March 15th is

Everything You Think Is Wrong Day

Ides of March

Kick Butts Day *

Peanut Lovers’ Day

Pears Helene Day

Shoe the World Day *

World Consumer Rights Day *

International Day Against Seal Slaughter
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MORE! Lida Heymann, Sarah Bernhardt and Ruth Bader Ginsburg, click

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WORLD FESTIVALS AND NATIONAL HOLIDAYS

Belarus – Constitution Day

Hungary – 1848 Revolution Day

Italy – Padova:
Cinema Silea Film Festival

Japan – Komaki: Hōnen Matsuri
(giant phallus harvest festival)

Liberia – Joseph Jenkins Roberts Day
(first Liberian President)

Palau – Youth Day

United States – Cleveland OH:
Buzzard Day *
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On This Day in HISTORY

44 BC – Julius Caesar, ‘dictator in perpetuity’ at the end of the Roman Republic, is stabbed to death by Marcus Junius Brutus, Gaius Cassius Longinus, Decimus Junius Brutus, and several other Roman senators on the Ides of March, causing civil wars which hasten the end of the Republic 

280 – Sun Hao, last emperor of the state of Eastern Wu during the Three Kingdoms period, surrenders to Sima Yan, first emperor of the Jin dynasty, which unifies China, under Sima Yan, who then wallows in extravagance and self-indulgence, reportedly keeping 10,000 concubines

493 – Odoacer, first non-Roman King of Italy after the Western Roman Empire falls, is killed by Theoderic, king of the Ostrogoths, while the two kings are feasting together; the next day, only a few of  Odoacer’s family and his followers escape being slain

1614 – Franciscus Sylvius born, physician/physiologist/anatomist, and chemist; pioneer in exploring chemical action as a cause of disease

1672 – Charles II issues the Royal Declaration of Indulgence, attempting to
extend religious liberty to Protestant nonconformists and Roman Catholics,
by suspending the Penal Laws, which had be enacted between 1661 and 1665.
These acts 1) Required all municipal officials to take Anglican communion; 2) Made
the Book of Common Prayer compulsory in religious services – over two thousand clergy refused, and were forced to resign their livings; 3) Forbade conventicles (meetings for unauthorized worship) by more than five people not of the same household; and 4) prohibited nonconformist ministers from coming within five miles of incorporated towns, or the place of their former livings, and forbid them to teach in schools

1778 – Commanding two frigates, French naval officer Jean-François de Galaup, comte de La Pérouse, sails east from Botany Bay on the last lap of his circumnavigation

1820 – Maine is admitted as the 23rd state of the Union

1838 – Alice Cunningham Fletcher born, American ethnologist, studies and documents Native American culture

1858 – Liberty Hyde Bailey born, American horticulturist, botanist and author; cofounder of the American Society for Horticultural Science; collects and classifies thousands of plants

1864 – Johan Halvorsen born, Norwegian composer, conductor and violinist

1868 – Lida Gustava Heymann born, German women’s rights activist, with her partner Anita Augspurg co-founds the movement to abolish prostitution in Germany, the Society for Women’s Suffrage, the newspaper Women in the State, a co-educational high school and professional associations for women

1875 – NY’s Catholic Archbishop, John McCloskey, is named the first U.S. Cardinal

1880 – Hattie Carnegie born in Austria, American fashion designer and entrepreneur, both couture and ready-to-wear lines, designer of Women’s Army Corps uniform, recipient of the Congressional Medal of Freedom for the WAC uniform design and other charitable and patriotic contributions

1892 – Jesse W. Reno patents the Reno Inclined Elevator, the first escalator

1900 – In Paris, Sarah Bernhardt stars in the premiere of Edmond Rostand’s L’Aiglon

1902 – 10,000 Boston MA freight handlers go back to work after a weeklong strike.

1903 – The British conquer Nigeria

1905 – Margaret Webster, theatre actress, director and producer with citizenship and successful careers in both the UK and the US, famous for Shakespearean productions, including Othello (1943) with Paul Robeson and Jose Ferrer

1907 – In Finland, women win their first seats in the Finnish Parliament

1909 – Italy proposes a European conference on the Balkans

1910 – Otto Kahn offers $500,000 for a portrait by Dutch artist Frans Hals, outbidding J.P. Morgan

1913 – U.S. President Woodrow Wilson meets with 100 reporters, the first formal presidential news conference

1916 – President Wilson sends 12,000 troops, under General Pershing, over the border of Mexico to pursue bandit Pancho Villa, but the mission fails

1916 – Harry James born, American trumpeter and bandleader

1919 – The American Legion is founded in Paris

1921 – Madelyn Pugh born, American screenwriter and producer, co-head writer with Bob Carroll of I Love Lucy; pre-tests stunts for Lucille Ball: “The worst one was trying out a unicycle. I ran into a wall and hit my head. We decided it was too dangerous for Lucy.”

