Friday the 13th

According to the Dutch Center for Insurance Statistics, you need not fear Friday the 13th. Statistics show that is actually luckier than your ordinary average Friday. Incidents of traffic accidents, fires and thefts are actually lower.

I don't know whether or not this is due to people hiding in their bunkers on Fridays the 13th or there is some other explanation. Causation is not discussed in the article so that is just speculation on my part. What I do know is that tomorrow you can do everything you would normally do with reckless abandon, safe in the knowledge that you are statistically less likely to come to harm.

And now to throw a little history at you, the superstition that Friday the 13th is unlucky came about because the Knight's Templar were hunted down and slaughtered on that day. Let me hunt down the Wikipedia entry on that ... here it is, although Wiki claims that the superstition didn't start with this event as the History Channel said it did. Regardless, on Friday October 13, 1307, King Philip IV of France ordered that Knights Templar be arrested. They were then tortured to extract false confessions of blasphemy.

Still, that's a better and more interesting story than the alternative that they have to offer so that is the one I will stick with.