Beware the Ides of March 2022 Part I

Ides simply referred to first new moon, which usually fell between the thirteenth and fifteenth day of a given month. Smithsonian Magazine history buff Tom A. Frail posted March 4, 2010 issue url = https://www.smithsonianmag.com/ history/top-ten-reasons-to-beware- the-ides-of-march-8664107/ top ten reasons to beware the ides of march. The following events all occurred fifteenth of March across span of millenniums. One: Assassination of fifty five year old Julius Caesar, 44 Before Common Era Two thousand and sixty six years ago conspirators led by Marcus Junius Brutus stab dictator-for-life Julius Caesar to death before the Roman senate. Two: A Raid on Southern England, 1360 Anno Domini. A French raiding party begins a 48-hour spree of rape, pillage and murder in southern England. King Edward III interrupts his own pillaging spree in France to launch reprisals, writes historian Barbara Tuchman, “on discovering that the French could act as viciously in his realm as the English did in France.” Three: Samoan Cyclone, 1889 A cyclone wrecks six warships— three U.S., three German— in the harbor at Apia, Samoa, leaving more than 200 sailors dead. (On the other hand, the ships represented each nation’s show of force in a competition to see who would annex Samoan islands; the disaster averted a likely war.) Four: Czar Nicholas II abdicates his throne, 1917 Czar Nicholas II of Russia signs his abdication papers, ending a 304-year-old royal dynasty and ushering in Bolshevik rule. He and his family taken captive and, in July 1918, executed before a firing squad. Five: Germany Occupies Czechoslovakia, 1939 Just six months after Czechoslovak leaders ceded Sudetenland, Nazi troops seize provinces of Bohemia and Moravia, effectively wiping Czechoslovakia off the map. Six: A Deadly Blizzard on the Great Plains, 1941 A Saturday-night blizzard strikes northern Great Plains, leaving at least 60 people dead in North Dakota and Minnesota and six more in Manitoba and Saskatchewan. A light evening snow did not deter people from going out— “after all, Saturday night meant time for socializing,” Diane Boit of Hendrum, Minnesota, would recall—but “suddenly the wind switched, and a rumbling sound could be heard as 60 mile-an-hour winds swept down out of the north.” Seven: World Record Rainfall, 1952 Rain falls on Indian Ocean island of La Réunion—and keeps falling, hard enough to register world’s most voluminous 24-hour rainfall: 73.62 inches. Eight: CBS Cancels the “Ed Sullivan Show,” 1971 Word leaks that CBS-TV cancelled “The Ed Sullivan Show” after 23 years on the network, which also dumped Red Skelton and Jackie Gleason in the preceding month. A generation mourns. Nine: Disappearing Ozone Layer, 1988 NASA reports the ozone layer over Northern Hemisphere depleted three times faster than predicted.