BLOG: 13 Unfortunate Occurrences That May Just Prove Friday the 13th is an Unlucky Day
Grab your lucky charm - there is probably no date in history more notorious for bad luck, superstitions, and freak accidents than Friday the 13th!
The origins of the fear of Friday the 13th are unclear, but some suppose that its superstitious reputation is attributed to the final days of Christ when, the night before Jesus’ death on Good Friday, 13 people - Jesus and his 12 disciples - sat down to the Last Supper on the 13th of Nisan Maundy Thursday. What is more clear is that up to 21 million Americans are reported to alter their daily lives every Friday the 13th out of their irrational fear for the day! Occurring one to three times per year, Friday the 13th is so feared that it even has specific names for those who have a phobia of the freakiest Friday: paraskevidekatriaphobia or friggatriskaidekaphobia.
But is fear of Friday the 13th really irrational? For centuries history has recorded many terrible and unfortunate things centered around the number 13, and a surprising number of those occurrences have fallen specifically on Friday the 13th. Does Friday the 13th actually hold a supernatural power of misfortune, or has the power of persuasion triggered us to believe in superstition? Here are 13 unfortunate occurrences that may just prove Friday the 13th is an unlucky day!
1) On Friday the 13th of October 1307, King Philip IV of France ordered the arrest and execution of hundreds of the Knights Templar, based on false accusations involving black magic and scandalous sexual rituals. Over the following weeks, hundreds of Templars were arrested, falsely charged, tortured, and killed. According to legend, the leader of the Templars, Grand Master Jacques de Molay, cursed King Philip IV and the Pope as he was burned to death; within the following year, both the King and the Pope were dead themselves.
2) On Friday the 13th of August 1521, Spanish conquistador Hernán Cortés effectively ended the indigenous civilization of the Aztecs. Cortés had waged the Spanish-Mexican war against the Aztec Empire for over two years when he succeeded in capturing Cuauhtémoc, the ruler of city-state Tenochtitlán, and proclaimed himself the new ruler. Weakened by war, famine, and the inundation of smallpox in their population, the remaining Aztecs surrendered to their invading enemies.
3) On Friday the 13th of November 1829, Sam Patch, America’s first professional daredevil, plunged to his death over the High Falls on the Genesee River. Patch was famous for performing perilous jumps over a number of waterfalls, including Niagara Falls, which earned him nationwide acclaim. Not long after his Niagara jump, Patch took a successful leap off of the High Falls in New York on November 6th. However, he was not satisfied with the amount of money it brought him, and so decided to reenact the same stunt on November 13. Plunging 125 feet down in front of thousands of people, Patch hit the water with a loud impact and never surfaced. He died at 22 years old, and his body was found four months later, frozen in the river. Ironically, Patch had advertised his November 13th stunt as “Sam’s Last Jump!” And it really was.
4) On Friday the 13th of January 1939, Australia’s Victoria province experienced what became known as “Black Friday” when a devastating bushfire killed 36 people in one day. Fires had been raging across the state due to drought and uncontrolled back-burning of vegetation, eventually leaving 1,300 buildings destroyed and a total of 71 people dead by the end of January.
5) On Friday the 13th of March 1964, New Yorker Kitty Genovese was brutally raped and murdered on her way home from work in the small hours of the morning. A stranger named Winston Moseley spotted Kitty entering her apartment building, followed her, and stabbed her with a hunting knife. Moseley fled the scene as Kitty cried out for help, but bizarrely returned 10 minutes later, where he located Kitty dragging herself to get help. Attacking her a second time, Moseley stabbed Kitty several more times, raped her, and left her for dead. The incident is all the more harrowing because the New York Times later reported that up to 38 witnesses either heard the violent crime or saw Moseley attacking Kitty, but no one ever stepped forward to help. That claim has since been contested as false, but the brutal murder coined the phrase “bystander effect” and became an object lesson in major psychology books for the next four decades.
6) On Friday the 13th of October 1972, the Uruguay Montevideo Old Christians, a rugby team, were flying to Santiago, Chile along with a number of friends and supporters when their plane crashed in the Andes Mountains. Of the 45 people aboard the flight, 28 initially lived through the crash. However, they remained stranded for 72 days, forcing the survivors to resort to cannibalism. When rescue finally came in December, 16 people remained alive. The tragically macabre event was immortalized in 1992 in the film Alive.
7) On Friday the 13th of October 1972 - the same day as the crash in the Andes - Russian flight Aeroflot 217 crashed on its approach to Sheremetyevo, just three miles from the runway, killing all 174 people onboard. At the time, the crash was the world’s deadliest disaster in aviation history. Although an investigation was launched, officials could never determine what caused the plane to crash, listing the most probable cause as 'psycho-physiological incapacitation of the crew for reasons unknown.’
8) On Friday the 13th of August 1976, a New Yorker named Daz Baxter had such a great fear of the unlucky day that he opted to remain snugly in his bed to avoid bad luck. While he lay hidden in his covers, the floor of his apartment collapsed, and he fell six stories to his untimely death.
9) On Friday the 13th of September 1996, legendary rapper Tupac Shakur died nearly a week after being shot four times in a drive-by shooting in Las Vegas. A killer was never identified, and in the years since his death, countless conspiracy theories have emerged claiming the performer isn’t actually dead. Tupac has even been “sighted” multiple times over the last two decades, fueling the conspiracy fire that he may have faked his own death.
10) On Friday the 13th of January 2010, the luxury cruise ship Costa Concordia notoriously wrecked off the western coast of Italy after hitting a submerged rock. Within hours of striking the rock, the ship capsized, forcing evacuations that took over six hours to complete. Over 4,000 people were rescued, but 32 were lost. The ship's captain was eventually found guilty of manslaughter, causing a maritime accident, and abandoning ship.
11) On Friday the 13th of August 2010, a 13-year-old boy was attending the Lowestoft Seafront Air Festival in Suffolk when he was struck by lightning at exactly 13:13 military time. Thankfully, he suffered only minor burns and fully recovered from the event.
12) On every Friday the 13th, the world’s economy loses approximately $900 million because, according to Founder of the Stress Management Center and Phobia Institute Donald Dassey, masses of people are afraid to work, travel, or even leave their homes on this day due to Friday the 13th’s unlucky reputation. Unfortunately, the “playing-it-safe” tactic doesn’t seem to be very effective: a 1993 study by the British Medical Journal found that even though less people were out and about on Friday the 13th, there were actually more people admitted to the hospital for accidents on the same day!
13) And on Friday the 13th of April 2029, scientists have predicted that an asteroid known as 99942 Apophis will pass precariously close to Earth. Coming closer in to Earth’s orbit than even our own satellites, 99942 Apophis is the size of a football field and has enough mass to cause widespread destruction should it chance to collide with our planet. Currently the large asteroid is on track to miss Earth by a measly 22,000 miles (a very small distance in space terms)… but who knows how much another decade and the added bad luck of Friday the 13th could change that prediction!
Most unfortunately for everyone involved, these Friday the 13th occurrences were truly unlucky - and they aren’t even a complete list! There are many more unlucky events that have unfolded on Friday the 13th, cementing this day - and the number 13 - as a bad omen throughout history. To read another tragic true story that fell on a 13th (although not a Friday), check out our blog, Opera Ghosts - Echoes of the Rhoads Opera House Fire.
Have you ever experienced bad luck or bizarre occurrences on a Friday the 13th? Do you believe in Friday the 13th superstitions? Share your thoughts and stories with us in the comments - and best of luck to you on this Friday the 13th!
~ Lindsay W. Merkel
