Mark the 15th of March
"Caesar: The ides of March are come.
Soothsayer: Aye, Caesar, but not gone."
- "Julius Caesar", Act III, Scene 1 (William Shakespeare)
A French raiding party pillaged southern England in 1360. A cyclone wrecked six warships in the harbor of Apia, Samoa in 1889. Czar Nicholas II abdicated his throne in 1917. Germany occupied Czechoslovakia in 1939. The most-voluminous rainfall was recorded in the island of Reunion in 1952. Five events that have nothing in common, except that they happened on March 15. Coincidental, but there was a history behind that date, albeit a sinister one.
The Ides of March is a day on the Roman calendar that corresponds on the fifteenth of March. Several religious observances marked that date, until in 44 B.C., when Julius Caesar was assassinated. He was proclaimed the King of Rome by the Roman Senate, which his opponent didn't want to happen. The deed would be a turning point in Roman history, a transition of sort. (It would be the demise of the Roman Republic, the advent of the Roman Empire.) Shakespeare dramatized this event, where the term "Ides of March" would mean betrayal or falling victim to one's fate. It would be one close to the heart, as in Julius Caesar's case, one of those who stabbed him was his son, Brutus.
This doesn't mean that March 15 is doomsday, as there are a number of significant events, positive ones, that took place during that day. Christopher Columbus returned to Spain (after his first trip to the Americas) in 1493. The First Meeting of The Council of Trent in 1545. Andrew Jackson, the seventh president of the United States, was born in 1767. South Carolina declared her independence on 1776. Maine became a state in 1820. Coincidence? No doubt about it. But there seemed to be unforeseen forces, which chose the fifteenth of March as an important day.
All of these seemed irrelevant in present time, except for the term's origin. It may pique's one's curiosity on the Bard's play, on Roman history, or even Italy. (The last one may be too expensive, going places in the Italian peninsula. Meandering the Internet may be a sensible option.)
Below were other significant happenings, all of which took place on the fifteenth of March:
Events
1672: Charles II of England issued the Royal Declaration of Indulgence
1864: American Civil War: The Red River Campaign
1874: France and Viet Nam's Nguyễn Dynasty signed the Second Treaty of Saigon
1906: Rolls Royce Limited was incorporated
1922: Fuad I became King of Egypt
1931: SS Viking exploded off Newfoundland
1961: South Africa withdrew from the Commonwealth of Nations
Birth
1684: Francesco Durante, Italian composer
1790: Ludwig Immanuel Magnus, German mathematician
1813: John Snow, English physician
1821: Johann Josef Loschmidt, Austrian physicist and chemist
1830: Élisée Reclus, French geographer
1838: Karl Davydov, Russian cellist, composer, and conductor
1866: Johan Vaaler, Norwegian inventor
Death
963: Romanos II, Byzantine Emperor
1575: Annibale Padovano, Italian organist and composer
1644: Countess Louise Juliana of Nassau
1891: Théodore de Banville, French poet
1937: H.P. Lovecraft, American author
1951: John S. Paraskevopoulos, Greek-South African astronomer
1975: Aristotle Onassis, Greek businessman