Welcome to the only Friday the 13th this year. This is considered an unlucky day, but I can’t imagine why. Like Sherlock Holmes, I’m “an omnivorous reader with a strangely retentive memory for trifles,” most of which are completely useless. I read somewhere that Cain supposedly killed Abel on Friday the 13th. This seems ridiculous, as the term Friday isn’t all that old. In The Da Vinci Code, Dan Brown claims our fear of Friday the 13th dates back to the 1300's, King Phillip IV of France and the Knights Templar. I’m not sure I buy that, either. Still, there are a lot of people with a fear of the number 13, a condition called triskaidekaphobia. It’s why you won’t find a thirteenth floor in most hotels. If you’re one of these people, I suppose you could stay in bed today. But you’d miss a perfectly good Friday; the day before the weekend. There’s nothing unlucky about that.
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