The subject of fortune and luck is widely debated – some people claim there’s no such thing, while others believe in it religiously, to the point where they attribute every fortunate and unfortunate event in their life to either good or bad luck.
Gala Bingo have conducted a survey that asks people around the country to divulge their lucky habits and it turns out that the city of Leicester has the highest number of residents who play the same lottery numbers week after week.
Leicester is a city with a rich sporting heritage, home to both Leicester Tigers Rugby Team and Leicester City Football Club. Neither team is top of their league, perhaps because – according to the survey – 66% of Leicester residents consider themselves to be unlucky.
Overall, it seems as though Leicester is a place where superstition rules: a quarter of the city’s population admit to being superstitious, with touching wood and not walking under ladders being the two most common superstitions. One in ten Leicester residents own a lucky charm and one third have a lucky number. The most interesting statistic of all is that 80% of the city’s population play the same lottery tickets every week, which is significant compared with the national average of 65%.
Throughout the rest of Britain, the majority of people said they would not walk under ladders 69%, 62% said they were superstitious about breaking mirrors and 55% said they thought it was bad luck to open an umbrella indoors. Other superstitions popular around the country include seeing a lone magpie (one for sorrow), placing new shoes on the table, spilling salt and stepping on the cracks in the pavement.
There are some superstitions you can understand the origins of; not walking underneath a ladder in the street is a sensible idea as the ladder could potentially fall down. There are other ideas about fortune, however, that go against all logic – what harm is a little spilled salt going to do?
