It's Friday the 13th, so if you want to stay safe... avoid the sequels. You're
watching What's Trending, I'm Shira Lazar. Be sure to like this video and subscribe
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Nobody really knows for sure why Friday the
13th is considered an unlucky day. Some people think it's in reference to the
Last Supper which had 13 attendees right before Jesus was crucified on Good
Friday. On a Friday? Really? What a bummer day to be crucified. Before the weekend
and everything? Damn. Other people think it goes back to Friday, October 13th, 1307
when King Philip the Fourth of France ordered the arrest of hundreds of
members of the Catholic Order known as the Knight's Templar. However, I got it
starts, Friday the 13th still gives us all the chills. And even though,
statistically, bad luck is no more likely to find you on Friday the... Oh my God it must be
Friday the 13th. I can't speak! And even though, statistically, misfortune is no
more likely to find you on Friday the 13th than any other day,
enough creepy and unlucky things have happened on that day to freak us the f*ck out.
So here are The Creepiest Things Ever To Happen on Friday the 13th! The Final Jump
of Sam Patch. Sam Patch became a nationally recognized daredevil in 1829
when on October 17th, he successfully survived jumping off a cliff near
Niagara Falls to the delight of spectators. He tried the same stunt again
only three weeks later from Genesee Falls on Friday, November 6 and it was
also a success. That jump, however, raised less money than he anticipated, so Patch
decided to do it again from a higher platform. That attempt came on Friday the
13th of November 1829, and it didn't go so well.
Patch apparently showed up half drunk and was unable to keep his typical
feet-first form. He hit the water with a thud and his frozen body was discovered
in the thawing ice the following spring. The unluckiest part of Patch's story,
though, is how he may now be forever immortalized through comedian Nick
Rutherford's retelling of the story on drunk history. So Sam Patch gets a bear.
That's... that's what you did back then. If you got to a certain level success,
you got a bear. What should we call the bear? There's no record of a name
that Sam gave his bear. The Murder of Kitty Genovese. On Friday the 13th of
March 1964, 28-year-old Kitty Genovese was murdered outside her home
in New York City. Kitty Genovese a 28-year-old bar manager
is walking home in the night. She's in front of her two-story tudor building
across from the stately Mowbray apartment house when she sees the man
with a knife. For 30 minutes, Walter Moseley raped and stabbed her all within
earshot of those in her Queens neighborhood. A story published two weeks
later in the New York Times alleged that three dozen people who heard her cries
for help did nothing. And Kitty's murder has long been promoted as a prime
example of the Bystander Effect, the psychological phenomenon where
individuals fail to act because they assume someone else has already done so.
Though later analysis found that many of the witnesses to Genovese's murder did
call the police, it is still frequently regarded as a modern example of American
apathy to one's neighbors. So if the police were called on that Friday the
13th, why did no one respond? In another unfortunate reminder of those times, it
appears the police thought the calls were about domestic disputes and
determined that they weren't needed. The Day of Plane Crashes. Again, even though
there's no evidence that Friday the 13th is a particularly dangerous day to fly,
that didn't matter on Friday the 13th of October 1972 when two separate planes
crashed 9,000 miles apart. The first crash was Aeroflot flight 217, travelling
from Paris to Moscow. Shortly before landing the Moscow Tower lost contact
with the aircraft and the plane crashed killing all 174 people on board. An
investigation was unable to determine what precipitated the crash and the
official cause is "psycho -physiological incapacitation of the crew for reasons
unknown." At the time, it was the deadliest plane crash in history. And that's not
even the most famous plane crash that day
because also on October 13, 1972, Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571, a charter
plane carrying a rugby union team and their families crashed in the remote
Andes Mountains on the border between Chile and Argentina. That plane is so
famous because the survivors not knowing when or if they would be rescued
resorted to eating the bodies of dead passengers preserved in the snow in
order to survive. The story is also the basis for the Frank Marshall film, Alive,
Eventually, the survivors were rescued over two months after the crash.
And, finally - Lightning Strike Boy. In one of the weirdest coincidences in Friday
the 13th history, a 13-year-old boy in Lowestoft, England was struck by
lightning on Friday the 13th of August 2010. What made it even weirder is the
ambulance team treated him at exactly 13:13 military time. So I guess that means
the lightning bolt hit him at 106 or something. Interestingly enough, that boy
was at a busy event where there was heavy rain and three people were struck
by lightning there in a span of 20 minutes. Plus, all three of them were
holding umbrellas. So I guess it's true what they say - beware of the umbrella. His
luck wasn't that bad, though. The boy was taken to a hospital and made a full
recovery. So what's the unluckiest thing that's ever happened to you on Friday
the 13th? Let us know in the comments below and be sure to like and subscribe
for more of What's Trending if you dare.