Triskaidekaphobia

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Triskaidekaphobia (from Greek tris=three, kai=and, deka=ten) is a fear of the number 13. It is a superstition. A specific fear of Friday the 13th is called paraskevidekatriaphobia or friggatriskaidekaphobia.

Contents 1 Origins 2 Examples 2.1 Buildings 2.2 Aeronautics and space 2.3 Miscellaneous 3 Similar phobias 4 References 5 External links

[edit] Origins

Some Christian traditions have it that at the Last Supper, Judas, the disciple who betrayed Jesus, was the 13th to sit at the table, and that for this reason 13 is considered to carry a curse of sorts. However, the number 13 is not uniformly bad in the Judeo-Christian tradition. For example, the 13 attributes of God (also called the thirteen attributes of mercy) are enumerated in the Torah (Exodus 34: 6-7).^[1] Some modern Christian churches also use 13 attributes of God in sermons.^[2]

Triskaidekaphobia may have also affected the Vikings—it is believed that Loki in the Norse pantheon was the 13th god. More specifically, Loki was believed to have engineered the murder of Baldr, and was the 13th guest to arrive at the funeral. This is perhaps related to the superstition that if thirteen people gather, one of them will die in the following year. This was later Christianized in some traditions into saying that Satan was the 13th angel. Another Norse tradition involves the myth of Nornagest: when the uninvited Norns showed up at his birthday celebration—thus increasing the number of guests from ten to thirteen—the Norns cursed the infant by magically binding his lifespan to that of a mystic candle they presented to him.

The Mesopotamian Code of Hammurabi (ca. 1760 BC) omits 13 in its numbered list.^[3] This seems to indicate a superstition existed long before the Christian era.

See also Friday the 13th for information concerning the traditions and superstitions surrounding this supposedly unlucky day.

[edit] Examples

• The arrest and murder of the Knights Templar occurred on Friday October 13, 1307. This event is incorrectly said to be the origin of the supposed unluckiness of Friday the 13th.^{[citation needed]}

[edit] Buildings

• In the US and Canada, many tall buildings do not have a floor numbered 13 (see picture at right for an example).
  • In Buffalo, New York, the downtown city hall has no 13th floor. The number buttons in the elevators have 12, then P, then 14. The P floor is like the cellar, with cement walls and floors, and is a storage unit.
  • Many apartments and other buildings use M as the thirteenth floor (12, M, 14) because it is the thirteenth letter in the English alphabet. M can also stand for "mezzanine", regardless of the floor, though mezzanines are not usually thought of as being on upper floors like the thirteenth.
  • Some buildings replace the thirteenth floor with 12A (12, 12A, 14). The A differentiates the floor one level up from the twelfth.

• In Kerala (India), The Kerala High Court building has not assigned Number 13 to any of its courtrooms.

[edit] Aeronautics and space

• Some airport terminals do not have gates numbered 13.^{[citation needed]}

• On some passenger aircraft such as Continental Airlines, Air NewZealand, Alitalia, and Meridiana, there is no seating row numbered 13 (see picture at left for an example).

• The military of the United States traditionally skips 13 in its aircraft designation sequences, most visibly in the "F-for-Fighter" sequence, skipping from the YF-12 to the F-14 Tomcat.

• Apollo 13 was launched at 7:13 p.m. (19:13) UTC. The spacecraft was crippled by an explosion two days into its flight, on April 13, 1970. On another hand, its landing date and time contains number 7 — considered lucky in the Western culture: 17 April 1970, 18:07:41 UTC. Although it is also true that the number is not directly related to seven.

[edit] Miscellaneous

• The Atlanta Braves have banned the number 13 throughout their Major and Minor League systems.

• In Formula One and many other racing categories, no vehicle carries the number 13.^[4]

• The Upcoming Office Suite of Microsoft, skipped the major number 13 and went on to Office 14 instead. ^[5]

• The very last version of Mozilla Application Suite is 1.7.13^[6] (SeaMonkey is currently the continuation of Suite). The last patch version of Mozilla Firefox 1.5 is 1.5.0.12.^[7] While Mozilla Firefox 2.0 and SeaMonkey 1.1.x have published bugfix releases with 13^[8] and "X.1.3"^[9] in them, then these versions have been fairly quickly superseded with a comparatively small number of vulnerabilities fixed in their very next iterations, with just one serious issue for Mozilla Firefox 2.0.0.14 and three in SeaMonkey 1.1.4.

[edit] Similar phobias

• Tetraphobia, fear of the number 4 — (phonetically similar to 'death') in Korea, China, and Japan, as well as in many East-Asian and some Southeast-Asian countries, it's not uncommon for buildings (including offices, apartments, hotels) to lack floors with the number 4 and Finnish mobile phone manufacturer Nokia's 1xxx-9xxx series of mobile phones does not include any model numbers beginning with a 4. In Taiwan, tetraphobia is so common that there are no 4's or x4's for addresses, car number plates and almost everything numerically-related.
• 17 is Italy's unlucky number, because of in Roman digits 17 is written XVII, that could be rearranged to "VIXI", which in Latin means "I lived".
• Paraskavedekatriaphobia is the fear of Friday the 13th, which is considered to be a day of bad luck in a number of western cultures. In Romania, Greece and Spanish cultures, Tuesday the 13th is considered unlucky.
• In Australia, particularly in cricket, the number 87 is considered to be unlucky. When batting scores of 87, 187, 287 etc are considered unlucky scores. The thought is that Australia being 'down under' they are in some way reverse and 87 is 13 short of 100.

Leinster and Ireland Rugby fans also wear T-Shirts emblazoned with Triskaidekaphobia on the front and the number 13 on the back, to symbolise the fear other teams have of the Irish centre Brian O'Driscoll, who wears number 13.

[edit] References

• Lachenmeyer, Nathaniel (2004). 13: The Story of the World's Most Popular Superstition. New York: Four Walls Eight Windows. ISBN 1-56858-306-0.
• Havil, Julian (2007). Nonplussed: Mathematical Proof of Implausible Ideas (Hardcover). Princeton University Press, p.152. ISBN 0691120560. 
• Thea, Christopher: What A Dollar Has To Tell You -13 Gentle Reminders- / Lo Que Un Dólar Tiene Para Decirte -13 Sutiles Sugerencias-Outskirts Press (2004) ISBN 9781932672497

[edit] External links

• 'Unlucky' airline logo grounded BBC, 21 February 2007
• Triskaidekaphobia on MathWorld