Friday the 13th

Friday the 13th is a superstition about a day of good or bad luck.

[edit] Phobia

The fear of Friday the 13th is called paraskavedekatriaphobia,^[1] a word derived from the concatenation of the Greek words Paraskeví (Παρασκευή) (meaning Friday), and dekatreís (δεκατρείς) (meaning thirteen), attached to phobía (φοβία) (meaning fear). The term is a specialized form of triskaidekaphobia, a simple phobia (fear) of the number thirteen. The term triskaidekaphobia was derived in 1911 and first appeared in a mainstream source in 1953.^[2]

[edit] History

According to folklorists, the belief that Friday the 13th is a particularly unlucky day is a modern amalgamation of two older superstitions: that thirteen is an unlucky number and that Friday is an unlucky day. It is not an ancient superstition, and it does not refer to any particular historical Friday the 13th.^[3][4][5][6]

• In numerology, the number twelve is considered the number of completeness, as reflected in the twelve months of the year, twelve signs of the zodiac, twelve hours of the clock, twelve tribes of Israel, twelve Apostles of Jesus, twelve gods of Olympus, etc. Whereas the number thirteen was considered irregular, transgressing this completeness. There is also a superstition, thought by some to derive from the Last Supper or a Norse myth, that having thirteen people seated at a table will result in the death of one of the diners.^[4]
• Friday has been considered an unlucky day at least since the 14th century's The Canterbury Tales,^[2] and many other professions have regarded Friday as an unlucky day to undertake journeys or begin new projects. Black Friday has been associated with stock market crashes and other disasters since the 1800s.^[5][6]

Despite the reputation of the two separated elements, there is no evidence for a "Friday the 13th" superstition before the 19th century, and folklore historians state that Friday the 13th was a convergence of the superstitions about "Friday" and "13".^[3][4][5] The earliest known reference in English occurs in an 1869 biography of Gioachino Rossini:

[Rossini] was surrounded to the last by admiring and affectionate friends; and if it be true that, like so many other Italians, he regarded Friday as an unlucky day, and thirteen as an unlucky number, it is remarkable that on Friday, the 13th of November, he died.^[7]

The superstition is rarely found before the 20th century, when it became extremely common. One author, noting that references are all but nonexistent before 1907 but frequently seen thereafter, has argued that its popularity derives from the publication that year of Thomas W. Lawson's popular novel Friday, the Thirteenth,^[8] in which an unscrupulous broker takes advantage of the superstition to create a Wall Street panic on a Friday the 13th.^[3]

Though the superstition developed relatively recently, much older origins are often claimed for it, most notably in the 2003 novel The Da Vinci Code, which declares that the superstition began with the arrest of the Knights Templar on Friday 13 October 1307.^[9] The association with the Templars predates The Da Vinci Code^[10] but is relatively recent and is a modern-day invention.^[6][2][9]

[edit] Social impact

According to the Stress Management Center and Phobia Institute in Asheville, North Carolina, an estimated 17 to 21 million people in the United States are affected by a fear of this day. Some people are so paralyzed by fear that they avoid their normal routines in doing business, taking flights or even getting out of bed. "It's been estimated that [US]$800 or $900 million is lost in business on this day".^[4] Despite this, representatives for both Delta and Continental Airlines say that their airlines don't suffer from any noticeable drop in travel on those Fridays.^[11]

[edit] Rate of accidents

There are conflicting studies about the risk of accidents on Friday the 13th. The Dutch Centre for Insurance Statistics (CVS) on June 12, 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; but statistically speaking, driving is a little bit safer on Friday 13th; 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.^[12][13] However, a 1993 study in the British Medical Journal that compared the ratio of traffic accidents between Friday the 6th and Friday the 13th, stated that there is a significant increase in traffic-related accidents on Fridays the 13th.^[14][2]

[edit] Scandinavia

In Scandinavia, Friday the 13th was at one point considered the luckiest day of the year.^[5] The word for Friday derives from the Norse Frigga, a major goddess in Norse paganism.

[edit] Occurrence

This sequence, here given for 2001–2028, repeats every 28 years from 1901 to 2099. The months with a Friday the 13th are determined by the Dominical letter (G, F, GF, etc.) of the year. Any month that begins on a Sunday will contain a Friday the 13th, and there is at least one Friday the 13th in every calendar year.

The longest period that can occur without a Friday the 13th is fourteen months, either from July to September the following year (e.g. in 2001/2002 and 2012/13), or from August to October in a leap year (e.g. in 2027/28).

Each Gregorian 400-year cycle contains 146,097 days (365 * 400 = 146,000 normal days plus 97 leap days), 146,097 / 7 = 20,871 weeks, and 400 * 12 = 4,800 months. Thus, each cycle contains the same pattern of days of the week (and thus the same pattern of Fridays the 13th), but no day of the month up to the 28th can occur the same number of times on each day of the week (because 4,800 is not divisible by 7). The 13th day of the month is slightly more likely to be a Friday than any other day of the week.^[15] On average, there is a Friday the 13th once every 212.35 (212 and 241/688) days.

The distribution of the 13th day over the 4,800 months is as follows:

[edit] Planned events on Fridays the 13th

Some events are intentionally scheduled for Friday the 13th for dramatic effect. They include:

• Black Sabbath's eponymous debut album was released in the UK on Friday, February 13, 1970.
• The 13th book in A Series of Unfortunate Events was released on Friday, October 13, 2006 by Lemony Snicket, also known as novelist Daniel Handler.
• The remake of the original Friday the 13th is planned to release on Friday, February 13, 2009.

[edit] Natural events on Fridays the 13th

Due to the large number of events that happen in the world, a similar list could be compiled for any combination of day of the month and day of the week. Events that have been notable for being linked to the concept of Friday the 13th include:

• The "Friday the 13th Storm" struck Buffalo, New York on Friday, October 13, 2006.
• The asteroid 2004 MN4 will make its close encounter on Friday, April 13, 2029.^[16]

[edit] References

[edit] External links

Look up paraskavedekatriaphobia in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

• How Friday the 13th works (HowStuffWorks.com)
• Your Unlucky Day: The religious roots of triskaidekaphobia.
• Some don't count on Lucky 13 - Via Magazine.
• Paraskevidekatriaphobia - skepdic.com article on Friday the 13th