Friday the 13th.

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Friday the 13th on a calendar

In popular belief, Friday the 13th is a day on which a particularly large number of accidents can happen. The irrational fear of Friday the 13th is also known as paraskavedecatriaphobia . In individual cases, this phobia can lead to the fact that affected persons cancel planned trips and appointments or do not dare to get out of bed on Friday the 13th.

Analyzes of accident data have shown that no more traffic accidents with serious property damage occur on Friday the 13th than on a Friday, the 6th or 20th. An investigation of the accident reports by the ADAC also showed for 2009 that on three Fridays on the 13th of a month the average number of accident reports was only 894, while on all other days an average of 975 accidents were reported. An analysis by Zurich Insurance also shows that there are fewer cases of damage on Fridays that fall on the 13th of the month than on all other Fridays in the year. The lower or constant number of accidents on Fridays the 13th compared to other Fridays could be due to increased caution to avoid accidents.

frequency

Every calendar year has at least one and a maximum of three Fridays that fall on the thirteenth.

  • Three Fridays the 13th in a non-leap year occur when February 13th is a Friday; then it is also March 13th and November 13th. In leap years , January, April and July are when the thirteenth share the same day of the week and can therefore fall on a Friday.
  • The shortest distance between two Fridays the 13th is only four weeks. This is always the case if February 13th is a Friday and February is only 28 days long. Then the following March the 13th will be a Friday again. The last time this was in 2015, the next time it will be in 2026.
  • The longest interval between two Fridays on the 13th is 14 months or exactly 61 weeks. This occurs when August 13th is a Friday and the following year is a leap year. Then there will only be Friday the 13th in October of the following year. The last time this was August 1999 / October 2000; the next time this will happen in August 2027 / October 2028.
  • There is an equally long interval of 61 weeks even if July 13th is a Friday and the following year is not a leap year. Then the 13th of September of the following year is again a Friday, the 13th. This was the case in July 2001 / September 2002, July 2012 / September 2013 and July 2018 / September 2019.

The Gregorian calendar repeats itself every 400 years because of the leap year rules, which is exactly 20,871 weeks (146,097 days). Therefore, not only does the leap year cycle repeat itself every 400 years, but each cycle also begins with the same day of the week, e.g. B. a Monday on the cycle started on January 1, 2001; also in the years 2401, 2801, 1601 etc. January 1st is or was a Monday. As a result of this, from our point of view, coincidentally in the Roman Empire (or rather) historically occurring assignment of a weekday to the beginning of a leap year cycle in today's Gregorian calendar, most of the thirteenth in each cycle (688) fall on a Friday; with a different initial assignment, any other day of the week could have become the most common thirteenth. Conversely, Fridays do not fall more frequently on any other day of the month than on a 13th (and the 6th, 20th and 27th directly dependent on it). Wednesday the 31st occurs least often, only 398 times in 400 years (the 31st are the rarest of the possible day numbers anyway). The following table shows the frequencies of all combinations.

Day of month So Mon Tuesday Wed do Fr. Sat
1 8th 15th 22nd 688 684 687 685 685 687 684 4800
2 9 16 23 684 688 684 687 685 685 687 4800
3 10 17th 24 687 684 688 684 687 685 685 4800
4th 11 18th 25th 685 687 684 688 684 687 685 4800
5 12 19th 26th 685 685 687 684 688 684 687 4800
6th 13 20th 27 687 685 685 687 684 688 684 4800
7th 14th 21st 28 684 687 685 685 687 684 688 4800
29 644 641 644 642 642 643 641 4497
30th 627 631 626 631 627 629 629 4400
31 400 399 401 398 402 399 401 2800

Using the example of the years 2001 to 2028, the following table lists all the months in which the 13th is a Friday. This sequence is repeated every 28 years from 1901 to 2099.

2001 2007 2018 April, July
2002 2013 2019 2024 September, December
2003 2008 2014 2025 June
2020 March, November
2009 2015 2026 February, March, November
2004 February, August
2010 2021 2027 August
2005 2011 2016 2022 May
2028 October
2006 2017 2023 January, October
2012 January, April, July

As you can see from this table, there are at least one and at most three Fridays in every year that fall on a 13th.

Origin of superstition

There are many attempts to interpret this superstition . One of them is based on the fact that the thirteen and Friday have long been considered symbols of bad luck. It can be assumed that superstitious people have always feared particularly bad luck on days that were both Fridays and the thirteenth. Later, the superstition spread to such an extent that nowadays even people believe in Friday the 13th who would not have had a problem with Fridays or the number thirteen in detail.

number

For a long time the 13 was called the “dozen of the devil” in German vernacular. But the number is not a symbol of bad luck everywhere. In Jewish tradition, 13 is a lucky number and a symbol of God because it is above twelve. For the Japanese, 13 is also considered a lucky number. The Jewish calendar is based on the moon, so that there is always a full moon on the 14th of each month. If the full moon falls on a Sabbath (Saturday) it is a godsend, so Friday the 13th is also something positive.

weekday

According to the New Testament , Jesus Christ was crucified on a Friday. The Christianity commemorating the passion and death on Good Friday , a fast and mourning. Catholics therefore make the so-called Friday sacrifice on Fridays . In 1930, on the other hand, in Protestant northern Germany, Friday was considered a lucky day and a particularly good date for getting married (also known as the "free one").

