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Welcome to brain Stuff from How Stuff Works.

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Hey, brain Stuff, I'm Lauren Vogelbaum. And

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even if you don't believe in the power of superstition,

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you may sometimes find yourself knocking

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on wood, crossing your fingers, or wearing

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your lucky baseball cap during the World Series.

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Although we know scientifically that these

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things don't actually affect the outcome of

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anything, we still find them comforting.

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Study by behavioral scientists at the University

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of Chicago suggested that when people

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perform a physical action to avoid bad

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luck or harm, the ritual calms their

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mind. Superstitions

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span cultures, countries, and centuries.

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Every culture has its own unique set of superstitions.

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However, this raises an interesting question,

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are any superstitions common across

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cultures. Superstitions

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revolving around numbers are abundant worldwide.

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The specific numbers may vary. For example,

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the number thirteen is widely regarded

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to bring bad luck in Western cultures. There's

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even a name for is fear triski decaphobia.

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Other cultures have superstitions about different

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numbers. In China and Japan, it's the number

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four because the pronunciation is similar

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to words for death. The number

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nine in Japan is feared because its pronunciation

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sounds like a word for torture. Some

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Italians consider Friday the seventeenth to

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be bad luck because the Roman numeral

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for seventeen x v I I

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can be rearranged to v i x

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I VIXI, translated from Latin

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means my life is over. In

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many parts of the world, the appearance of a black

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cat is considered bad luck. Although

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this isn't true across all cultures, black

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cats still hold a place in global superstitions.

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In ancient Egypt, cats were worshiped as gods

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and kept in homes to bring prosperity.

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In Italy, if your cat's sneezes, good luck

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is on the way. In some parts of Europe,

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black cat crossing your path is good luck.

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However, in the New World, Puritans believed

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black cats were related to witches and therefore

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were considered a bad omen. The

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action of knocking on wood or tie chingwood

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for good luck goes back millennia and exists

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across the world. Some people's believed

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fairies or spirits lived inside trees,

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and they would knock on or touch the tree wants to

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request a wish, and one more time to express

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thanks, or they believed that the knocking

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would distract any evil spirits living there.

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Similar expressions to knock on wood exist

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today in Arabic, Brazilian, Finnish,

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German, Czechoslovakian, English,

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Greek, and Finnish. Other

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superstitions that cross cultures include crossing

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your fingers for good luck, four leaf clovers

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as lucky charms, and sneeze is causing

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some change in luck, be it good or bad.

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As human beings in an often chaotic

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world, we all try to control our destinies

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one knock, number or bless you at

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a time. Today's

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episode was written by Deborah Rnka and produced

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by Tyler Clang. For more on this and lots

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of other lucky topics, visit our home planet,

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pastaff works dot com