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© St. Petersburg Times, published April 7, 2002
More than a few people noted recently that bad things such as . . . oh, I don't know . . . death really do happen in threes. They had irrefutable proof, they said, and it was right there in all the newspapers and in many other fine, reputable news sources. Like E!
Dudley Moore, Milton Berle and Billy Wilder. All dead. All within hours of each other on Wednesday, March 27.
Well, that had to be a coincidence.
(Cue Silence of the Lambs theme.)
Wrong again, Clarice. Wednesday is the third day of the work week. March is the third month. Two plus seven equals nine, and the square root of nine is. . . .
(Pause)
Okay. That last one's a stretch. The point is that there is evidence to support the terrible triad theory.
Look at the case of Charles Schulz, the creator of Peanuts, Tom Landry, the stone-faced former head coach of the Dallas Cowboys, and Jim Varney, the Silly Putty-faced "Hey Vern!" guy. They all died within hours of each other in February 2000.
Let's drop some more names:
Robert Mitchum, Jimmy Stewart and Charles Kuralt. Died between July 1-4, 1997.
Frank Sinatra, Phil Hartman and Barry Goldwater. Died between May 14-29, 1998.
Wilt Chamberlain, Payne Stewart and Walter Payton. Died between Oct. 10 and Nov. 1, 1999.
John Lee Hooker, Jack Lemmon and Carroll O'Connor. Died between June 21-27, 2001.
You better believe there's a pattern developing here.
If you're a celebrity and somebody else famous dies, check yourself into the nearest hospital immediately. And don't leave until the other two shoes -- or in this case celebrities -- drop.
But this story transcends the mere passing of famous people. What about Three Mile Island, which almost turned southeastern Pennsylvania into the toast of the nation?
Dale Earnhardt's number?
Tres.
The Bermuda triangle.
Arguably the most frightening proof that bad things happen in threes is the phrase "three on a match."
The phrase means bad luck and probably was coined by soldiers during the Crimean War. Keeping a match lit long enough to light three cigarettes gave enemy snipers time to see the light, aim and fire.
(And the tobacco companies are going, "See! People knew smoking could kill them 100 years ago. Leave us alone.")
This business about bad things coming in threes would make for a great made-for-TV movie (starring William Shatner) -- except that it's not true.
It only seems that way. We don't always consider all of the other, far less publicized events that happened during the same time.
If you were really well-informed, and very sensitive, you could convince yourself that bad things happen in 422s. Or 943s.
Tens of thousands of other people died during March 27-31 (hundreds in an earthquake in Afghanistan alone), and their deaths were just as tragic and untimely as Berle's, Moore's and Wilder's. We just didn't know those other people.
But we like order in our universe. Three is a small, manageable number, and saying bad things happen in threes somehow lets us contain the damage.
"Most people have a very poor understanding of the laws of probability," Dr. Michael Shermer wrote in his book Why People Believe Weird Things. "A gambler wins six in a row and thinks he's either on a hot streak or due to lose. Two people in a room of 30 people discover they have the same birthday and conclude that something mysterious is at work. You go to the phone to call your friend Bob. The phone rings. It's Bob. You think, 'Wow, what are the chances?'
"In fact, none of these coincidences are coincidences under the rules of probability. The gambler has predicted both possible outcomes, a fairly safe bet. The probability that two people in a room of 30 will have the same birthday is 71 percent. And you have forgotten how many times Bob did not call under such circumstances, or someone else called, or Bob called but you were not thinking of him, and so on.
"As the behavioral psychologist B.F. Skinner proved in the laboratory, the human mind seeks relationships between events and often finds them even when they are not present. Slot machines are based on Skinnerian principles of intermittent reinforcement.
"The dumb human, like the dumb rat, only needs an occasional payoff to keep pulling the handle. The mind will do the rest."
So why does the number three get so much attention? We say bad things happen in threes. We also say the third time is the charm. Time is separated in three parts (past, present and future), and so is the Holy Trinity.
And most of us have at some point in our lives heard of three cheers, tenors, wishes, Musketeers, guesses, yards and a cloud of dust, Men and a Baby, Days of the Condor, Amigos, Company, blind mice, Dog Night, bears, Stooges and wise men.
None of those things is bad. Except Three's Company. What were those people thinking? And those clothes!
And then there's Thomas Jefferson, one of the founders of our country. The distant relatives of Jefferson, who number about 30-million, point out that he was the original Mr. Three.
Jefferson was born on April 13, 1743, the third child and the third Thomas in his family. He wrote the Declaration of Independence at age 33, was the third member of Washington's cabinet, the third president of the American Philosophical Society and the third ambassador to France. He served for three years.
He ran for president in 1796, but lost by three electoral votes. (Feel better, Al?)
So he grew a beard, hung out with his wife and kids, ran again in 1800 and won. Making him our third president.
He died at age 83.
In eighteen-twenty-six.
Sorry, but bad things don't happen in threes. Or fives, fours or twos.
They just happen.
Times researchers Cathy Wos and Mary Mellstrom contributed to this report.