Unlucky for some 13
As Friday the 13th approaches MARION McMULLEN takes a look at the fear and superstition behind the unluckiest number
COMPOSER Arnold Schoenberg was so terrified of the number 13 he scared himself to death... on July 13. He had predicted he would die on the 13th at the age of 76 (7+6=13) and did just that at 13 minutes to midnight in 1951. It is said his that last word was “harmony”.
The composer, born in Vienna 145 years ago, suffered from– an over-riding fear of the number 13. But he was not the first composer to pass away on the 13th. Italian Gioachino Rossini, of The Barber of Seville fame, died on Friday, November 13, 1868. There was nothing suspicious though surrounding his demise. The 76-year-old had been suffering from pneumonia.
American President Franklin D Roosevelt would never sit down to eat if there were 13 people at the table and he never travelled on the 13th of the month.
Napoleon was superstitious of both Fridays and the number 13 and would never travel on either one if he had a choice and horror writer Stephen King shares the fear, once writing of his phobia “It’s neurotic, sure, but it’s also safer.”
This September sees a Friday, 13th looming and the irrational fear of the combined date is known as friggatriskaidekaphobia or paraskevidekatriaphobia.
The date proved unlucky for the royal family on Friday, September 13,
1940, when five German bombs struck Buckingham Palace during a daylight raid as King George VI and his wife Queen Elizabeth were having tea.
The palace had suffered hits before but the date marked the worst devastation so far with windows being blown out, a water main ruptured and damage caused to the Royal Chapel. Queen Elizabeth, who had visited many of the capital’s bomb damage with
King George, reported said of the Luftwaffe attack on Buckingham Palace: “I’m glad. It makes me feel I can look the East End in the face.”
Friday, October 13, also proved tragic in 1972 for plane passengers travelling from Montevideo in Uruguay to Santiago in Chile.
The plane crashed in the Andes mountain range and the survivors, including members of an Uruguayan rugby team, had to cannibalise the bodies of the passengers who did not make it in order to stay alive. Sixteen people were eventually rescued after 72 days in the mountains with their ordeal being told in the 1993 film Alive.
The number 13 was also unlucky for American space agency NASA back in 1970. Astronauts Jim Lovell, Jack Swigert and Fred Haise were on their way to the moon in Apollo 13 when there was an explosion on April 13 in one of their main fuel tanks when they were 206,000 miles from Earth.
Jack Swigert – a last-minute replacement for Ken Mattingley – had written the emergency manual for Apollo 13 and uttered the famous understatement “OK, Houston, we’ve had a problem here”.
All three men managed to return home despite the overwhelming odds with the help of the power and oxygen supplies aboard the lunar landing module Aquarius and their story was brought to the big screen in 1995 movie Apollo 13 starring Tom Hanks, Kevin Bacon and Bill Paxton.
The film was based on a based on the book Lost Moon, co-written by Commander Jim Lovell who commented: “For some time I thought Apollo 13 was a failure. I was disappointed I didn’t get to land on the moon, but actually it turned out to be the best thing that could have happened.”
Four of the Friday The 13th films were released, appropriately, on Friday the 13th – the first in 1980.
A number of famous people can lay claim to being Friday the 13th babies including Britain’s Iron Lady Margaret Thatcher, who was born on October 13, 1925, Cuban leader Fidel Castro (August 13, 1926), Sound Of Music star Christopher Plummer (December 13, 1929) and Peter Tork of The Monkees, who was born on February 13, 1942.
Being born on December 13, 1957 hasn’t done any harm to award-winnng Reservoir Dogs and Con Air film actor Steve Buscemi, although reviewers were sometimes unkind, as he pointed out: “My favourite review described me as the cinematic equivalent of junk mail.”
Psycho, North By Northwest and Vertigo film director Alfred Hitchcock also made his first appearance just over 100 years ago on Friday, August 13, 1899. His first film venture in London in 1922 was called Number 13... it proved unlucky and was never finished because of lack of funding.
Only two reels of the movie were filmed and are now believed to have been lost and Hitchcock had to wait until 1925 to make his directing debut with The Pleasure Garden.
He then found success with British movies like The Lady Vanishes and Jamaica Inn before Hollywood beckoned, and he was never struck by the curse of 13 again.