This Is Why Buildings Don't Have a 13th Floor

everybody's working for the weekend right well maybe not everyone especially if your Friday happens to be cursed now let's be honest here if you work in retail Friday is probably already a scary day for you but despite everybody working for the weekend there is a historic standard for Friday being bad luck with one Friday in particular being a particularly ill omen is there any proof to back up the belief that Friday the 13th brings bad luck or is it just another superstition but first today's episode is exploring a widely held belief from a certain culture we're not here to judge just to look at the origin and beliefs behind Friday the 13th and explore the evidence linking it to bad luck every culture has its own superstitions and there's nothing wrong with that as long as it doesn't include ritual sacrifices or astrology if you don't want to travel or take risks on Friday the 13th that's your business same goes for if you want to walk under a ladder break a mirror and spill all the salt on your table and with that out of the way let's get into it like many superstitions the origin of Friday the 13th being bad luck is unclear at best your meatbag myths have no centralized databank how quaint huh oh yeah not everything gets written down that's my name in fact the story of Friday the 13th may come from two separate myths for the number thirteen itself we can thank Christianity for the idea that it's unlucky you may have noticed that some buildings in the u.s. don't have a 13th floor or some streets skip the 13th house number this is all thanks to the biblical story of the Last Supper where Jesus dined with his Twelve Apostles bringing the total number of diners to the big one three now whether it was Jesus himself or Judas Iscariot that was the 13th guest is unclear but the end result was the same Judas pulled a Judas and when all Anakin Skywalker on them leading to another very important biblical story the crucifixion which happened on you guessed it Friday Good Friday to be exact but that's not the only dinner related story that led to thirteen being considered to be the bad number no I'm serious there's more than one of these heads up kids all stories are remakes in the poetic Edda a Norse myth the story goes that after tricking the blind God HOD into slain Balder with mistletoe Loki really hello let me check my sources okay yeah but this is the thing this is this happened anyways after tricking hajj loki proceeded to crash memorial dinner held by the twelve other gods another unlucky 13th guest none too pleased about this the rest of the gods did the only thing that seemed reasonable chain loki up beneath the earth where a snakes poison eternally drips on his face yeah Norse gods are scary thanks to these stories having thirteen people at a table has developed a reputation as being bad according to NPR there was even a belief that one of the thirteen would pass within a year spooky fridays carry their own reason for being unlucky and no it's not because of black friday though stay strong retail friends stay strong as early as the 14th century classic English poet Geoffrey Chaucer made reference to Friday as a day of misfortune in his famous work the canterbury tales though seeing as how canterbury tales is pretty full of mocking tragedy this may have been a joke brew speaks truth so weep for those who take mine words without joy a myth for in these verses jokes veiled and stealth i mock mine self much as any else oh ja sir verily that's pretty good yeah that was good yeah thank you so much oh yeah take a nap one of these days huh wouldn't wouldn't that be rich according to the BBC Friday gained a bad rap in the UK for being known as the hangman's day for reasons according to an article from the mirror following the spread of Christianity through skin Naevia that Frigga the Norse goddess of love and fertility was branded a witch and banished the story goes that Frigga assembled the Dark Lord and 11 other witches to plot evil deeds on Fridays according to the Irish women's magazine Irish Tattler the day was labeled the witches Sabbath which incidentally sounds like a rocking band man it's thought that the superstitious Victorians were the first to combine Friday and 13 into some kind of bad luck fusion dance but the first known mention of Friday the 13th in media actually comes from 1907 when an author named Thomas Lawson released a book called Friday the 13th the novel was about a stockbroker at an evil business plan to crash the stock market on the titular date Friday the 13th which does sound like a very novel idea and sounds like it's a thing well I mean kind of but something like that happened not of the time but in 1989 a full 82 years after the novel was released on Friday October 13th a mini crash rocked the stock market according to an LA Times article written at the time this doesn't appear to have been a plan by some evil business instead analysts Newton zinder claimed that traders were spooked by word that a buyout of United Airlines had collapsed and that's just getting started there are plenty of other stories surrounding the ominous date as avid Dan Brown readers may be aware it is believed that another unlucky October 13th may have happened centuries earlier in 1307 as described by National Geographic the Knights Templar were arrested by King Philip the 4th for the crimes of having more money than the King of France charges which were dressed up as consorting with demons and such you know heresy according to some tellings of the story the Templar Grand Master Jacques de Molay is said to have cursed those who wronged them and his curse has caused every Friday the 13th to become unlucky the Knights were dealt with in the periods usual fashion yeah kind of like this but worse there was also Friday September 13th 1940 when Buckingham Palace was severely damaged by airstrikes because of reasons other down our historic fry the thirteenth includes September 13 1996 when rapper Tupac Shakur passed away January 13th 2012 when the cruise ship Costa Concordia wrecked off the coast of Italy and August 13th 2010 when a 13 year old boy was struck by lightning is there any truth to this superstition statistically speaking is Friday the 13th actually any worse than other dates considering all the bad things that have happened on other dates probably not that said there is a study linking Friday the 13th to Miss Fortune published in the 1993 Christmas edition of the British Medical Journal the study shows a link between driving on the cursed day in an increased risk of hospitalization from traffic accident that sounds credible right Oh kind of