Beware Ides of March - really!

Like so many of the best-known sayings in English, this too is Shakespeare’s. Yet the warning could have foretold more than Caesar’s death in the Bard’s 1599 tragedy. March 15 hasn’t exactly been a good luck charm.

The Roman god Mars wouldn’t be too happy about that. The Ides of March (dates on the Roman calendar included an “ides” around the middle of every month) was the date of Mars’ big festival, and perhaps why Caesar and company wouldn’t have stayed home despite the warning.

Let’s take these infamous Ides of March in order:

44 B.C.E. — Julius Caesar stabbed 23 times, allegedly planned by 60 conspirators, as the Roman Senate watched (poetic license taken).

1360 — A two-day murder, rape, and pillage spree by French raiders begins in England. To be fair, English King Edward III was already doing the same in France.

1889 — Several warships, including three American, destroyed by a cyclone in Samoa. Samoans might consider this good luck, rather than bad. The ships were there to take over the island.

1917 — Russia’s Czar Nicholas abdicates his throne, paving the way for Bolshevik rule. They executed him and his family anyway.

1939 — Nazi Germany occupies, and effectively destroys, Czechoslovakia

Wait a sec, here. Mars was the god of war; on second thought maybe all of this is his doing?

1941 — The Great Plains blizzard hits North Dakota, Minnesota, and Canada, killing 66.

1952 — The world’s most voluminous rainfall in 24 hours — 73.62 inches — hits the small, French island of La Reunion.

1971 — CBS cancels Ed Sullivan, just after dumping Jackie Gleason and Red Skelton.

1988 — NASA reports the ozone layer is depleting three times faster than previously thought.

2003 — The World Health Organization issues a global health alert for a new disease called SARS — Sudden Acute Respiratory Syndrome. Remember those little white masks in news images?

I think I’ll skip the festival, stay inside, and beware the Ides of March today.

Sholeh Patrick is a wimpy homebody and columnist for the Hagadone News Network. Send reassurance to Sholeh@cdapress.com.