Why are there so many dates known as “Bloody Sunday” throughout history? On Wikipedia I count about 20. See Bloody Sunday - Wikipedia Far more than any other day of the week.
There are maybe 1 or 2 “Bloody” other days of the week (and I’ve never heard of anyone refer to 9-11 as “Bloody Tuesday”) but for some reason, Sunday seems to be the bloodiest day of the week by a factor of 10 or more. It looks like there are more Bloody Sundays than Bloody Mondays through Bloody Saturdays combined.
Are people more violent on Sundays for some reason? Many of the Bloody Sundays are based on disputes centered around religion, and obviously Sunday is a particularly religious day in Christianity… maybe that has something to do with it? Also, Bloody Sunday sounds a lot better than, say, Bloody Wednesday (I don’t think U2 would have made a song called “Wednesday Bloody Wednesday”). So, maybe when something violent happens on a Sunday we’re apt to call it “Bloody Sunday” whereas, if the same thing were to happen on one of the other six days of the week, we’d come up with some name other than Bloody Monday, Bloody Tuesday, etc.
WAG: A lot of the entries on that list seem to be centered around protests or demonstrations. Perhaps demonstrations have been held on Sundays because more people were off work and could attend?
Maybe, but that would apply equally as well, if not more, to Saturdays. People have more free time to bitch, whine, and protest on Saturdays because on Sundays many would be in church.
But on Saturday, people are out and about shopping, watching the game, visiting friends, down the pub etc.
On (Christian) Sundays, you have a a whole bunch of like minded people in very close quarters - ideal conditions to whip a mob into a frenzy or be marked out as targets.
The same thing happens today in the Middle East after Friday prayers.
It has nothing to do with anything occurring more often on Sunday. It’s just that it’s now become standard to refer to anything that does occur on Sunday that could in any sense be described as “bloody” as “Bloody Sunday.” I was just trying Google Ngram to see how far back this term went and there were people using it well back into the nineteenth century. It’s hard to be sure, since some of the references seem to be just uses of the adjective “bloody” and the noun “Sunday” together without seeming to be claiming that it was an obvious term.
I have a theory about this. I wonder if the term “Bloody Sunday” was used for Easter at one point, since it was the day that Christ died. I can’t find any uses of it in that way though. Perhaps since the term “bloody” was taboo in some varieties of English back then, it was a term that was spoken but not used in print. So then people began using “Bloody Sunday” for any event on a Sunday that could be thought of as being bloody. I think this would make a good question for Cecil.
It is only since around 1960 that Saturday has been a full day off. Before that, it was at best a half day. In my first job (in 1954) the work week consisted of 9-5 five days, with an hour off for lunch, and 9-1 on Saturday for a total of 39 hours. I worked in that job till 1958 and it remained the same. I am not sure when it changed.
The big shopping day in Philadelphia was Wednesday night when the department (and other) stores and supermarkets stayed open till 9.
Another multi-used descriptor-day is “Black Monday” – it’s applied to two different stock market crashes as well as to the day after the NFL season concludes, when many head coaches lose their jobs. (Google also produces “Black Monday” references to an 1886 riot in Trafalgar Square; I did no exhaustive searches.)
The three largest percentage declines in the Dow-Jones Industrial Average all occurred on Mondays (though the decline in December 1899 doesn’t show Google hits as “Black.”) Seven of the 15 largest percentage declines were all on a Monday. I think this is logical – the markets being closed on the weekend gives fear a chance to build up. (It doesn’t work the other way: only two of the 20 largest percentage increases in the DJIA occurred on a Monday.)
It’s even more off-topic, but nine of the 20 largest declines occurred in October. Another six of the 20 occurred in one of the three “-ember” months. One possible explanation for this phenomenon is that people pull money out of the market to finance back-to-school and Christmas shopping. (The Panic of 1907 also occurred in October; the worst day might have been a Thursday but it doesn’t make Wikipedia’s 20 Worst list: Although the total decline over a few weeks was still huge, John Pierpont Morgan stepped forth to avert utter collapse.)
I was wondering if there was a certain day of the week where violence is most likely to occur in the middle east. If someone were to go look at all the violent outbreaks in the middle east over the past, say, 50 years, would they find that most occurred/began on a Friday? I’ve often heard that Ramadan is the most violent time of the year in the middle east… more terrorist attacks, bombings, sunni vs shiite / shiite vs sunni, hungry fasting muslims vs infidels shoving food in their mouths, etc but I don’t know the exact stats on that. Makes sense though - religious fervor and empty stomachs.
I think religious people release a pheromone when they practice their religion, and this pheromone causes other people to feel religious and feel the urge to practice their religion. Christians are constantly exuding this pheromone on Sundays, and I think it causes people to become extremely religious on sundays. Extremely religious people are extremely dangerous people, thus you get ten times more infamous acts of violence on “Bloody” Sundays than any other day of the week. This is my theory, anyway. In the middle east perhaps it’s Bloody Fridays.
Wendell: I was clear in the first paragraph that I’ve heard (as in it’s just second hand info, hearsay, etc) ramadan is the most violent time of the year, I expressly stated I don’t have the stats. I could try to find them but i’m too lazy at the moment, especially since it’s a tangetial topic. As for the religious pheromones, i was just kidding (though it would explain a lot).
I think that much of it comes from Sunday being, oftentimes, in a Christian context, or in a nation of many Christians, called “The Lord’s Day”, and the pathos associated when people who are to be resting, and, ostensibly, celebrating a day of rest/worship. The juxtaposition of murder/killing/execution/death of run-of-the-mill people taking one day in seven off and being shot/etc… is more poignant. That’s why “Bloody Sunday” can be such a handy device. Even if most ‘Christians’ are watching football, etc… on a Sunday, there is some kind of assumed reverence for the day.
Any other day of the week, and, heck, people are expected to die doing mundane killings. M-F is business, and Saturday, everything is doable on a Saturday.
–A concerned and demonstrative Jew
ETA: I believe the disgusting and sometimes violent harassment of secular “non-modest” people who happen to walk in the Mea Shaarim neighborhood of Jerusalem do happen on Saturdays, exactly as claimed above. They’re home.