Another common claim is that what is known as " Black Friday " has to do with the attribution of bad luck on Friday the 13th. However, this contradicts the fact that the US stock market crash of 1929 began on a Thursday. In the public consciousness, however, the stock market crash was later linked to Friday because at the time it was already Friday due to the time difference in Europe. However, there was a German Black Friday on the Berlin Stock Exchange two and a half years before the events on the New York Stock Exchange . The stock market crash on May 13, 1927 caused the stock index of the Reich Statistical Office to collapse by 31.9 percent within one day.

history

One of the first recorded events to fall on a 13th was the arrest of all members of the Knights Templar in Paris (Knights Templar) ordered by the French King Philip IV in October 1307 . Sealed envelopes with the arrest warrants were sent to all departments in the country days earlier. This meticulous action ultimately led to the repeal of the Knights Templar by the papal bull Vox in excelso on March 22nd, 1312. Despite the tragedy of this event, it is not considered the origin of the superstition around Friday the 13th. Legend has it that the last Grand Master of the Knights Templar, Jacques de Molay , was burned at the stake on Friday the 13th .

Between 1307 and 1907 there has been no written mention of Friday the 13th as an unlucky day. In the online archive of the New York Times there is no mention of place Friday the 13th before 1907. The first edition of the New York Times published some 56 years earlier on September 18th. 1851

The American Thomas William Lawson , who became a multimillionaire through stock market speculation at the end of the 19th century, wrote the stock market novel Friday the 13th in 1907 , which appeared in Germany in the same year as Friday the 13th . Thomas W. Lawson can thus be seen as the inventor of the horror date.

In Germany, awareness increased when in 1916 the film Friday the 13th by director Richard Oswald was released, which was about a family whose members always died on this date.

The superstition was further nourished by the comedy Friday the 13th by director Erich Engels, which was shown in German cinemas in 1944 .

According to folklorist Stephan Bachter, the great popularity and the assumption that this belief is already very old is based only on false media reports in which the near-catastrophe of the Apollo 13 mission or the stock market crash (Black Friday) was assigned to this bad luck messenger. He traces the superstition back to the sixth and seventh books of Moses in the version published by the Braunschweiger Planet-Verlag from 1949/50. There will be warned about activities on Friday the 13th. Before this connection was completely unknown. However, this book was published far too late to be the origin.

At the beginning of the 21st century the controversial rumor surfaced that “Friday the 13th” only became a household name in Germany in 1957 through a gloss by Thilo Koch in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung .

Distribution and importance

According to a 2003 US study, between 17 and 21 million US citizens suffered from fear of Friday the 13th. The Stress Management Center and Phobia Institute in Asheville, North Carolina estimated the economic damage it would cause that because of their fear of that date, people would not fly, do business they would normally do, or not get up in the first place, at $ 800 million to $ 900 million per cut-off date.

Friday the 13th is not a special date everywhere in the world. In Spanish-speaking countries and Greece , Tuesdays that fall on the 13th of the month (Martes 13) are considered unlucky days. In Italy Friday the 17th is considered the unlucky date.

Use for action days

In Finland, an association of authorities and NGOs, including the Ministry of Health and the Finnish Red Cross, has been using Friday the 13th since 1995 as National Accident Day ( kansallinen tapaturmapäivä ) to raise awareness of road safety.

The association Aktion gegen Arbeitsinrecht has been using Friday, the 13th since March 2015 in Germany as a resistance day of the working population against union busting , works council obstruction and wage dumping .

The Austrian gaming group Casinos Austria is using Friday the 13th as part of a marketing campaign as a lucky day with increased chances of winning.

Occurs in songs

Occurrence in movies

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b Edgar Wunder: The consequences of "Friday the 13th" on the accident situation in Germany . In: Journal of Anomalies . tape 3 , 2003, p. 47–55 ( skeptizismus.de [PDF]).
  2. ↑ In 2009 three Fridays fell on a 13th, namely the months of February, March and November.
  3. ↑ Determined by ADAC: Risk of accident on Friday 13th, not higher. reifentrends.de, archived from the original on May 16, 2011 ; accessed on May 13, 2016 . Original source donaukurier .de (no longer available.)
  4. ↑ Don't panic: Friday the 13th is not a bad day ( memento from November 17, 2015 in the Internet Archive ), inserted Oct. 18, 2015
  5. ↑ Black Friday . In: Die Zeit , No. 14/1967
  6. ↑ a b Ralf Bülow: The man who invented Friday the 13th . one day , June 12, 2008
  7. ↑ Friday the 13th - fictitious as "unlucky day" . In: Humanistic Press Service , July 12, 2007
  8. ^ John Roach: Friday the 13th Phobia Rooted in Ancient History. National Geographic News, August 12, 2004, accessed January 3, 2018 .
  9. ^ Rafael Falcón: Salsa: a taste of Hispanic culture . Verlag Praeger Frederick, June 30, 1998, p. 64 ISBN 978-0-275-96121-3
  10. ^ Fergus McGuckian: Anomalies in Finance: Friday the 17th & Superstition in the Italian Stock Market . Social Science Research Network, November 1, 2010
  11. ↑ Tapaturmapäivä 9/13/2013: erityisteemana työpaikkojen turvallisuustyö . Archived from the original on April 29, 2014. Retrieved January 4, 2018.
  12. ↑ Tiina Tikkanen: Mikä on Tapaturmapäivä? March 30, 2016, accessed January 3, 2018 .
  13. ^ Accident Day today to create public awareness. In: Finland Times. September 13, 2013, accessed January 5, 2018 .
  14. ↑ Elmar Wigand: Now it's striking 13! The word for Friday. In: Injustice at work in Germany. November 13, 2015, accessed January 3, 2018 .
  15. ↑ action ./. Injustice to work: now it's striking 13! What happened until now. Retrieved January 3, 2018 .
  16. ↑ Casinos Austria AG: Friday the 13th - Conditions of participation. (PDF) Archived from the original on January 5, 2018 ; accessed on January 4, 2018 .
  17. ↑ Lucky Day competition on Friday 13th at Casinos Austria. Lotto News, November 5, 2015, accessed January 5, 2018 .