Some see Friday the 13th as an unlucky date on the Gregorian calendar, but to others it's just a classic horror movie from the 1980s. How did so many people come to regards Friday the 13th as superstitious? Well, the origins of the date's importance stem from a long held superstition by Gioachino Rossini, an Italian composer, born on Italy's Adriatic coast. Rossini's biographer, Henry Sutherland Edwards, referenced the irony surrounding the composer's death in his book.

"He [Rossini] was surrounded to the last by admiring friends; and if it be true that, like so many Italians, he regarded Fridays as an unlucky day and thirteen as an unlucky number, it is remarkable that one Friday 13th of November he died."

People being afraid of the number 13 is nothing new. In fact that superstition goes back to the days of the Mayans and Babylonians. Today in Asia many skyscrapers forgo the 13th floor altogether. But how did 13 get mixed up with Friday? Friday's are celebrated because it is the last day of school before the weekend in America. Why give such an amazing day a bad rap?

Well, not all cultures think Friday is so amazing, actually. Famed English Poet Geoffrey Chaucer wrote, "And on a Friday fell all this mischance," in the The Canterbury Tales way back in the 1300s. Jesus Christ's crucifixion is also commemorated on the Friday before Easter. Lest we forget Rebecca Black's less than average music video release titled "Friday."

Despite all the bad, creepy feelings associated with the number 13, it isn't any better or worse then any other numeric value. One such study mentioned in a Livescience.com article had this to say:

"No data exists, and will never exist, to confirm that the number 13 is an unlucky number," said Igor Radun of the Human Factors and Safety Behavior Group at the University of Helsinki's Institute of Behavioural Sciences in Finland. "There is no reason to believe that any number would be lucky or unlucky." 

A savvy marketer must have been behind the pairing of 13 and Friday. Case in point: the long running Friday the 13th movie franchise has earned a half a billion dollars at the box office.