Do You Feel Luck? Friday the 13th!

“Do you feel Lucky? Well, do ya punk?”  Dirty Harry knew that some people believe in “Luck” and by extension Bad Luck…like is there one round left in a .44 Magnum! Friday the thirteenth is the poster child for bad luck for many…are you among them?  The Mail & Guardian Online have pulled together a list of superstitions.  Have a “nice” day!

 The curses that surround Friday the 13th range from sailors and fishermen being wary of going out to sea to beliefs that hearing any piece of news on the day would add a wrinkle to your face.

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• In 1913, New York pastor Charles Reynolds even offered to marry couples for free, if they dared to challenge the superstitions.
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• An extreme superstition is that if you have 13 people who sit down to a meal together, all will die within a year.
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• Throughout history, many of the world's most notorious killers have had exactly 13 letters in their names, such as Jack the Ripper, Jeffrey Dahmer, Theodore Bundy, and Charles Manson.
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• Throughout history, May 13th has seen Pope John Paul II shot and seriously wounded in Rome in 1981, Vice-President Richard Nixon attacked in Latin America in 1958, and Winston Churchill promising Parliament "to wage war, by sea, land and air with all our might and strength that God can give" in 1940.
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• Finally, in 1993, a study in the British Medical Journal concluded that the "risk of a transport accident on Friday the 13th may be increased by as much as 52% and that staying at home was recommended."