In most large cities in the United States, many building don't have 13th floors. In Japan, they don't have 4th floors, because the word for four sounds similar to the word for DEATH! Some say that the modern basis for Friday the 13th phobia dates back to Friday, October 13, 1307.
On this date, Pope Clement in conjunction with the King Philip of France secretly ordered the mass arrest of all the Knights Templar in France. The Templars were terminated with extreme prejudice (burned to a crisp) for apostasy, idolatry, heresy, "obscene rituals" and homosexuality, corruption and fraud, and secrecy, never again to hold the power that they had held for so long.
Nathaniel Lachenmeyer, author of 13: The Story of the World's Most Popular Superstition, suggests in his book that references to Friday the 13th were practically nonexistent before 1907; the popularity of the superstition must come from the publication of Thomas W. Lawson's successful novel (of it's day,) Friday, the Thirteenth. In the novel, a stock broker takes advantage of the superstition to create a Wall Street panic on Friday the 13th.
If it gives you some comfort, there is the only more Friday the 13th this year.
On this date in 1989, this day officially became knowm as Uncle Sam Day.
The day commemorates Sam Wilson, born on September 13, 1766, (a meatpacker from New York,) the man behind the iconic image and fascinating nickname for the United States government.
September 13, 1965 -
The Beatles released the single Yesterday in the US on this date (Act Naturally was on the B side.)
This was the first Beatles song to capture a mass adult market. Most of their fans were young people to this point, but this song gave the band a great deal of credibility among the older crowd. It also became one of their "Muzak" classics, as companies recorded instrumental versions as soothing background noise for shopping centers and elevators. Another Beatles song that lived on in this form is Here Comes The Sun.
September 13, 1965 -
Ben Gazzara's series about a wealthy, successful lawyer, Paul Bryan, who quits his practice after learning he has a terminal illness, Run for Your Life, premiered on NBC-TV on this date.
Some sources claim that Ben Gazzara's character suffered from leukemia. However, in a 1998 interview conducted by television book writer Ed Robinson, Executive Producer Roy Huggins indicated that the affliction from which Paul Bryan suffered was never mentioned on the program and does not exist.
September 13, 1969 -
Scooby-Doo, Where Are You! made its CBS network debut on this date.
Shaggy is the only character (apart from Scooby himself) to be in every incarnation of the series.
September 13, 1974 -
The science fiction/ horror series Kolchak: The Night Stalker premiered on ABC-TV on this date.
Darren McGavin is often incorrectly considered to be, and listed in many official references guides, as the show's Executive Producer. In fact, he never held the position, although he unofficially assumed many of the duties. This put him at odds with Paul Playdon and then Cy Chermak, the official producers appointed by Universal.
September 13, 1974 -
The first regularly scheduled episode of The Rockford Files, starring James Garner, premiered on NBC-TV on this date.
Co-writer/co-producer David Chase would go on afterwards to create another famous series, The Sopranos . As a little tribute to this series, a scene in a first season episode of The Sopranos is set in a retirement home where the residents are watching television. Though the picture can't be seen, the theme music for The Rockford Files can be heard.
September 13, 1977 -
The nighttime parody of daytime soap operas, Soap, starring Jimmy Baio, Rebecca Balding, Roscoe Lee Browne, John Byner, Diana Canova, Billy Crystal, Cathryn Damon, Nancy Dolman, Robert Guillaume, and Katherine Helmond premiered on ABC TV, on this date.
Soap was actually the working title for the show, while the producers tried to come up with a better name, and was used all through pre-production. No better name was ever decided upon, so Soap became the formal title when the show went into production.
September 13, 1979 -
A spin-off of the series Soap, Benson, starring Robert Guillaume, James Noble, Inga Swenson, and Missy Gold premiered on ABC TV, on this date.
The series was on the air seven years, longer than the show from which it was spun off, Soap, which lasted four years.
September 13, 1980 -
The musical variety show, Solid Gold, featuring Dionne Warwick and the Solid Gold dancers, premiered in syndication on this date.
Rumor has it that Wayland Flowers, whose scene-stealing puppet, Madame, was a recurring guest, was so high on cocaine that he frequently had to be carried on and off the set. Theme composer/musical director Michael K. Miller disagreed, "I was at all the tapings of Solid Gold (and a lot of the Madame's Place tapings too) and I never once witnessed him as being anything other than fully focused and healthy."
September 13, 1986 -
CBS allowed a strange, pale man, in an ill-fitting suit to come into their viewers homes (to scream really loud) when Pee-Wee's Playhouse premiered on this date.
Throughout the entire series run, the closing credits have never credited Paul Reubens as Peewee Herman, but instead would display the other cast & guest stars first and then would display "and Peewee Herman as Himself".
September 13, 1993 -
Coco, a Simpson TV writer, was snatched from obscurity to replace David Letterman on the newly rebranded Late Night with Conan O'Brien on NBC-TV on this date.
