‘Welcome to Friday the 13th’: Was it really an unlucky day for America? Watch DHS Secretary's startling remark

“Welcome to Friday the 13th.” That was how US Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin opened his press conference on Friday, November 13, after a nationwide FAA ground stop upended air travel for thousands of passengers over a possible “telecommunications outage.”

After jokingly starting his statement, Mullin rejected the speculation that the FAA ground spot may be somehow linked to the ongoing Microsoft outage.

“There is no connection between this and Microsoft,” he said, adding that officials had found no evidence of a cyberattack. “So far, what we’ve seen, there is actually no cyberattack.”



Other than today’s date, when the FAA, in a rare scenario, declared a ground stop, some consider the number 13 the unluckiest in Western culture. And thousands of passengers were already affected before the agency lifted the restriction.

The flight disruption was only one of several unusual events on Friday the 13th.

Microsoft's global Microsoft 365 outage, which affected Outlook, Teams and Copilot, entered its second day, wrecking workplaces that use their services. Even ChatGPT users for some time reported problems with services connecting to Microsoft 365.

Amtrak, the national passenger railroad corporation of the country, reported unusually high traffic on its website and phone services as stranded air passengers scrambled to book train tickets.

Also Read: Amtrak’s booking experiences outages, glitches amid increased demand as passengers look for alternatives after FAA ground stop

The National Weather Service (NWS) also initially warned of nationwide internet and communications problems that could affect access to some weather products. It later clarified that its radars were operating normally.

Cruise ship collision adds to Friday's unusual events

In another incident on Friday, a cruise ship was struck by a tanker in the Mississippi River near New Orleans. According to the BBC, around 130 people aboard the American Heritage were rescued after it collided with the cargo vessel Atlantic Asphalt. CNN, citing New Orleans Mayor Helena Moreno, reported that there were 180 to 190 passengers at that time.

Everyone was accounted for, while 32 people were taken to local hospitals with non-critical injuries, Moreno said Officials described the rescue as a “miracle on the Mississippi,” the BBC quoted.

Why Friday, November 13, had an unusual doomsday prediction

The unusual twist to the date, November 13, 2026, had been identified as a potential doomsday in a 1960 paper published in the journal Science. Titled “Doomsday: Friday, 13 November, A.D. 2026,” the paper by Heinz von Foerster and his colleagues predicted that unchecked exponential population growth could eventually leave humanity being “squeezed to death”.

Also Read: ‘Doomsday: Friday, November 13, 2026’: Why a 1960 Science journal paper predicted humanity would be ‘squeezed to death’

The prediction, however, did not materialize. Population growth rates slowed significantly over subsequent decades, and the original forecast fell behind actual population trends from around 1993.