The brown buds thicken on the trees, Unbound, the free streams sing, As March leads forth across the leas The wild and windy spring. –Elizabeth Akers Allen
So if you are a basketball fan, particularly a college basketball fan, you know what March Madness means of course! March Madness refers to that time of year when the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) men’s and women’s college basketball tournaments are held.
However there are a few other interesting events or occurrences that can also be associated with a bit of March madness.
A historical tragedy happened on March 1, 1932 when the ‘Lindbergh baby’ vanished. The evening of March 1, 1932 pioneering aviator Charles Lindbergh was at home in New Jersey with his wife, Anne, and 20-month-old son, Charles Jr. At 7.30 p.m., a nanny laid the toddler down to sleep in his crib. About two hours later, Charles heard a noise he thought sounded like a crate smashing, but thought nothing of it.
Then at 10 p.m. the nanny reported that the baby had disappeared. In his bedroom, Charles found a handwritten, misspelled note: “Dear Sir! Have 50000$ redy 25000$ in 20$ bills 15000$ in 10$ bills and 10000$ in 5$ bills … We warn you for making anyding public or for notify the Police. The child is in gut care.”
So began one of the most appalling cases in American criminal history. Amid massive publicity, crowds swiftly swarmed to the Lindbergh estate, destroying any chance of finding footprints. Amateur detectives, military men and even Chicago mobsters offered their assistance. More ransom notes arrived. In early April, Lindbergh delivered $50,000 to the kidnapper via an intermediary. But there was no baby.
Then on May 12, a truck driver found a child’s body in woods near Lindbergh’s home. It was little Charles. Two years later, the police arrested a German-born carpenter, Bruno Richard Hauptmann, who had a record of robbery and whose garage contained notes from the ransom money. Protesting his innocence, he went to the electric chair. But many observers were convinced that he must have had help. And for the novelist Agatha Christie, the case inspired one of her greatest books, Murder on the Orient Express.
Clive Sinclair launched the ZX81 computer on March 5, 1981. The ZX81 was a home computer that was produced by Sinclair Research and manufactured in Dundee, Scotland, by Timex Corporation. It was designed to be a low-cost introduction to home computing for the general public costing just £70 (around 93.91 U.S. dollars). Its peculiar keyboard will never be forgotten. Buyers could choose between a kit version to assemble themselves; or opt for a fully-assembled model ready for use once plugged into a television and power source. The keyboard was a ‘touch sensitive membrane’, a flexible plastic surface with the actual switches under the surface. While easy to clean and water resistant, it was very difficult and slow to type on, because you had to press hard and very deliberately to use the tiny, closely-spaced keys. Touch-typing was impossible.
In the spring of 1946, Winston Churchill arrived in Fulton, Missouri. Churchill saw a chance to revive his American reputation when President Harry Truman invited him to give a lecture at a college in his home state.
“Churchill and Truman travelled to Fulton by train and on the way the president read a draft of the former prime minister’s talk. It was, he declared, excellent. But when Churchill stood up on March 5, in the packed gymnasium at Westminster College, few could have expected that his words would resound in history.”
“A shadow, he explained, had fallen ‘upon the scenes so lately lighted by the Allied victory’ – thanks entirely to Stalin’s Soviet Union. ‘From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic,’ he declared, ‘an iron curtain has descended across the continent.’ That made Anglo-American co-operation all the more important. Theirs, Churchill added, was a ‘special relationship’.”
Churchill was not the first man to use the words ‘iron curtain’, but he was the most famous. After Fulton, there was no doubt that the alliance between Stalin’s Soviet Union and the two great western powers was over – and that the Cold War had begun.
On March 31, 1889 France’s iconic and unique tower opened with a troubled birth. Conceived by engineers Maurice Koechlin and Emile Nouguier as the centrepiece of the 1889 Paris Universal Exposition, the Eiffel Tower was built by the celebrated bridge-maker Gustave Eiffel, who claimed it would celebrate “not only the art of the modern engineer, but also the century of Industry and Science in which we are living, and for which the way was prepared by the great scientific movement of the 18th century and by the Revolution of 1789”.
Most of the French intellectual establishment hated the idea. It would be “useless and monstrous”, a “hateful column of bolted sheet metal”, claimed a petition signed by some 300 writers and artists. But Eiffel refuted these claims and compared his new structure to the pyramids of Egypt. “My tower will be the tallest edifice ever erected by man,” he wrote. “Will it not also be grandiose in its way? And why would something admirable in Egypt become hideous and ridiculous in Paris?”
When the tower was finally opened to the government and press on March 31, 1889, it wasn’t finished. The lifts weren’t working, so all had to trudge up the stairs on foot. Most gave up and remained on the lower levels; only a handful made it to the top, where Eiffel hoisted a gigantic French flag, greeted by fireworks and a 21-gun salute.
“The tower was an instant hit: illuminated every night by gas lamps, it dominated not just the Exposition, but Paris itself. When the public were finally allowed in, the lifts were still not working. Yet in the first week alone, almost 30,000 people climbed to the top – a sign of how completely it had caught the world’s imagination.”
Remember, “If March comes in like a lion, it will go out like a lamb,” which means that if the month starts off stormy, it will end with mild weather.
Equinox Quiz: The March equinox occurs on March 20 at 11:33 a.m. EDT this year, ushering in the spring season in the Northern Hemisphere. At this time, the Sun’s position will be at which of the following coordinates on the celestial sphere? A. 0 hour right ascension, 0° declination. B. 6 hours right ascension, 23.5° North declination. C. 12 hours right ascension, 0° declination. D. 18 hours right ascension, 23.5° South declination
The Full Worm Moon. March’s full Worm Moon reaches peak illumination at 3:20 a.m. EDT on Friday, March 18 or 1:20 a.m. MDT. No, you won’t see the moon change into the shape of a worm, but why is it called the Worm Moon?
March’s full Moon goes by the name Worm Moon, because it was originally thought to refer to the earthworms that appear as the soil warms in spring. This invites robins and other birds to feed—a true sign of spring!
An alternative explanation comes from Captain Jonathan Carver, an 18th-century explorer, who wrote “this Moon name refers to a different sort of “worm”—beetle larvae—which begin to emerge from the thawing bark of trees and other winter hideouts at this time.”
The answer to the Equinox quiz is A. B describes the Sun’s position during the June (summer) solstice; C, during the September (fall) equinox; and D, during the December (winter) solstice.
Go mad at the library – “The more that you READ, the more things you will KNOW. The more that you LEARN, the more places you’ll GO.”