A toast to usher in the month of March. Photo credit: iStock/mediaphotos iStock/luoman
It’s March—Happy New Year, ancient Romans!
Welcome to the third month of the year—or, if you were born before 150 B.C., the first! According to the oldest Roman calendars, one year was ten months long, beginning in March and ending in December. It may sound crazy, but you can still see traces of this old system in our modern calendar: because December was the tenth month, it was named for the number ten in Latin (decem), just like September was named for seven (septem). So, what about January and February? They were just two nameless months called ‘winter,’ proving that winter is literally so awful it doesn’t even deserve a spot on the calendar.
It’s the best month for basketball (but worst for productivity)
For civilians, on the other hand, March is known for one thing above all others: brackets. March Madness, as the NBA calls it, runs from March 15 to April 4th this year, and the safest bet you can make is that lots and lots of people will be distracted. One number-crunching firm predicted last year that American companies would lose $1.9 billion in wages paid to unproductive workers spending company time on betting pool priorities. How to recoup these costs? Go into gambling. According to the American Gaming Association, fans wagered more than $2 billion on March Madness brackets for the 2015 tournament. Each one of those 70-million-or-so brackets has a one in 9.2 quintillion (that’s 9 followed by 18 zeroes) chance of predicting the correct winners of every game. Good luck!
It’s also the best month for vasectomies
March Madness is a cherished time to reacquaint oneself with the couch, especially during the early tournament days when dozens of games unfold consecutively. In other words, it’s the perfect week to recover from a vasectomy!
According to doctors at the Cleveland Clinic, the number of vasectomies surge by 50 percent during the first week of March Madness. Why? Patients typically need ‘at least a day with ice’ to keep swelling down, says urologist Stephen Jones, MD, ‘So if they’re going to spend a whole day doing nothing, it’s not hard to figure out that they’d want to do it on a day they’d like to be sitting in front of the television.’
Smart clinics even offer incentives, like the Cape Cod urologists who offered a free pizza with every vasectomy in March 2012. That deal is certainly a cut above the rest!
March was named for war—and lives up to its title
So, if so many months were named for their Latin numbers, why wasn’t March called… unumber? Firstly, because that sounds ridiculous, and secondly, because the gods had dibs on it. March was actually named for the Latin Martius—aka Mars, the Roman God of war and a mythical ancestor of the Roman people via his wolf-suckling sons, Romulus and Remus. With the winter frosts melting and the ground becoming fertile for harvest again in the Northern hemisphere, March was historically the perfect month for both farmers to resume farming, and warriors to resume warring.
Incidentally, the Pentagon still seems to agree with this Roman tradition: with the exception of the recent War on Afghanistan, almost all major US-NATO led military operations since the invasion of Vietnam have begun in the month of March. You can see a full list here, but to name a few: Vietnam (initiated March 8, 1965), Iraq (March 20, 2003), and Libya (March 19, 2011) all follow the trend.
Beware The Ides of March unless you’re a cat
We’ve all heard it uttered, but what does ‘beware the Ides of March’ actually mean? On the Roman calendar, the midpoint of every month was known as the Ides. The Ides of March fell on March 15th. This day was supposed to correlate with the first full moon of the year (remember, winter didn’t count then) and marked by religious ceremonies, but thanks to Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar we know it for another reason. Supposedly, in 44 BC, a seer told Julius Caesar that his downfall would come no later than the Ides of March. Caesar ignored him, and when the fated day rolled around he joked with the seer, ‘The Ides of March have come.’ The seer replied, ‘aye, Caesar; but not gone.’ Caesar continued on to a senate meeting at the Theatre of Pompey, and was summarily murdered by as many as 60 conspirators. Ironically, the spot where Caesar was assassinated is protected in today’s Rome as a no-kill cat sanctuary.
So, if someone tells you ‘beware the Ides of March,’ they are probably just being a jerk, or letting you know they’ve read Shakespeare.
More memorable March dates:
March 1: As the saying goes, March comes ‘In like a lion, out like a lamb.’ That was certainly true on March 1st, 2007, when a detachment of 170 Swiss infantrymen accidentally invaded neighboring Liechtenstein when they got lost on a training mission.
March 2: NASA astronaut Scott Kelly will return from space after one full year, setting a new record for the longest uninterrupted trip to space.
March 20: The sun shines on the equator for the Vernal Equinox, giving us a near 50-50 split of day and night.
March 21: The 10th anniversary Twitter founder Jack Dorsey inaugurating the social media site with its profound first tweet: ‘just setting up my twttr’
March 27:Easter Sunday
Source: Reader’s Digest
Mind-blowing facts about the month of March
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