Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - Friday the 13th

Episode Date: May 13, 2022

Friday the 13th is a day associated with bad luck and ill omens.  However, why is this particular combination of day of the week and day of the month considered bad luck? If you think you know why Friday the 13th is considered unlucky, there is a good chance that the story you’ve heard is wrong. Learn more about Friday the 13th and how it became associated with being unlucky on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. Learn about how you can invest in art at https://www.masterworks.io/ Subscribe to the podcast!  https://podfollow.com/everythingeverywhere/ -------------------------------- Executive Producer: Darcy Adams Associate Producers: Peter Bennett & Thor Thomsen   Become a supporter on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/everythingeverywhere Update your podcast app at newpodcastapps.com Discord Server: https://discord.gg/UkRUJFh Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/everythingeverywhere/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/everywheretrip Website: https://everything-everywhere.com/everything-everywhere-daily-podcast/ Everything Everywhere is an Airwave Media podcast." or "Everything Everywhere is part of the Airwave Media podcast network Please contact [e-mail] to advertise on Everything Everywhere. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Friday the 13th is a day associated with bad luck and ill omens. However, why is this particular combination of day of the week and day of the month considered bad luck? And if you think you know why Friday the 13th is considered unlucky, there's a good chance that the story you've heard is wrong. Learn more about Friday the 13th and how it became associated with being unlucky on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. What if your perceptions about the past were wrong?

ThruLine is a podcast that takes you back in time to uncover the parts of the story that may have gone unnoticed. It effectively turned day into night. And how it shaped the world now. Time travel with us every week on the Thuline podcast from NPR. Normally when I do episodes like this, I can start with some similar holiday from ancient history, which gradually morphs into the day that we know today. I can't really do that when talking about Friday the 13th, because there is really nothing

before the 19th century about Friday the 13th being an unlucky day. Absolutely nothing. The funny thing is, this sounds exactly like the sort of superstition that would have had some sort of ancient or at least medieval origin. There are two superstitions that do have ancient, or at least older origins, which did come together to form the Friday the 13th myth. This has to do with the number 13 and to a lesser extent, Fridays. The superstition surrounding the number 13 being unlucky goes far back, and there are a whole bunch of different possible origins which might have arisen independently. The reason why 13 is considered unlucky probably had to do with the number 12. 12 is a really nice round number. It's divisible by

1, 2, 3, 4, and 6, and it makes nice fractions with 8 and 9. There were 12 apostles, 12 gods of Olympus, 12 labors of Hercules, 12 signs in the zodiac, 12 tribes of Israel, 12 days of Christmas, and of course, there are 12 months in a year. 13 is right next to 12, and it's a prime number. It can't be divided by anything. While there are infinitely many prime numbers, this one sits right next to 12 in stark opposition. But so does 11. So why does 13 get all the hate? There's a bunch of theories surrounding this from many different sources. One source comes from the ancient Norse legends. According to legend, there were 12 guests at a dinner party in Valhalla, when Loki, the god of mischief, showed up to be the 13th guest.

Loki then proceeded to trick the blind god Hoder, the god of darkness and winter, to shoot his bow and kill his brother, Balder, who was the god of light and joy. Hence, 13 became an unlucky number. Remember that the Norse gods are where we get the names of the days of the week in English, so there were certainly Norse traditions that found their way to the speakers of Old English. Another source has a very similar origin, and it comes from the New Testament. At the last supper, there were 13 people in attendance, not including cooks and waitstaff, of course. The 13th person was Judas Ascariot, who betrayed Jesus. If we go back even further, we find the code of Hamarabi actually skipped the 13th law. This resulted in a superstition for centuries about

not having 13 people in a room or seating 13 people at a table. According to the superstition, if 13 people assembled in a room, then one of them would die within a year. In the 19th century, there was an attempt to put aside the superstition surrounding the number 13. A civil war veteran by the name of Captain William Fowler created the 13 Club in New York in 1881, with the express intent of thumbing their nose at the superstition. There were actually over 400 members of the 13 Club in New York, and it had five U.S. presidents as honorary members, Chester Arthur, Grover Cleveland, Benjamin Harrison,

