Friday the 13th: A Bad Day?

Many of us thinks and believes that Friday the 13th causes bad luck to people. This is believed by the English, Polish, German and Portoguese speaking counties around the globe. Greece and Spain however believes on a different day but with the same bad luck effect -- Tuesday the 13th.

If you fear Friday the 13th then you have a paraskavedekatriaphobia. Fearing the number 13 is called friggatriskaidekaphobia. She sells sea shells on the sea shore, however is not a phobia but a tounge twister.

According to Dan Brown's novel , "The Da Vinci Code," Friday the 13th has something to do with the Knights Templar:

The catastrophe was the decimation of the Knights Templar, the legendary order of "warrior monks" formed during the Christian Crusades to combat Islam. Renowned as a fighting force for 200 years, by the 1300s the order had grown so pervasive and powerful it was perceived as a political threat by kings and popes alike and brought down by a church-state conspiracy, as recounted by Katharine Kurtz in Tales of the Knights Templar (Warner Books: 1995):

"On October 13, 1307, a day so infamous that Friday the 13th would become a synonym for ill fortune, officers of King Philip IV of France carried out mass arrests in a well-coordinated dawn raid that left several thousand Templars — knights, sergeants, priests, and serving brethren — in chains, charged with heresy, blasphemy, various obscenities, and homosexual practices. None of these charges was ever proven, even in France — and the Order was found innocent elsewhere — but in the seven years following the arrests, hundreds of Templars suffered excruciating tortures intended to force 'confessions,' and more than a hundred died under torture or were executed by burning at the stake."

Friday the 13th has a huge effect on business:

It's been estimated that [U.S] $800 or $900 million is lost in business on this day because people will not fly or do business they would normally do.

Friday the 13th also has some interesting coincidences:

January 13, 2006, and October 13, 2006, were not only Fridays, but the digits in the month, day, and year of each date add up to 13. This last occurred on October 13, 1520, and will next occur on May 13, 2011.

Several tornadoes touched down in north Texas on Friday, April 13, 2007

I hope the following videos aren't due to Friday the 13th:

Thats it! Goodluck everyone and be safe!