What people say
The unluckiest date in the calendar.Calendar · 3,040 searches a month
Friday the 13th
The unluckiest date in the calendar.
When it actually starts
How old is this one
First recorded
1907 — Thomas Lawson's novel of that name
That makes it
about 119 years old
Rank by age
36 oldest of 40 dated here
Category
Calendar
Searched
3,040 a month
Fear of 13 is old and fear of Friday is old, but the combination is not. No source before the 19th century treats Friday the 13th as unlucky, and the date entered popular culture through a 1907 novel about a stockbroker who deliberately crashes the market on that day.
Counted across 2000–2099
Every year has one. No year has more than three.
43 years
have 1 Friday the 13th — that is
43% of the century.
42 years
have 2 Friday the 13ths — that is
42% of the century.
15 years
have 3 Friday the 13ths — that is
15% of the century.
2026 has 3: February, March, November. The floor of one per year is forced by the calendar — any month starting on a Sunday puts the 13th on a Friday, and no arrangement of twelve months avoids that entirely.
There is a further oddity in the Gregorian calendar, which repeats on a 400-year cycle: across that cycle the 13th falls on a Friday slightly more often than on any other weekday. The most feared date is also the most common one.
What is going on
Every year contains at least one and at most three. That is arithmetic, not fate: the 13th falls on every weekday across the calendar, and the pattern repeats on a 400-year cycle in which the 13th lands on Friday slightly more often than on any other day.Where it applies. In Spain and Greece the unlucky day is Tuesday the 13th; in Italy it is Friday the 17th.
Other calendar superstitions
Recorded around the same time
Friday the 13th is the 36th oldest of the 40 dated superstitions here. Of those, 6 are younger than a century and 5 predate the common era.
First-recorded dates are the earliest documented appearance in written sources, not the earliest possible origin — an unrecorded practice can be older. How the dating works and where it is uncertain →