Advance Notice

In his 1966 book New Mathematical Diversions From Scientific American, Martin Gardner predicted that the millionth digit of π would be 5. (At the time the value was known only to about 10,000 decimal places.) He was reprinting a column on π from 1960 and included this in the addendum:

It will probably not be long until pi is known to a million decimals. In anticipation of this, Dr. Matrix, the famous numerologist, has sent me a letter asking that I put on record his prediction that the millionth digit of pi will be found to be 5. His calculation is based on the third book of the King James Bible, chapter 14, verse 16 (it mentions the number 7, and the seventh word has five letters), combined with some obscure calculation involving Euler’s constant and the transcendental number e.

He’d intended this as a hoax, but eight years later the computers discovered he was right.