The Poor Fellow-Soldiers of Christ

On this date 700 years ago, it was a Friday, and in an act which makes it rank alongside December 7th 1941 as worthy of being called "a date which will live in infamy" King Philip of France moved against the Knights Templar and had as many of them as possible - including all their leaders - arrested on a trumped-up charge of heresy and blasphemy. Under torture, many of them confessed to the most amazing and obscene acts, and this gave Philip all the cause he needed to move to commandeer their vast wealth - which was the whole grubby purpose of the exercise. And this is the origin of the superstition that Friday the thirteenth is a day to be wary of.