Friday the 13th, or 17th, or Tuesday the 13th - superstition history

May 13, 2016 8:59 AM

What's so bad about Friday the 13th? Well, what's so unlucky about the number 13? It's largely a modern, Western superstition, merging suspicion about Fridays and the number 13, which once concocted, felt ancient. Some give credit to the Thirteen Club, formed in 1881 or 1882, who flaunted so-called cursed actions, breaking glasses with abandon. Meanwhile, Martes Trece, or Tuesday the 13th is bad luck in Spanish speaking countries, and it's an ominous date for Greek history as Constantinople fell on the specific date in 1204, while Friday the 17th is a national day of sfortuna, or bad luck, in Italy.

Finally, according to la Smorfia Napoletana (Google auto-translation), a system devised in Napoli which links the numbers 1 to 90 to images, and it’s used to interpret dreams and events so that those numbers can be used to play the lottery, 17 represents disgrazia (misfortune).

To make things worst, this year è un anno bisestile (is a leap year), which in itself is considered unlucky. According to a common saying: anno bisesto, anno funesto (leap year, deadly year).

posted by filthy light thief (19 comments total)

I'd always heard it that it was related to the fall of the templars by philip the fair, though it always seems much more of a just so story than an actual reason. Great post!
posted by Carillon at 9:07 AM on May 13, 2016

To make things worst, this year è un anno bisestile (is a leap year), which in itself is considered unlucky. According to a common saying: anno bisesto, anno funesto (leap year, deadly year).

Phew! It's a good thing US presidential elections never happen in a leap year.

{Checks calendars} Oh shi
posted by Wordshore at 9:15 AM on May 13, 2016 [2 favorites]

Wikipedia has a decent collection of potential sources for Friday the 13th, most of it anecdotal or unsubstantiated, and also cites Friday the 13th: A Novel by Thomas William Lawson, published in 1907, about a stock broker who picks that day on which to bring down Wall Street. Wikipedia tells me that

The Thomas W. Lawson, the only seven-masted schooner ever built, was named after him. As an odd coincidence, the Thomas W. Lawson, in which the intensely superstitious Lawson had invested heavily, was wrecked off the Isles of Scilly at 2:30 am GMT on Saturday 14 December 1907, but to Lawson, at home in Boston, it was at that time still Friday the 13th.

posted by filthy light thief at 9:19 AM on May 13, 2016

Nothing is bad about Friday the 13th, which is the date I met grumpybearbride. For us it is the pinnacle of romance!
posted by grumpybear69 at 9:19 AM on May 13, 2016 [4 favorites]

Wait a minute; I thought it came from Christian tradition. Judas Iscariot was the 13th member of Jesus's band (counting Jesus himself) and Friday is the day of the week that Jesus was crucified.
posted by Chocolate Pickle at 9:52 AM on May 13, 2016 [2 favorites]

While there is evidence of both Friday and the number 13 being considered unlucky, there is no record of the two items being referred to as especially unlucky in conjunction before the 19th century. Such "Christian traditions" are modern.


Phew! It's a good thing US presidential elections never happen in a leap year.

Oddly enough, though an election occurs every four years, not every election year falls on a Leap Year. The reason is simple enough and is once again based on the Gregorian Calendar, which dictates that years marking the end of a century (ie: multiples of 100) are only leap years if also divisible by 400. As a result, 1600, 2000, & 2400 are leap years, but 1800, 1900, & 2100 are not.
posted by filthy light thief at 9:56 AM on May 13, 2016 [1 favorite]

I thought the number 17 was associated with the yellow pig.
posted by Dr Dracator at 10:32 AM on May 13, 2016

All prime numbers are unlucky, for in being indivisible they simulate the essential property of unity without being the true unity; they are instruments therefore of the Great Deceiver. More info on why freedom of contract and a return to the gold standard are the only defenses against the tyranny of primes is available on my website agnelfire.com/a_is_a
posted by invitapriore at 11:32 AM on May 13, 2016 [2 favorites]

Prime numbers are known as "the snobs of the integers," only ever hanging out with themselves and #1.
posted by rhizome at 11:34 AM on May 13, 2016 [1 favorite]

I have always found it weird and hilarious that people ascribe specific meanings to particular numbers.
posted by 5_13_23_42_69_666 at 12:18 PM on May 13, 2016 [4 favorites]

I'd always heard the Knights Templar origin story too. (The linked National Geographic article, which is mostly about the Templars, dismisses the notion but mentions a theory that a 1907 novel called Friday the 13th is responsible for the superstition.)
posted by usonian at 12:59 PM on May 13, 2016

Meanwhile, Martes Trece, or Tuesday the 13th is bad luck in Spanish speaking countries

Yes, but Martes y Trece are hilarious.
posted by lollymccatburglar at 1:13 PM on May 13, 2016 [1 favorite]

Tesla fun fact of the day. His favorite numbers were 3 and 13. (and then his laboratory burned down March 13, 1895).
posted by dances_with_sneetches at 1:16 PM on May 13, 2016

Dr Dracator: I thought the number 17 was associated with the yellow pig.

Apparently, that specific day is July 17. More facts about 17, but none about yellow pigs, sorry.
posted by filthy light thief at 1:33 PM on May 13, 2016

How about a Robert Graves' jag? There are 13 lunar months and the reckoning of time is fundamental to power. Accounting time by the moon's cycles sustained rituals and adaptations long before dedicated skywatchers/diviners kept a "record" of time (the sun's position).
posted by lazycomputerkids at 2:57 PM on May 13, 2016 [2 favorites]

I've been under a similar impression as Chocolate Pickle. Jesus is supposed to have died on a Friday, 12 is supposed to be a holy number and so 13 is unlucky (but not 11, whew). I do think it's funny Friday the 13th only happens when the first of the month is a Sunday.
posted by parallax at 3:42 PM on May 13, 2016

Fun fact: certain combinations of the day of the month and weekday are more common than others thanks to the repeating nature of the calendar. Friday the 13th is among the combinations that occurs most often.
posted by Mr.Encyclopedia at 4:10 PM on May 13, 2016

"On 14 September, Philip took advantage of the rumors and inquiry to begin his move against the Templars, sending out a secret order to his agents in all parts of France to implement a mass arrest of all Templars at dawn on 13 October...Molay was in Paris on 12 October, where he was a pallbearer at the funeral of Catherine of Courtenay, wife of Count Charles of Valois, and sister-in-law of King Philip. In a dawn raid on Friday, 13 October 1307, Molay and sixty of his Templar brother knights were arrested."

Mass arrest of the leaders to one of the largest private armies puts the sticky wicket on certain plans for the future.
posted by clavdivs at 4:25 PM on May 13, 2016

Yesterday in Japan was also 仏滅 (butsumetsu), a fact which several of the parents at my school informed me of when they dropped off their kids for the day.
posted by emmling at 8:12 PM on May 13, 2016