According to O'Brien, the show was cancelled during the first season, but NBC realized that they had nothing to replace it. NBC renewed the show a few weeks at a time.
September 13, 1996 -
The family comedy based on the stand-up routines of Ray Romano, Everybody Loves Raymond, starring Ray Romano, Patricia Heaton, Brad Garrett, Doris Roberts and Peter Boyle, premiered on CBS-TV on this date.
The three Barone children, Ally, Geoffrey, and Michael, were played by real-life siblings Madylin Sweeten, Sawyer Sweeten, and Sullivan Sweeten.
September 13, 2000 -
Cameron Crowe's autobiographic film, Almost Famous, was released on this date.
The film is director Cameron Crowe's semi-autobiographical account of life as a young Rolling Stone reporter. The actual group Crowe first toured with was The Allman Brothers Band. Gregg Allman distrusted him, and kept asking if he was a narc. Crowe was in a near-fatal plane crash while traveling with The Who. The character of Russell Hammond is partially based on Glenn Frey of The Eagles.
Another unimportant moment in history
Today in History:
September 13, 1848 -
A 13-pound tamping iron is blown through the head of railroad construction foreman Phineas P. Gage, entering beneath the left cheekbone and exiting the top of his head. The metal bar landed 30 yards away, taking with it much of his left frontal lobe.
Gage never loses consciousness, even while the doctors examine his wound. Two months later, he was well enough to return home and resume an active life of work and travel.
The steel rod, along with a cast of Gage's head, and his skull, are now on display at Harvard Medical School's Warren Anatomical Museum.
September 13, 1899 -
Henry M. Bliss was coming home from work today and never came back. Mr. Bliss was enjoying his ride home near Central Park and 74th Street, when he stepped out of a streetcar and into the street and was struck by a taxicab. Bliss was rushed to a hospital but died from his injuries the next morning.
The cab driver Arthur Smith was arrested and charged with manslaughter. The charges were dropped after it was determined that Bliss’ death was unintentional. Bliss became the first pedestrian to be killed by an automobile in the United States.
On September 13, 1999, a hundred years to the day, Citystreets unveiled a historical marker at the site of the first "American Pedestrian Fatality".
September 13, 1916 -
Give the people what they want ....
Mary the circus elephant was publicly executed in the Erwin, Tennessee rail-yard, after killing a drifter named Walter "Red" Eldridge the previous day.
The five-ton animal was hanged from a derrick car in front of 3,000 onlookers, and left hanging for half an hour.
(Please folks, I am not encouraging the execution of any animal, especially mammals weighing over five tons.)
September 13, 1916 -
Roald Dahl was born on this date in Llandaff, South Wales.
He was sent off to private boarding schools as a kid, which he hated except for the chocolates, Cadbury chocolates. The Cadbury chocolate company had chosen his school as a focus group for new candies they were developing. Every so often, a plain gray cardboard box was issued to each child, filled with eleven chocolate bars. It was the children's task to rate the candy, and Dahl took his job very seriously. About one of the sample candy bars, he wrote, "Too subtle for the common palate." He later said that the experience got him thinking about candy as something manufactured in a factory, and he spent a lot of time imagining what a candy factory might be like.
Today, he's best known for his children's book Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and for the fact he ran off with his children's nanny after his wife, the actress Patricia Neal, recovered from a stroke. But even more interesting, a recently published biography of Dahl, purports that he was a spy for the British government during World War II, paid to sleep with wealthy U. S. women to gain information for the British government.
And you thought only 007 had a way with women.
September 13, 1940 -
The German Luftwaffe directly targeted Buckingham Palace during 'the Blitz' and dropped a bomb into the palace courtyard and detonated on impact on this date. The force of the explosion blew out all the inside windows of the palace.
No one was seriously hurt and had the unintended effect of bonding the Royal Family with the people of England, as the Windsors did not evacuate London.
Queen Elizabeth (the queen's mother) narrowly averted serious injury.
When asked about the incident said, "I am glad we have been bombed….it makes me feel like I can look the [heavily bombed] East End in the face."
September 13, 1948 -
Republican Margaret Chase Smith of Maine was elected to the U.S. Senate, on this date, becoming the first woman to serve in both houses of Congress.
A moderate Republican, she was among the first to criticize the tactics of Joseph McCarthy in her 1950 speech, "Declaration of Conscience". Smith was a candidate for the Republican presidential nomination in the 1964 election; she was the first woman to be placed in nomination for the presidency at a major party's convention.
September 13, 1956 -
IBM introduced the worlds first production hard disk the "IBM 305", on this date, which stored five megabytes of data.
To put this in perspective a modern USB drive stores 2 gig or more (400 times more than the first hard drive just 50 years ago) and fits on a keychain , the first IBM weighed over a ton and needed a fork lift to move it.
September 13, 2001 -
While the World Trade Center and the Pentagon were still smoldering, President Bush asked Congress for powers to wage war, following the 9/11 attack, against an unidentified enemy.
And so it goes
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