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MILLIONS of football fans are already feeling like their luck has run out… and now it’s Friday the 13th for goodness sake, the dodgiest date in the calendar!
The number 13 and Friday The idea that the number 13 and Friday are unlucky is thought to date back to Biblical times. There were 13 people at the Last Supper. The number 13 is also considered unlucky in Norse Mythology. The tale goes that the god Loki turned up to a dinner as the uninvited 13th guest and it led to the death of another deity.
Fear of Friday 13th in particular may have originated on that date in 1307 when King Philip IV of France ordered hundreds of Templar Knights to be arrested.
Bhave been considered unlucky for centuries and there’s even a name for the fear of the day itself – paraskevidekatriaphobia. Here JAMES MOORE reveals 13 freaky facts about it…
Shot rapper Tupac Shakur died on Friday 13th September, 1996, while David McGreavy killed three children in Worcester on Friday 13th April, 1973.
FUruguayan Air Force Flight 571 crashed on Friday 13th October, 1972. The members of the rugby team on board who survived had to resort to cannibalism – the story was made into the film Alive.
Buckingham Palace was bombed during the Blitz on Friday 13th September, 1940, while the Costa Concordia cruise ship sank on Friday 13th Jan, 2012, with the loss of 32 lives.
HPope John Paul II was shot on Friday 13th May, 1981, while wrestler Lance Cade died on Friday 13th August, 2010. On the same day a 13-year-old boy was struck by lightning in Lowestoft, Suffolk, aged 13.
Superstitious Thomas W. Lawson’s 1907 novel Friday The Thirteenth is about a stock market
Jcrash on the date. On Friday October 13, 1989, global markets really did plunge in what became known as Black Friday.
Fear of the date is reckoned to cost businesses £585million a year. Fewer weddings happen on Friday 13th and it’s one of the cheapest dates to fly as travellers shun flights. On Friday 13th August, 1976, New York’s Daz Baxter was so afraid of the date that he decided to stay in bed to avoid it. Sadly he died when his apartment block promptly collapsed.
The film franchise Friday the 13th, featuring creepy killer Jason Voorhees, cashed in on the fear.
The good news is that if you get through today there isn’t another Friday the 13th this year. But do take care on Friday 13th April, 2029. Space boffins have calculated that on this day asteroid 99942 Apophis is set to pass dangerously close to Earth!
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