Friday the 13th trivia

Friday the 13th Trivia:

• Many buildings and skyscrapers do not have a 13th floor.
• Many people will not allow 13 people at the table. If there is exactly 13 people present, a second table is set up.
• Skippers would not go out to sea with a crew of 12. Including the captain, that made 13 people.
• Ancient Mayans of Central America were the most advanced culture in all of the Americas. They considered the number 13 sacred.

Like any other special or wacky day, we encourage you to fully embrace the day and have fun with it. But, don't cower in your room in fear of this day. You'd miss all of the fun and excitement!

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Origin of Friday the 13th: In biblical references, it is believed that Cain killed Abel on Friday the 13th. We are not sure how this was determined, as calendars were unlikely to have been in existence back then.
We do know with certainty, the ancient Babylonian Code of Hammurah omitted the #13 in it's list of laws. Written in 1,700 B.C., it suggests ancient Babylonians considered the #13 to be unlucky.

  Occurs one to three times a year, when the 13th falls on a Friday

• 2013: September, December
• 2014: June
• 2015: February, March, November 

Source holidayinsights.com

Friday the 13th folklore

Do you suffer from  friggatriskaidekaphobia? Or possibly paraskevidekatriaphobia? .... Then you suffer from a phobia of Friday the 13th!


To understand Friday the 13th’s fall from grace, scholars have first tried to determine what about the number 13 rubs so many people across so many cultures the wrong way. Some have suggested that its nasty reputation dates back to at least 1780 B.C., when the ancient Babylonian legal document known as the Code of Hammurabi was enacted without a 13th law; this hypothesis has been questioned, however, since the original text did not include numeration. Others have pointed out that 13’s younger sibling, the number 12, traditionally signifies completeness: There are 12 signs of the zodiac, 12 months of the year, 12 hours on the clock and 12 tribes of Israel, among other famous dozens. Anywhere outside a bakery, then, 13 is considered a transgression of this rule.

Friday the 13th superstition theories

Several theories have been proposed about the origin of the Friday the 13th superstition.
One theory states that it is a modern amalgamation of two older superstitions: that thirteen is an unlucky number and that Friday is an unlucky day.

• In numerology, the number twelve is considered the number of completeness, as reflected in the twelve months of the year, twelve hours of the clock, twelve gods of Olympus, twelve tribes of Israel, twelve Apostles of Jesus, the 12 successors of Muhammad in Shia Islam, 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.
• Friday has been considered an unlucky day at least since the 14th century's The Canterbury Tales, and many other professions have regarded Friday as an unlucky day to undertake journeys, begin new projects or deploy releases in production. Black Friday has been associated with stock market crashes and other disasters since the 1800s.
• 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,in which an unscrupulous broker takes advantage of the superstition to create a Wall Street panic on a Friday the 13th^.
• Records of the superstition are rarely found before the 20th century, when it became extremely common. The connection between the Friday the 13th superstition and the Knights Templar was popularized in the 2003 novel The Da Vinci Code and in the 1989 work "Born in Blood: The Lost Secrets of Freemasonry". On Friday, 13 October 1307, hundreds of the Knights Templar were arrested in France, an action apparently motivated financially and undertaken by the efficient royal bureaucracy to increase the prestige of the crown. Philip IV was the force behind this ruthless move, but it has also tarnished the historical reputation of Clement V. From the very day of Clement V's coronation, the king falsely charged the Templars with heresy, immorality and abuses, and the scruples of the Pope were compromised by a growing sense that the burgeoning French State might not wait for the Church, but would proceed independently. However, experts agree that this is a relatively recent correlation, and most likely a modern-day invention

Source Wikipedia