A Moment In Time

The Ides of March Throughout History

BY » Mickey Dunaway

This month’s Moment in Time looks at The Ides of March. Whether fact or fiction, strange things seem to occur on this day. The Ides of March occurs on March 15th of each year, and in Imperial Rome, a week of festivals and feasting were kicked off by the ides. Rome did not count days of the month as we do. They structured their year and calendar by phases of the moon. Thus, the Ides of March signified the first full moon of their new year.

44 BC

Julius Caesar was murdered while in the Roman senate. Fifty-five years old, he was stabbed at least 23 times by a group of senators led by Marcus Junius Brutus and Gaius Cassius Longinus. At least 60 senators were in on the conspiracy to assassinate the dictator.

And you thought you would never use your sophomore English class!

1360

While English King Edward was on a pillaging campaign in France, a French raiding party engaged in a 48-hour spree of their own of rape, pillage, and murder in southern England. Then, King Edward interrupted his spree to launch reprisals on the French.

Tit for tat has always defined FrenchEnglish relations. In WWII, a French General who was to be transported to North Africa to lead the Free French against German General Rommel would not be secreted out of France on an English submarine. So General Eisenhower replaced the English submarine captain with an American, and all was resolved!

Russian Czar Nicholas and his family

1917

Russian Czar Nicholas abdicated his throne. The last of a 304-year-old dynasty, his abdication paved the way for Bolshevik rule. Nicholas and his family were executed in July 1918 by firing squad.

I visited Russia in 1991 when it was still the Soviet Union, and I remember being taken aback by the condition of the cities and the lives of the people and at the same time how prized were the treasures of Czarist Russia found in museums in Moscow and St. Petersburg.

1941

A deadly blizzard swept across North Dakota and Minnesota, killing 60 people who were routinely traveling in their cars in a light snow when a massive front roared through with hurricane-strength winds dropping temperatures 20 degrees in 15 minutes and leaving snowdrifts as high as seven feet.

It is still known as the most severe blizzard in modern U.S. history and occurred only a week away from the first day of spring.

2003

A mystery respiratory disease that affected people in China, Vietnam, Hong Kong, Singapore, and Canada was identified as a sudden acute respiratory disorder and given the acronym of SARS.

SARS never reached a pandemic state but was a precursor to COVID as it affected patients so suddenly. COVID, SARS, and MERS are all related, except that SARS and MERS had a much greater death rate, while COVID moved much faster in infecting people.