Friday the 13th

Friday the 13th, also known as the unluckiest day, is a superstition that has been around for many years. However, no one really knows where this superstition originated from.

There are a lot of different beliefs as to why Friday the 13th is considered bad luck. The first belief dates back to the Bible. According to the text, 13 guests attended the Last Supper, held on Maundy Thursday, including Jesus and his 12 apostles (one of whom betrayed him). The seating arrangement at the Last Supper is believed to have given rise to a longstanding Christian superstition that having 13 guests at a table was a bad omen—specifically, that it was courting death. Some Christians have also suggested that this day is bad luck because Jesus was crucified on a Friday. Friday is also the day Eve gave Adam the fateful apple from the Tree of Knowledge, and the day Cain killed his brother, Abel.

Other people also believe that the superstition of Friday the 13th dates back to October 13, 1307. Officers of King Philip IV of France arrested hundreds of the Knights Templar, a powerful religious and military order formed in the 12th century for the defense of the Holy Land. They were imprisoned because the King wanted access to their financial resources and were later executed.

Although Friday the 13th is seen as a superstition, there have been numerous traumatic events that happened on this day. This includes the German bombing of Buckingham Palace (September 1940); the murder of Kitty Genovese in Queens, New York (March 1964); a cyclone that killed more than 300,000 people in Bangladesh (November 1970); the disappearance of a Chilean Air Force plane in the Andes (October 1972); the death of rapper Tupac Shakur (September 1996) and the crash of the Costa Concordia cruise ship off the coast of Italy, which killed 30 people (January 2012).

Whether you believe in this superstition or not, you have to admit that a lot of scary and unexplainable things have happened on this day. Who knows what could happen next?