On Friday, 13th November, 1970, the deadliest storm in history
devastated Bangladesh, with some estimates putting the number killed at as high
as a million. And that was just one of the disasters that happened on this feared date.
On Friday, 13th October, 1307, scores of members of the elite
military Knights Templar order, who had played a crucial role in the Crusades,
were arrested by Philip IV of France and accused of heresy, blasphemy and vice.
After the authorities extracted confessions by torture, the order was dissolved
in 1312.
On Friday, 13th November, 1972, a Fairchild FH-227D on
charter from the Uruguayan Air Force crashed in the Andes. 29 of the 45 people
on board died. It took more than two months to rescue the remaining 16, some of
whom had to survive by eating the dead. Their story was told in the feature film,
Alive.
Then on Friday, 13th January, 2012, the Italian cruise ship, Costa Concordia, (pictured) struck a rock and
capsized off a little Tuscan island with the loss of 32 lives. All nasty things
to happen, but statistically enough to brand Friday the 13th as any
worse than any other date? Well, funnily enough, a study in the British Medical Journal in 1993
apparently concluded that you might expect a higher than average rate of road
accidents on Friday, 13th.
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