the thing is that in author Robert Lubin's own words the study was just a bit of fun and not to be taken seriously according to Lubin while the data in the study is all real the study itself was written in a tongue-in-cheek manner it was written for the Christmas edition of the British Medical Journal which usually carries fun or spoof articles on the flipside Dutch researchers found the exact opposite that you're less likely to be injured on a Friday the 13th the study hypothesized that this might be because people are more careful on the day because of the superstition which makes sense as said by the independent a lot of people tend to prefer to not take risks even when dealing with superstitions and then there's the 13 Club enter Captain William Fowler a man whose life was strangely tied to the number 13 he constructed 13 buildings was a member of 13 clubs joined and left the army on the 13th of the month and even fought 13 battles for you know reasons realizing that he was still fine despite the superstition Fowler decided to do the only thing that seemed reasonable to him put together a club and do all the things they weren't supposed to and I'm not kidding this club would meet on the 13th of every month start their meeting off by walking under a ladder break mirrors spill salt and eat dinner with 13 people at the table yet they even drank coffee with cream scandalous but despite inviting every ill omen upon themselves nothing happened to the club after a year the club secretary stated whether they have participated or not at the banquet table not a single member is dead or has even had a serious illness the 13 club grew so widespread that it actually came to include a number of presidents but not Franklin Delano Roosevelt who according to biographer John Gunther hated Friday the 13th the day not the movie series you're safe for now Jason FDR is not coming for you yet in the words of Gunther himself like most people with good luck FDR was moderately not excessively superstitious he hated Friday the 13th he would never start an important trip on a Friday if he could help it ain't it's like sitting down with 13 at dinner but as Friday the 13th really unlucky if I had to make an educated guess it would be that incidents that happened on Friday the 13th tend to stick in our minds due to the stigma attached to the day huh you hear that I think it's another visit from our old friend correlation and causation if you look hard enough it's easy to find connections between dates and misfortune let me give you an example there's a period known as the Ides in April that lasts from the 15th to the 20th and tends to contain all sorts of tragedies for the United States the 1906 San Francisco earthquake the sinking of the Titanic and the BP oil spill all took place in this period if that term sounds familiar you might know a little something about the Ides of March the Ides in general is a term referring to a date in the Roman calendar that fell roughly in the middle of the month today for us that would coincide to the fifteenth and months like March and April or here let's make another example personally I don't like August it gets warm and muggy and reminds me that summer is ending and winter is coming so here look let's try to get a random date in August I'm gonna take here now okay that leaves us with August 8th so what happened on this cursed day in history August 8th 1963 a group of 15 robbers boarded a British mail train and stole 2.6 million pounds in used banknotes August 8 1973 future South Korean president Kim dae-jung is kidnapped from his hotel room in Tokyo August 8 2010 mudslides hit Joe chu County in China's Gansu Province causing loss of life and relocation in the area see how easy it is you can even try this at home just pick a random day of the year to check and share what happened historically on that day down in the comments I'm I'm curious to see what you turn up with or tweeted at me I got Twitter on this thing but whatever your feelings on the unluckiest day of the year are there's one thing that is certain if you want to travel for cheap Friday the 13th is probably the best time to do it according to the CNBC Investor reports street signs it's estimated that there's an overall revenue loss across all businesses of 700 to 800 million dollars on Friday the 13th as people decide not to travel and make purchases but as such that means those willing to ignore the stigma can travel on the cheap some flights can drop from 5 to 44 percent on Friday the 13th though discounts do vary between companies and may depend on how superstitious other travelers are so what's up with Friday the 13th well all in all there's no real evidence that there's any difference in terms of luck when it comes to this specific date like with any superstition it's more of an old-timey meme that just spread until it was widely accepted in the public perception not that everyone believes that Friday the 13th brings bad luck but hey must be pretty persistent to get a horror film franchise named after it though 13s cursed status isn't Universal according to Italy magazine 13 is considered a lucky number to Italians and 17 is thought of as the unlucky one in fact when written in roman numbers 17 can be arranged to VI EXI which according to national geographic means my life is over neat still feeling unlucky wow there's something that you can do give in and ride the wave of superstition throw salt over your shoulder knock on wood cross your fingers according to a study by Jane rise in a behavioral scientist at University of Chicago Booth School of Business why do even when you don't believe in superstitions the act of warding off bad luck can still have benefits after all according to Rebecca Borah a professor of English at University of Cincinnati being aware of superstitions can help instill a sense of order so what are your plans for the next Friday the 13th if you like playing it safe or want to prove the superstitions wrong me I think I'm going to shake things up and stay inside [Music] [Applause] [Music]

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Views: 1,082,178

Rating: 4.9381895 out of 5

Keywords: friday the 13, friday 13, friday the 13th, friday 13th, unsolved, unsolved mystery, unsolved mysteries, solved mysteries, unsolved cases, mystery, theory, investigate, investigation, mysteries unsolved, mysteries solved, solved mystery, why friday the 13th is unlucky, why friday the 13th is scary, why 13 is an unlucky number, why are we afraid of friday the 13th and the number 13, unexplained mysteries, unexplained mystery

Id: 48gqSmWwzrY

Length: 14min 14sec (854 seconds)

Published: Thu Dec 12 2019