Community Corner
Five Things for January 13
Does Friday the 13th really bring bad luck? Here's some examples to consider.
Today is Friday the 13th. The fear of this day is called friggatriskaidekaphobia. While it is purely superstition, some bad and strange things have happened on this day, according to LiveScience.com.
- Sept. 13, 1940: Five German bombs hit Buckingham Palace and destroyed the Palace Chapel, as part of Hitler's strategic "Blitz" bombing campaign.
- Nov. 13, 1970: A huge South Asian storm killed an estimated 300,000 people in Chittagong, Bangladesh, and create floods that killed as many as 1 million in the Ganges delta.
- Jan. 13, 1989: The "Friday the 13th virus" infected hundreds of IBM computers across Great Britain, wiping out program files and causing considerable anxiety at a time when large-scale computer viruses were a relatively new threat.
- Oct. 13, 1989: The Dow Jones Industrial Average underwent the second largest drop it had ever experienced at that time. Nicknamed the Friday-the-13th mini-crash, the Dow dropped 190.58 points that day.
- Aug. 13, 1999: Alfred Hitchcock's 100th birthday would have been on Friday the 13th.
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