Thanks everyone & keep them coming.

Wolfgang - didn't find anything particularly interesting with a quick web search - and of course, I didn't keep notes as to which pages I visited. I just did a Google search on Friday & 13 as well as the two words in my thread's title.

Here's some of the better things:

13 is a Fibonacci number. You generate Fibonacci numbers by adding together the two previous numbers in the sequence: 1 + 1 = 2, 1 + 2 = 3, 2 + 3 = 5, 3 + 5 = 8, 5 + 8 = 13 - and so on. Fibonacci numbers are named after Leonardo Fibonacci of Pisa who lived in 13th century Italy. His description of the numbers appears in a book called Liber Abaci and makes use of an example about the rate at which rabbits breed. The numbers have so many interesting mathematical properties that they have become quite famous.

Past disasters linked to the number 13 hardly help triskaidekaphobics overcome their affliction. The most famous is the Apollo 13 mission, launched on April 11, 1970 (the sum of 4, 11 and 70 equals 85 - which when added together comes to 13), from Pad 39 (three times 13) at 13:13 local time, and struck by an explosion on April 13.

Napoleon, J. Paul Getty, Herbert Hoover and Franklin Delano Roosevelt were all practicing triskaidekaphobes. FDR might have been our most superstitious president. He was scared to death of the number 13. When lunch or dinner parties numbered 13, he would ask his secretary to join the guests to make an even 14.

Roosevelt's fears extended far beyond the table, affecting even his travel arrangements. If he was going to travel on the 13th, often he would make the conductor leave at 11:50 p.m. on the 12th or wait until the early hours of the 14th. He died on Thursday, April 12, 1945 and it was almost as if he said, I'm not leaving on the 13th.

A recent article shows that a new superstition has been 'invented' involving the number 13. Now some serial killers has been bunched under the 13 letter group, and it goes something like this: Jack the Ripper, John Wayne Gacy, Charles Manson, Jeffrey Dahmer, Theodore (Ted) Bundy

Every year contains at least one Friday the 13th. The most number of these days that can occur in any one calendar year is three; the last time that happened was 1998, and the next will be 2009. Way back when, a decree was issued in French Lick Springs, Indiana that every Friday the 13th all local black cats had to wear bells.

The Farmer's Almanac says that the USA is full of lucky 13's. For instance, George Washington laid the cornerstone for the White House on the 13th. The cornerstone of the Supreme Court was also laid on the 13th. There were 13 original colonies and the Great Seal of the United States still contains 13 stars, 13 bars and an eagle with 13 tail feathers holding 13 arrows and 13 olive branches. And 'E Pluribus Unum', the motto of the U.S., Latin for 'out of many, one' also has 13 letters.

pax yall