What the Stars Foretell

The first newspaper astrology column—forerunner of those authored by Sydney Omarr and Jeane Dixon—was published by Britain’s Sunday Express. After the birth of Princess Margaret in August 1930, the editor asked astrologer R.H. Naylor to do her horoscope. Naylor safely predicted her life would be “eventful.” Asked to create several more forecasts, Naylor penned that “a British aircraft will be in danger” between Oct. 8 and 15—close enough to the actual crash of the R101 airship outside Paris on Oct. 5 to earn him a weekly column.
Although Naylor initially focused on “natal charts” using the exact positions of the stars at the time of a person’s birth, his “What the Stars Foretell” column soon expanded to “sun signs.” These simplified predictions based on the 12 signs of the zodiac offered casual readers fortune-cookie-like guidance headlined “Tendencies for Everybody.”
Naylor badly missed the tendencies leading Europe into World War II, however, writing in May 1939 that readers should not “look to Europe as the seat of conflagration. Actually the danger lies in the Mediterranean, the Near East and Ireland—on the sea and sea coast rather than inland.” He warned that “childless marriages” and “the failure of agriculturalists” were the real dangers to civilization, not the Nazis.
Wartime paper shortages, ironically, led to Naylor’s column and other Express features being cut in 1942.