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No best answer has yet been selected by dgrey83. Once a best answer has been selected, it will be shown here.
For more on marking an answer as the "Best Answer", please visit our FAQ.It just shows what a lot of nonsense it is when you consider that, In the US, the ground floor is known as the 1st floor whereas, in Europe, the 1st floor is the floor above that.
What is the difference between the floor that is 13th above the ground and one that is labelled "14" in the lift or elsewhere?
Also, many restaurants don't have a table 13 because customers won't sit there.
I thought it was unlucky because Judas was the 13th disciple. There are probably loads of other reasons too.
Mind you, I guess if you live on the 13th floor and the lift doesn't stop there, that WOULD be unlucky! :-p
Nice thread though.
Alexander the G wanted to be a God and accordingly made a 13th statue on the place of his capital. He died and people considered that his will to be a 13th God (12 gods, one for each month were known) was the reason of his death. After that this number was considered as unlucky.
According to historians, there were 13 people at Christ's Last Supper and Christ was crucified on Friday 13th. So, Friday 13th is considered as Unlucky.
The Friday the 13th superstition is thought by many to have started on Friday October the 13th, 1307. The Roman Catholic Pope and the King of France, Philip IV, carried out a secret death warrant against the Knights Templar. They were an order of fighters within the Roman Catholic Church who promised to protect Christian travellers visiting Jerusalem in the centuries after the Crusades. The order became a rich, powerful and allegedly corrupt, and were killed as heretics. Their Grand Master, Jacques DeMolay, was arrested and before he was killed, was tortured and crucified. A Black Friday indeed!
13 eh? Harold Shipman, Charles Manson, Jeffrey Dahmer, and even Jack the Ripper were all nasty men with 13 letters in their names, so look out for Robert Redford, Pierce Brosnan, and Mario Di Maggio becoming mass murderers! In Ancient Egypt there were 12 stages of life and the 13th was death. Not considered unlucky or bad, but the entrance to glorious immortality. There are 13 lunar cycles (just about) in a year, so the extra one must be bad, after all everything else is in 12s, isn't it? However, Jews and others observe Lunar calendars without too much trouble; their 13th month is no worse than any other!
The South American Maya people, whose number system was to base 20 and included zero, had two calendars, a ritual one, the Tzolkin, composed of 13 months of 20 days and a 365-day civil calendar, the Haab. This had 18 months, named after agricultural events, each with 20 days, numbered 0 to 19, and a short month of only 5 days, called the Wayeb. This was considered an unlucky period and the Maya did not wash, comb their hair or do any hard work during these five days. Anyone born during Wayeb would have bad luck and remain poor and unhappy all their lives.