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.
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