Part Five: Friday the 13th
It’s Friday the 13th, but are you superstitious enough for it to be affecting your day? Perhaps you think it’s just a load of nonsense and nothing to worry about? This study, published in the BMJ in 1993, seems to suggest that it really might be riskier than normal to leave the relative safety of your home on such days.
Whichever side you’re taking, I’m sure you’ll appreciate this image of a Japanese ivory figure, or netsuke. It’s in the form of the racoon dog Tanuki, commonly associated with gluttony and excessive drinking - but also a bringer of good luck. Let him (and his grossly enlarged scrotum) see you safely through the night into Saturday the 14th.
Al McCartney, Wellcome Images.
Image Credit: Science Museum, London / Wellcome Images
Copyrighted work available under Creative Commons by-nc-nd 2.0 UK: England & Wales, see http://images.wellcome.ac.uk/indexplus/page/Prices.html
