A Baker's dozen

If you are at the table were thirteen, you deadly risk: one of you will die in the next year. Now it is difficult even to imagine how unconditionally possessed the minds of this strange superstition: in the mid-19th century, he was exposed to millions of courageous and educated people. In our days this bad luck almost completely forgotten, but replaced by others: some people never get out of the house on Friday that fell on the thirteenth number, and someone will be horrified at the prospect to take a seat in the thirteenth row of the cabin. Anyway, the reputation of the number 13 and today is worse than ever: it is still considered to be "unhappy", sinister and promises all sorts of nascuta. From it better to stay away. Where did the expression "Baker's dozen" why in American skyscrapers skip the thirteenth floor, but in the Chinese fourth and why for the Spanish expression "Friday the 13th" is devoid of any sinister sense - all this in a book by American writer and journalist Nathaniel Lachenmeyer.
Translated from English by A. Turov.