Henry Ford, the father of the modern automobile industry, ‘refused to do business on Friday the 13th.’ Ford shared the same fear and caution with other stalwarts as Napoleon and President Franklin Roosevelt.

FDR was such a day 13th phobic that he altered his ‘own travel plans on any day of the week that landed on the 13th.’ According to Thomas Fernsler, a University of Delaware mathematician who has studied the number enough to earn the moniker ‘Dr. 13,’ “FDR would not depart on a (train) trip on the 13th.” One story goes that ‘the former president would order the train to leave the station before midnight on the 12th or after midnight on the morning of the 14th.’ “He avoided traveling to the beyond on the 13th,” joked Bob Clark, head archivist at the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum. FDR died on April 12, 1945. It was a Thursday.

According to Donald Dossey, a North Carolina behavioral scientist and author who named the fear of Friday the 13th as paraskavedekatriaphobia, people are afraid that ‘something tragic or ominous would happen.’ Some people are known to rearrange travel plans or delay surgery schedules to avoid any crucial activities to fall on the day.

Dossey adds that in Norse mythology, Loki ‘crashed a party of 12 gods at Valhalla.’ He says, “That’s really when the number 13 became unlucky.”

‘The phobia around the 13th is a cousin to triskaidekaphobia, the fear of the number 13. The supposedly unlucky number, triskaidekaphobes say, is the reason behind the explosion of Apollo 13, which took off at exactly 1:13 p.m. (1313 military time) on 4/11/70 (digits that add up to 13, naturally).’

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Via Yahoo! News-AP