William McKinley, and Theodore Roosevelt. There were similar 13 clubs that sprang up all over the United States. The attitude of the 13 club was summed up by the American Order and lawyer Robert Green Ingersoll. At a meeting of the 13th, on December 13th, 1888, he ended his toast by saying, quote, We have had enough mediocrity, enough policy, enough superstition, enough prejudice, enough provincialism, and the time has come for the American citizen to say, hereafter, I will be represented by men who are worthy, not only of the Great Republic, but of the 19th century.

End quote. One thing which is of note, the 13 club held their meetings on the 13th, but didn't go to the way to hold them on Friday the 13th, which sort of indicates that the 13th falling on a Friday didn't hold any special meaning, at least as far back as the late 19th century. Of course, the 13 club didn't end superstition surrounding the number 13. As skyscrapers were built, they began to purposely avoid having floors with the number 13. Likewise, hotels and cruise ships will often avoid having rooms numbered 13. A 2007 Gallup poll found that the number of Americans who would be bothered if they were given a room numbered 13 is 13%.

You can't make this stuff up. The only failed Apollo mission was Apollo 13, and the disaster occurred on April 13. The space shuttle program actually renumbered its missions to avoid a space shuttle mission 13. And the space shuttle mission, which would have been the 13th, actually landed on Friday the 13th, and the crew made it an alternative mission patch with a black cat on it. There is actually a clinical condition known as triscydecaphobia, which is a fear of the number 13. Supposedly, Franklin Roosevelt and the author Stephen King are triskeidicophobics. The fear of the number 13 is very much cultural.

China and other East Asian countries, four is considered the unlucky number. Many new hotels in Las Vegas will not have a fourth floor and will even avoid all floors in the 40s. In Italy, 17 is considered unlucky, because in Roman numbers, it's written XVII, which can be rearranged as Wixie, which in Latin means, I have lived, which is another way of saying, I died. In parts of Afghanistan, 39 is considered unlucky because it's three times 13. Before I go on, I have to note one major exception to 13 being unlucky. Taylor Swift. Yep.

Taylor Swift's lucky number is 13, and she will often perform with the number 13 written on the back of her hand. She explained it in an interview with CNN as follows. Quote, I was born in the 13th. I turned 13 on Friday the 13th. My first album went gold in 13 weeks. My first number one song had a 13-second intro. Every time I've won an award, I've been seated in either the 13th seat, 13th row or the 13th section or row M, which is the 13th letter, end quote.

I suppose she would have Triskeida Cophilia. The fact that 13 is considered unlucky is something that most of you are probably familiar with. But what does that have to do with Friday? Why not Monday the 13th or Saturday the 13th? This has to do with another old tradition, which really isn't that much of a thing anymore, which holds that Friday is the unluckiest day of the week. No one really knows why Friday was considered unlucky, but it

probably has something to do with Good Friday and Christ being killed on a Friday. There have also been stories about Noah's Flood starting on a Friday, and Adam and Eve getting kicked out of the Garden of Eden on a Friday. The fear of Fridays didn't really appear in writing, however, until the mid-17th century. There is a 17th century poem that states, quote, Now Friday came, you old wives say, of all the week's unluckiest day. The fear of Fridays didn't really pick up, however, until the 19th century. In Hone's yearbook, which was like an almanac published in 1831, it said, quote,

there are still a few respectable tradesmen and merchants who will not transact business, be bled, or take physic on a Friday, because it's an unlucky day. End quote. Some shipbuilders would not lay the keel of a ship on a Friday, and some farmers would try to avoid starting a harvest on a Friday. They would actually often go out on a Thursday evening just to make a symbolic start to avoid Fridays. So you had two unlucky things that were totally separate, Fridays and the number 13. It was just a matter of time before someone put these two things together like a Reese's peanut butter cup. If they were each individually unlucky, then together they must be really unlucky. The first mention in print that anyone has found referencing Friday the 13th being unlucky was in 1868.

