5 things you need to know Friday

[dlevere]

Friday is going to be a tough day for those suffering from Triskaidekaphobia (fear of the number 13) or Paraskavedekatriaphobia (fear of Friday the 13th) because it's the first of two Friday the 13ths that will fall in 2017.

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2...iday/96341654/

[soprano1]

Oh, snap!

[bungholio]

Where did this 13 and Friday The 13th BS even originate from? Was it some ancient dumb superstition made up by over-religious clowns from 500 years ago that somehow still exists today? Who were these clowns that started this? It's dumb. It's a number, and it's another day of the week, not a threat upon your life and well being.


I don't usually so bluntly just call something dumb, but this is a dumb superstition just like nearly all of them. Somebody dropping something off of a ladder and it hitting your head because you walked underneath the ladder at the perfect wrong time could maybe be called bad luck, but the number 13 and the day Friday aren't hell on Earth in any kind of way. I have a hard time not looking at people that fear these days and not directly calling them a moron for it.

[dlevere]

Friday the 13th is considered an unlucky day in Western superstition. It occurs when the 13th day of the month in the Gregorian calendar falls on a Friday. It occurs at least once every year in the 2010's, and up to three times a year.

In 2017, it occurs twice, on January 13th and October 13th. There will be two Friday the 13ths per year until 2020, and there is at least one every year until at least 2050.

The superstition surrounding this day may have arisen in the Middle Ages, "originating from the story of Jesus' last supper and crucifixion" in which there were 13 individuals present in the Upper Room on the 13th of Nisan Maundy Thursday, the night before his death on Good Friday.

While there is evidence of both Friday and the number 13 being considered unlucky, there is no record of the two items being referred to as especially unlucky in conjunction before the 19th century.

An early documented reference in English occurs in Henry Sutherland Edwards' 1869 biography of Gioachino Rossini, who died on a Friday 13th:

He [Rossini] was surrounded to the last by admiring friends; and if it be true that, like so many Italians, he regarded Fridays as an unlucky day and thirteen as an unlucky number, it is remarkable that on Friday 13th of November he passed away.

It is possible that the publication in 1907 of Thomas W. Lawson's popular novel Friday, the Thirteenth, contributed to disseminating the superstition. In the novel, an unscrupulous broker takes advantage of the superstition to create a Wall Street panic on a Friday the 13th.

A suggested origin of the superstition—Friday, 13 October 1307, the date Philip IV of France arrested hundreds of the Knights Templar—may not have been formulated until the 20th century. It is mentioned in the 1955 Maurice Druon historical novel The Iron King (Le Roi de fer), John J. Robinson's 1989 work Born in Blood: The Lost Secrets of Freemasonry, Dan Brown's 2003 novel The Da Vinci Code and Steve Berry's The Templar Legacy (2006).

Tuesday the 13th in Hispanic and Greek culture

In Spanish-speaking countries, instead of Friday, Tuesday the 13th (martes trece) is considered a day of bad luck.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friday_the_13th

[bungholio]

Rate of accidents

A study in the British Medical Journal, published in 1993, concluded that there "is a significant level of traffic-related incidences on Friday the 13th as opposed to a random day, such as Friday the 6th, in the UK."^[23] However, the Dutch Centre for Insurance Statistics (CVS) on 12 June 2008 stated that "fewer accidents and reports of fire and theft occur when the 13th of the month falls on a Friday than on other Fridays, because people are preventatively more careful or just stay home. Statistically speaking, driving is slightly safer on Friday the 13th, at least in the Netherlands; in the last two years, Dutch insurers received reports of an average 7,800 traffic accidents each Friday; but the average figure when the 13th fell on a Friday was just 7,500



The Dutch make Friday The 13th sound like good luck for driving with a reduced risk of crashes.