According to folklorists, there is no written evidence for a "Friday the 13th" superstition before the 19th century .. the earliest known documented reference in english occurs in Henry Sutherland Edwards' 1869 biography of Gioachino Rossini, who died on a Friday 13th .. Edwards states about Rossini.. "he was surrounded to the last by admiring friends; and if it be true that, like so many Italians, he regarded Fridays as an unlucky day and thirteen as an unlucky number, it is remarkable that one Friday 13th of November he died"