Friday the thirteenth ... again!

As Michael mentioned on his blog last month, 2015 blesses/curses us with three Fridays the Thirteenth -- February, March and November. If you care to know more than you possibly could about superstitions regarding the date and number, click on the link above.

But to give you something queer to ponder, on March 13, 1781 William Herschel discovered Uranus. That was a Tuesday, but the Spanish-speaking often consider Tuesday the Thirteenth to be unlucky. 

Herschel was German-born, though he migrated to Great Britain when he was nineteen. I imagine he considered March 13 very lucky for himself, but the planet he discovered was not to be named for him (although that had been suggested) nor for his patron King George III as Herschel proposed. (Yes, that King George III. Britain's loss of the American colonies at Yorktown was only eight months after the planetary discovery.) That sycophantic suggestion was unpopular outside the British dominions, and the name Uranus finally won general acceptance some seventy years after the discovery. During the interim, several names had been in use.

And, of course, it is bad luck that crude jokes are so easily made about the planet's name. Its luck and the jokes got even worse when the existence of rings around Uranus were confirmed in 1977.