In 1759, a Swedish scientist stood up at a dinner party and announced that a city three hundred miles away was on fire, while it was burning. Thirteen years later, he named the day he would die. He was right both times.

His name was Emanuel Swedenborg, and he was no fairground mystic. He was an assessor of the Swedish Board of Mines, a published mathematician, astronomer and anatomist, one of the most learned men in Europe. Then, in his fifties, the visions began. On the 19th of July 1759, at a dinner in Gothenburg, three hundred miles from Stockholm, he suddenly went pale and left the table. A great fire was raging in Stockholm, he said. A friend's house was already ashes. His own was in danger. At about eight o'clock he cried out with relief: the fire is out, the third door from my house. The story ran through the town. The governor questioned him the next day. And when the messengers from Stockholm finally arrived, every detail matched, hour for hour, house for house.

The case reached the last man on earth likely to believe it: Immanuel Kant, the most rigorous philosopher alive. Kant had a trusted friend travel to Gothenburg and question the witnesses one by one. Then he set the whole account down in a long careful letter, and confessed that of every story told about Swedenborg, the fire was the one he could find no way around.

Thirteen years later, in February 1772, Swedenborg was eighty four, lodging above a wig maker's shop in London. He wrote to John Wesley, the most famous preacher in England: I have been informed in the world of spirits that you wish to speak with me. Wesley was stunned. He had told no one. He wrote back that he would gladly come, after his six month preaching tour. Swedenborg replied that that would be too late. He was to go into the world of spirits, he wrote, on the twenty ninth day of March, never more to return. His housekeeper said he counted down the days as pleased as if he were going on holiday. On the afternoon of the twenty ninth of March, 1772, he asked the time. Near five, they told him. He thanked them, blessed them, and died.

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