It's Friday the 13th!!!!! Do you believe?
Face it, you're screwed. Today is Friday the 13th — the unluckiest day on the calendar — so try not to crash your car, fall down a flight of stairs, set yourself on fire or do anything else that might compromise your well-being. And for God's sake, stay away from men in hockey masks. Friday the 13th occurs when the thirteenth day of a month falls on a Friday, which superstition holds to be a day of bad luck . The fear of Friday the 13th is called paraskevidekatriaphobia or friggatriskaidekaphobics (try saying those!!) The number 13 has been unlucky for centuries. Some historians peg the superstition to the 13 people who attended the Last Supper (neither Jesus nor Judas came out of that one O.K.), but ancient Babylon's Code of Hammurabi omits the number 13 in its list of laws, so the superstition dates back to at least 1700 BC. Thirteen is so unlucky, in fact, that in 1881 an organization called the Thirteen Club attempted to improve the number's reputation. At the...