It was an obituary for the composer Joaquino Rossini who died on Friday the 13th of November 18th. The obituary said, quote, Rossini was surrounded to the last by his admiring friends. And if it be true that like so many Italians, he regarded Fridays as an unlucky day, and 13 as an unlucky number, it is remarkable that on Friday the 13th of November, he passed away. End quote. This was just a casual mention, and it didn't really reflect any broad-based fear of Friday the 13th, only the coincidence of these two things happening together.

What probably really kicked it off was a novel written in 1907, by Frederick W. Lawson, titled Friday the 13th. The novel tells the story of a man who takes advantage of the superstition to crash the stock market. So, the superstition must have existed beforehand for it to become a plot in a novel, but the novel itself probably popularized it. After the novel came out, references to Friday the 13th started popping up all over. In 1908, a Native American member of the Oklahoma State Legislature introduced 13 bills on Friday the 13th, just to thumb his nose at the superstition. In 1913, a pastor in Middletown, New York,

offered to marry any couple for free who agreed to get married on Friday the 13th. I should note that in Spain, Tuesday the 13th is considered bad luck. That's because in Spanish, Tuesday is Martes, which is named after the Roman god Mars, who is the god of war, which is associated with death. The clinical condition for someone who has a fear of Friday the 13th is known as parisgividecate triophobia. Now at this point, some of you might be wondering why I haven't mentioned the thing that most people believe is the reason why Friday the 13th is unlucky, the Knights Templar. The Knights Templar indeed ended as a religious order when King Philip the 4th of France arrested hundreds of knights and confiscated their property on Friday the 13th,

1307. That did happen. However, the association of that event with Friday the 13th is a very modern invention, that by all accounts can be attributed to Dan Brown and his Da Vinci Code books. The Knights Templar is a total retcon of the Friday the 13th story. And it's been a while since I've been able to rip on Dan Brown, but I will use this opportunity to do so again. As for the date itself, there are some interesting facts about it. Over a 400-year Gregorian calendar cycle, the 13th of the month, is more likely to land on a Friday than any other day of the week. slightly. In such a cycle, there will be 688 Friday the 13th as opposed to only 684, Thursdays, or Saturdays. There will be at least one Friday the 13th in every year, and at most there can be three in a single year.

The next year with three, Friday the 13th will be in 2026. In a year with three Friday the 13th, there will also be a pair which are only one month apart, and this will always occur in March and April. So if you're listening to this on Friday the 13th, I wouldn't want to be a pair. I wouldn't worry too much about it. You're probably safe. And if by chance you happen to have parisgividecatechia just switch over to the Julian calendar for one day and everything will be all right. Everything Everywhere Daily is an airwave media podcast. The executive producer is Darcy Adams. The associate producers are Thor Thompson and Peter Bennett. Today's review comes from listener Blonde Nurse Barbie from Apple Podcasts in the United States. They write, Seriously Addictive. I learned about this

podcast from Daily History and have absolutely fallen in love with it. I can't believe how much information is packed into each approximately 10-minute episode, with the flow of it being so on point. I feel as though I learn something continuously and am entertained at the same time. I've shared it with all my friends and family. Good job, sir. Good job. Thanks, Barbie. I'm glad you told your friends about the show, which I assume includes Ken and Stacey and all of your friends in the Greater Barbieverse. And I also hope you enjoy listening to the show at your Malibu Beach House. Remember, If you leave a review or send me a boostagram, you too can have it read on the show. I'm staying at a hotel right now.

There's no 13th floor because of superstition. But come on, man, the people on the 14th floor, you know what floor you're really on. If you jump out of the 14th floor hoping to kill yourself, you will die earlier. 13 is an unlucky number. If 13 is unlucky, then so is you with the letter B, B, because B looks like a scrunch together 13. Hello, what is your name? Bob, get the hell away.