MARCH TRIVIA

Special Days this month include:

Saint David's Day March 1
Mothering Sunday March 2, 2008
Women's History Month & International Women's Day March 8
Daylight Saving Time March 9, 2008,
St. Patrick's Day March 17
Spring , or Vernal Equinox Marcha 20 2008
Easter Sunday March 23, 2008

Saint David and Saint David's Day

If you were lucky enough to be in Wales on March the first, you would find the country in a festive mood. Every self-respecting man, woman and child would be celebrating St. David's Day in one way or another. But who was St. David, and why is he so important to the Welsh? And just how is St. David's Day celebrated in Wales today?

Read the rest here:

March 1 is the 60th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar (61st in leap years). There are 305 days remaining.

March is the third month of the year in the Gregorian Calendar and one of seven Gregorian months with the length of 31 days.

March begins (astrologically, non-sidereal) with the sun in the sign of Pisces and ends in the sign of Aries. Astronomically speaking, the sun begins in the constellation of Aquarius and ends in the constellation of Pisces.

In ancient Rome, March was called Martius, so named after the Roman god of war and was considered a lucky time to begin a war. March was originally the first month of the Roman calendar because the winter months of January and February were unsuited for warfare, the essence of any Italic state. Julius Caesar's calendar reform in 45 BCE began the year on January 1. The tradition of starting the year in March continued in some countries for a long time. January 1 was only instituted as New Year's Day in France in 1564. Great Britain and her colonies continued to use March 25 until 1752, the same year they finally adopted the Gregorian calendar.

In ancient Hellenic civilization, March was called Anthesterion. In old Japanese calendar, the month is called Yayoi (??). In Finnish, the month is called maaliskuu, of obscure origin. Historical names for March include the Saxon term Lenctmonat, named for the equinox and eventual lengthening of days and the eventual namesake of Lent. The Saxons also called March Rhed-monat (for their goddess Rhedam); ancient Britons called it hyld-monath (meaning loud or stormy).

March was originally the first month of the year in the Roman calendar. The Romans named the month after Mars, the God of war. Later March became the third month.

The soothsayer's warning to Julius Caesar, "Beware the Ides of March," has forever imbued that date with a sense of foreboding. But in Roman times the expression "Ides of March" did not necessarily evoke a dark mood?it was simply the standard way of saying "March 15." Surely such a fanciful expression must signify something more than merely another day of the year? Not so. Even in Shakespeare's time, sixteen centuries later, audiences attending his play Julius Caesar wouldn't have blinked twice upon hearing the date called the Ides.

The term Ides comes from the earliest Roman calendar, which is said to have been devised by Romulus, the mythical founder of Rome. Whether it was Romulus or not, the inventor of this calendar had a penchant for complexity. The Roman calendar organized its months around three days, each of which served as a reference point for counting the other days:

Kalends (1st day of the month)
Nones (the 7th day in March, May, July, and October; the 5th in the other months)
Ides (the 15th day in March, May, July, and October; the 13th in the other months)
The remaining, unnamed days of the month were identified by counting backwards from the Kalends, Nones, or the Ides. For example, March 3 would be V Nones?5 days before the Nones (the Roman method of counting days was inclusive; in other words, the Nones would be counted as one of the 5 days).

March 1: Kalends; March 2: VI Nones; March 3: V Nones; March 4: IV Nones; March 5: III Nones; March 6: Pridie Nones (Latin for "on the day before"); March 7: Nones; March 15: Ides

Used in the first Roman calendar as well as in the Julian calendar (established by Julius Caesar in 45 B.C.E.) the confusing system of Kalends, Nones, and Ides continued to be used to varying degrees throughout the Middle Ages and into the Renaissance.

So, the Ides of March is just one of a dozen Ides that occur every month of the year. Kalends, the word from which calendar is derived, is another exotic-sounding term with a mundane meaning. Kalendrium means account book in Latin: Kalend, the first of the month, was in Roman times as it is now, the date on which bills are due.

Julius Caesar's bloody assassination on March 15, 44 B.C., forever marked March 15, or the Ides of March, as a day of infamy. It has fascinated scholars and writers ever since.

For ancient Romans living before that event, however, an ides was merely one of several common calendar terms used to mark monthly lunar events. The ides simply marked the appearance of the full moon.

But the Ides of March assumed a whole new identity after the events of 44 B.C. The phrase came to represent a specific day of abrupt change that set off a ripple of repercussions throughout Roman society and beyond.

The March Hare, often called the Mad March Hare, is a character from the tea party scene in Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. The main character Alice hypothesises, "The March Hare will be much the most interesting, and perhaps as this is May it won't be raving mad -- at least not so mad as it was in March."

"Mad as a March hare" was a common phrase in Carroll's time, and appears in John Heywood's collection of proverbs published in 1546. It is reported in The Annotated Alice by Martin Gardner that this is based more on popular belief than science. The saying refers to the hare's behaviour at the beginning of the long breeding season, which lasts from February to September, when unreceptive females use their forelegs to repel overenthusiastic males.

In American McGee's Alice, the March Hare had experiments performed on him by the Mad Hatter and is now a twisted form of machinery and animal and is very much in a tortured state by the time Alice (the player) arrives.