Beware the Ides of March!

Today is the Ides of March, on which Julius Caesar was famously murdered. It's not a special day with a special name because he was murdered, it just happens to be the day he got his. Bostonist remembers it because some time during our education, we had to read Shakespeare's play about the life of Caesar (cleverly titled "Julius Caesar"), and there's a part where a soothsayer tells Caesar to "beware the Ides of March." Caesar figures the guy's crazy ("He is a dreamer. Let us leave him."), but later, well, you know.

On account of the play, the Ides of March has come to be synonymous with bad news, which got Bostonist to wondering what the hell an Ides is. Luckily, there's an internet to answer these sorts of questions, and it turns out every month has an Ides (though sometimes it falls on the 13th rather than the 15th), and that Ides is actually plural. Back in Roman times, every month had three days in it that were used to divide up the month and keep track of the days (they apparently weren't wild about the whole days-of-the-week thing). These were the Kalends (first day), the Nones (fifth or seventh day), and the Ides (13th or 15th). To refer to days, they would count backward or forward from the Ides, Kalends, or Nones.

But all that aside, as New Englanders, we should think of March 15 not as the dire day when Caesar was slain (because really, who cares about Caesar anyway?), but as the happy occasion when the great state of Maine was admitted to the Union in 1820. Happy Birthday, Maine!

Image: How did Bostonist get to be one of Boston's "blogging elites"? By providing you with content you just can't find anywhere else, like this picture of Julius Caesar inside a map of the state of Maine.