Reuters fact check
Reuters fact check
More than 35,000 social media users share posts claiming that within one week in March 2021 there will be a time change, a full moon and Friday the 13th. This assertion is untrue: March 2021 is the 13th Saturday, and the switch to daylight and full moon will take place on March 14 and 28, respectively, so not in the same week. These three events took place in the same week in March 2020 in the same week, not 2021.
“Next week has a time change, full moon AND Friday the 13th,” the reports say (here, here, here).
Superstitions exist around these events (here, here, here).
In 2021, March 13 is a Saturday, not a Friday (here, here); the clocks change on March 14 in Daylight Saving Time (DST) in the United States (timegov.boulder.nist.gov/, here); and there will be a full moon on March 28, two weeks after the clocks in the United States changed (here, here, here).
Not every country changes to DST, and different countries change to DST on different days: about 70 countries worldwide use DST (here, here) and while the switch to DST takes place on the second Sunday of March in the United States (here), for example, in the UK, the DST enters into force on the last Sunday in March (here). However, the full moon occurs on the same day around the world, as explained here by NASA, which means that March 13 and the full moon in no country in the world in 2021 can be in the same week.
In 2020, March 13 was a Friday (here), DST started on March 8 in the United States (here) and there was a full moon on March 9 (here), which means that these three events took place within one Sunday to Sunday week it (March 8 to March 15).
VERDICT
Untrue. In 2021, March 13 is a Saturday (not Friday), the full moon is on March 28 and in the United States the time changes on March 14. A time change, full moon and Friday 13 occurred in the same week in the United States in March 2020, from March 8 to March 15.
This article was produced by the Reuters Fact Check team. Read more about our fact-checking work here.