year for doomsday in Les Propheties, the centuries he wrote. However, if you do in fact believe in the prophecies of Nostradamus, he did predict a twenty-seven year war, thought to be World War III, at the hands of the third "Antichrist," who is yet to come.

The antichrist very soon annihilates the three, twenty-seven years his war will last. The unbelievers are dead, captive, exiled; with blood, human bodies, water and red hail covering the earth.
Century 8.78

To my knowledge, 2012 is not twenty-seven years away in any calendar, however, it is possible that the war mentioned has already started, such as the NATO mission in Iraq, Pakistan and Afghanistan, but that would not bring the final date to 2012 either.

Conclusion: NO. Nostradamus did NOT foresee doomsday in 2012. The thing is, with the Mayan calendar cycle ending, every doomsayer and their grandparents are coming up with their own end of the world theories and searching for any proof, imaginary or not, to back it up.