1922 – Fuad I assumes the title of king of Egypt after the country gains nominal independence from Britain

1930 – Wilma L. Vaught born, Brigadier General in U.S. Air Force, first woman to deploy with an Air Force bomber unit, inductee into National Women’s Hall of Fame and the Army Women’s Foundation Hall of Fame

1933 – Ruth Bader Ginsburg born, American lawyer, professor, and Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court

1934 – Henry Ford restores the $5 a day wage

1935 – Joseph Goebbels, German Minister of Propaganda band four Berlin newspapers

1937 – In Chicago, IL, the first blood bank to preserve blood for transfusion by refrigeration begins oprations at the Cook County Hospital

1938 – Oil is discovered in Saudi Arabia

1939 – German forces occupy Bohemia and Moravia, and part of Czechoslovakia

1939 – Julie Tullis born, British mountaineer and filmmaker

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1946 – British Premier Attlee offers India full independence after agreement on a constitution

1948 – Sir Laurence Olivier is featured on the cover of LIFE magazine in the title role of Shakespeare’s Hamlet

1949 – British Clothes rationing ends nearly four years after the end of World War II

1951 – General de Lattre demands that Paris send more troops for the fight in Vietnam

1951 – The Persian parliament votes to nationalize the oil industry

1954 – CBS television debuts its Morning Show

1955 – The U.S. Air Force unveils a self-guided missile

1956 – The musical My Fair Lady opens on Broadway

1957 – The first official Buzzard Day * in the Cleveland Metroparks, although there is a long-standing legend that the buzzards return to Cleveland every year on March 15

1960 – Consumers International is founded, an umbrella organization for citizen activist groups in 100 countries advocating for consumer protection laws, safer products and the right to redress in the event of harm; in 1983, they launch World Consumer Rights Day *

1960 – The first underwater park is established as Key Largo Coral Reef Preserve

1965 – U.S. President Lyndon Johnson addresses a joint session of Congress, calling for new legislation to guarantee every American’s right to vote

1968 – The U.S. mint halts the practice of buying and selling gold

1972 – The Godfather, Francis Ford Coppola’s gangster movie based on Mario Puzo’s novel, premieres in New York

1977 – The first episode of Eight is Enough airs on ABC-TV

1979 – Pope John Paul II publishes his first encyclical Redemptor Hominis In the work he warned of the growing gap between the rich and poor: “A purely materialistic civilization has slavery as its consequence”

1985 – In Brazil, two decades of military rule come to an end with the installation of a civilian government

1989 – The U.S. Department of Veteran’s Affairs becomes the 14th Department in the President’s Cabinet

1990 – Mikhail Gorbachev is elected the first executive president of the USSR, and the  Soviet parliament rules that Lithuania’s declaration of independence is invalid and Soviet law is still in force in the Baltic republic

1990 – The Ford Explorer is introduced to the American public

1991 – Four Los Angeles police officers are indicted in the beating of Rodney King on March 3, 1991

1994 – U.S. President Clinton extends a nuclear testing moratorium until September 1995

1996 – The aviation firm Fokker NV collapses

1996 – Kick Butts Day * is started by Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids and sponsored by United Health Foundation and the Council on Alcoholism and Drug Abuse

1998 – 15,000 ethnic Albanians march in Yugoslavia demanding Kosovo’s independence

2002 – Secretary of State Colin Powell tells the Associated Press the U.S. will stand by a 24-year pledge not to use nuclear arms against states that don’t have them

2003 – The World Health Organization issues a worldwide health alert for the respiratory illness SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome)

2004 – Clive Woodall’s novel One for Sorrow, Two for Joy is published; two days later, Woodall sells the film rights to Walt Disney Co. for $1 million

2014 – Shoe the World Day * is inspired by Donald Zsemonadi and the United Indigenous People, now sponsored by Soles4Soles which accepts donations of shoes for disadvantaged children in the U.S. and 126 other countries
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Visuals

• Peanut in the shell
• March 15 Days montage
• International flags
• Julius Caesar assassination
• Map of  La Pérouse circumnavigation
• Chief Joseph with Alice Cunningham Fletcher
• Lida Gustava Heymann in 1900
• Hattie Carnegie, taste quote
• Othello poster/Margaret Webster
• Madelyn Pugh with Lucille Ball
• Ruth Bader Ginsburg, 9 justices quote
• Laurence Olivier as Hamlet on cover of LIFE, by N.R. Farbman
• Kick Butts Day banner
• Clive Woodall’s novel One for Sorrow, Two for Joy book cover

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