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Published June 13, 2008 at 8:00 a.m.
It’s Friday the 13th. Is it an unlucky day for you? Do you watch out for black cats? I can’t say that I remember anything happening to me out of the ordinary or that it would make it an unlucky day for me. Where does this superstition come from?
Here's what the all-knowing, all-powerful Wikipedia says:
Friday the 13th is considered a day of bad luck in English-, French- and Portuguese-speaking countries around the world, as well as in Austria, Germany, Estonia, Finland, The Netherlands, Belgium, Republic of Ireland, Poland, Bulgaria, Denmark, Iceland, Sweden, Norway, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Slovenia, and even the Philippines.
Similar superstitions exist in some other traditions. In Greece, Romania and Spanish-speaking countries, for example, it is Tuesday the 13th that is considered unlucky. In Italy it is Friday the 17th.
The fear of Friday the 13th is called paraskavedekatriaphobia, a word derived from the concatenation of the Greek words Paraskevi (meaning Friday), and dekatreis (meaning thirteen), attached to phobia (meaning fear).
There is also a helpful chart showing which months and years have a Friday the 13th.
And while searching on the web I came along this this interesting article about the events of April 13th, 2029 — Friday the 13th.
Dr. Tony Phillips writes: "A point of light will be gliding across the sky, faster than many satellites, brighter than most stars. What's so lucky about that? It's asteroid 2004 MN4 ... not hitting Earth.”
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