prodigy

1. (archaic) An extraordinary thing seen as an omen; a portent.Examples: "These on the farther bank now stood and gazed, / By Heaven alarm’d, by prodigies amazed: / A signal omen stopp’d the passing host, / Their martial fury in their wonder lost."; "Prodigies and Portents have infected the beſt VVritings of Antiquity; and have ſo blotted and deformed our modern Annals, that (vvith greater Juſtice than Polybius has obſerv'd it, of the former) they may be rather called Tragedies than History."; "John Foxe believed that special prodigies had heralded the Reformation."