
While some people take the superstition around Friday 13th with a pinch of salt, other people avoid going to work or driving on Friday 13th for fear that something bad might happen.Īnd according to an article on CNBC, the Stress Management Center and Phobia Institute in North Carolina estimates between $700 million and $800 million are lost every Friday the 13th because of people’s refusal to travel, purchase major items or conduct business.Īre there more accidents on Friday 13th? The Costa Concordia sank off the coast of the island of Giglio on Friday 13th January 2012. How does superstition around Friday 13th impact society? Some major airlines, such as Air France, Lufthansa and Ryanair, don’t have a 13th row. It’s been said that fear of the number 13 is linked to 12 being a number of perfection.įor example, there are 12 months in a year, 12 hours on a clock and 12 zodiac signs, making 13 seem an irrational number that brings bad luck.ĭinner parties of 13 people are still considered unlucky, and many hotels don’t have a room number 13. The irrational fear of the number 13 is called “triskaidekaphobia”. Why are people afraid of the number 13? Some airlines have no row 13. This is mentioned in the 1955 historical novel The Iron King by Maurice Druon and later in Dan Brown’s 2003 novel The Da Vinci Code, as well as in various other publications.īy shuffling the digits around, you can get the word VIXI, which in Latin means ‘I have lived’, implying death in the present and an omen of bad luck. It’s also been suggested that the superstition comes from an incident that took place way back on Friday 13th 1307, when Philip IV of France arrested hundreds of the Knights Templar. The book tells the story of an unscrupulous broker who takes advantage of the Friday 13th superstition to create a Wall Street panic on that date. Lawson in 1907 helped spread the superstition. It’s also possible that the novel titled Friday, the Thirteenth, written by Thomas W.


In Henry Sutherland Edwards’ 1869 biography of Italian composer Gioachino Rossini, who died on Friday 13th November, it’s documented that Rossini regarded Friday as an unlucky day and the 13th as an unlucky number. However it’s been argued that there’s no record of Friday and the 13th being referred to as unlucky before the 19th century. The painting of The Last Supper by Leonardo da Vinci presents 13 people in the Upper Room on the 13th of Nisan Maundy Thursday, the night before Jesus’s death on Good Friday. Some attribute the superstitions around Friday 13th to the story of Jesus’s last supper and crucifixion.
