New York, Nov 13 (THAINDIAN NEWS) Paraskevidekatriaphobia is the phobia of fear of the day when it is Friday also and the date is 13th. Friday the 13th occurs when the thirteenth day of a month falls on Friday, which superstition holds to be a day of good or extreme bad luck. In the Gregorian calendar, this day occurs at least once, but at the most three times in a year, consisting of 12 months. Any month’s 13th day will fall on a Friday if the month started on a day of relaxation i.e. on a Sunday. In the present year 2009, the phenomenon of ‘Friday the 13th’ happened thrice in the months of February, March, and November.

Gioachino Rossini in the late 1800s was the first person to chronicle the fear of ‘Friday the 13th’, which until then didn’t have any true cultural history of its origin. “He was surrounded to the last by admiring and affectionate friends; and if it be true that, like so many other Italians, he regarded Friday as an unlucky day, and thirteen as an unlucky number, it is remarkable that on Friday, the 13th of November, he died.”

There are conflicting studies about the risk of accidents on Friday 13th. It is supposed to be generally a day of bad luck, but ironically the Dutch Centre for Insurance Statistics (CVS) on June 12, 2008, stated that “fewer accidents and reports of fire and theft occur when the 13th of the month falls on a Friday than on other Fridays, because people are preventatively more careful or just stay home. Statistically speaking, driving is slightly safer on Friday 13th, at least in The Netherlands; in the last two years, Dutch insurers received reports of an average 7,800 traffic accidents each Friday.”