Beware the Ides of March!

When Husband brought me my cup of tea in bed this morning he said, 'Beware the Ides of March!' He's that sort of man.

That was followed by some consultation with Alexa, and an early morning conversation about which months were added to the Roman calendar to become the Julian calendar. I suggested July (after Julius Caesar) and August (after Augustus).

It seems I am wrong. It was Julius who instigated the change to twelve months instead of ten but the extra months were January and February. The original fifth and sixth months were simply renamed in honour of the emperors.

We now use the Gregorian calendar, named after Pope Gregory, and introduced in October 1582. I could tell you a lot more, like how the Roman calendar went backwards but I got confused so instead we'll go back to the Ides of March.

The Ides fall on the 15th day of March, May, July, and October, and on the 13th of the others, and was originally to do with the full  moon. The famous quotation is courtesy of Shakespeare, of course, from his play, Julius Caesar, although because of its link with the full moon there were superstitions about the date anyway.

The place you really don't want to be on the Ides of March is Reunion Island in the Indian Ocean. In 1952 it took the world record for the greatest rainfall in 24 hours. Since then meteorologists have decided the measuring system was faulty and took away its record, only for it to be regained in January 1966 when 71.8" of rain fell in 24 hours. As Reunion Island also holds the record for the greatest rainfall in 72 and 96 hours, it's probably not a good place to be at any time during cyclone season.