Whether March winds and April showers will bring forth May flowers is still a hope away, but the facts behind the month’s name are fortunately more certain.

The name March is derived from the Roman “Martius“ named after Mars, the Roman god of war. In ancient Rome, March 1st marked the first day of spring, which coincided with the beginning of the calendar year and the start of the military campaign season – which may explain why soldiers “march into battle.” The Roman ruler, Numa Pompilius, added January and February to the calendar thus making March the third month of the year. While many have adopted the Gregorian calendar, some cultures and religions still celebrate the start of the New Year on March 1st.

(Is it true there used to be one more month called Mercedonius? The accurate answer is sometimes. Here’s the reason why.)

Hares mate during the month of March and a female hare may be seen “boxing” (striking another hare with their paws) off a male to prevent an act of procreation — hence “Mad as a March hare” – a phrase that appeared for the first time in Sir Thomas More’s “The supplycacyon of soulys,” published in 1529. Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, under the pseudonym Lewis Carroll, also referenced this annual event in 1865’s “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland“(often shortened to Alice in Wonderland) and the passage: “The March hare… as this is May, it won’t be raving mad – at least not so mad as it was in March.”

The Ides of March is a reference to the date Julius Caesar was stabbed to death in 44 B.C. and is observed on the 15th day of the month. Julius Caesar was many things good and bad, but did he deserve to have the month of July named after him? Read our explanation of the mess that defined the Roman calendar before Julius Caesar, here.

6. “SURFIN’ USA,” THE BEACH BOYS

“You’d see ‘em wearin’ their baggies, Huarache sandals, too”

“Baggies” were the boxer-style bathing suits preferred by surfer dudes over the traditional Speedo-type form-fitting model. The extra fabric helped to prevent surfboard wax from painfully ripping out upper-leg hair when the surfer rose from a sitting to a standing position. Huarache is a type of woven leather sandal, one that’s actually closer to a shoe than a sandal.

8. “HOTEL CALIFORNIA,” THE EAGLES

“Warm smell of colitas rising up through the air”

According to the Eagles’ then-manager, “colitas” was explained to Don Henley and Glenn Frey as literally meaning “little buds” by their Mexican-American road manager, and further as Spanish slang for “marijuana.”

9 AND 10. “BOHEMIAN RHAPSODY,” QUEEN

“Scaramouche, Scaramouche, will you do the fandango?” … “Bismillah! No!”

Scaramouche is a traditional clown character featured in Italian commedia dell’arte. He is a stock character in Punch and Judy shows and often gets his head knocked off of his shoulders by Punch. The fandango is a lively couples dance usually accompanied by guitars, hand claps and castanets.

“Bismillah” is an Arabic word that means “in the name of God.” It is used at the head of almost every chapter in the Holy Quran.

Radium was discovered by Marie Curie and her husband Pierre in 1898. In 1903, the Royal Academy of Sciences awarded Marie and Pierre Curie and Henri Becquerel the Nobel Prize in Physics, making Marie the first woman to win the prize. Later, in 1911, she would win her second Nobel for isolating radium, discovering another element (polonium), and for her research into the new phenomenon of radioactivity, a word she coined herself.

By 1910, radium was manufactured synthetically in the U.S. But before the effects of radiation exposure were well understood, radium ended up in a lot of crazy places for its purported magical healing properties and its glow-in-the-dark novelty.

1. in chocolate
2. in water
3. in toys and nightlights
4. in toothpaste
5. in cosmetics
6. in heating pads and suppositories
7. in the treatment of impotence
8. in health spas
9. in clocks and watches

There are four European capital cities located on the Danube River— Vienna, Austria; Bratislava, Slovakia; Budapest, Hungary; and Belgrade, Serbia.

[…and I live in one of them…woo]

5 Historical Misconceptions Rundown 

Did Viking helmets have horns? Was Napoleon that short? Was the Roman Vomitorium real? (03:58)

Today I found out, before the 17th century, almost all carrots cultivated were purple.  The modern day orange carrot wasn’t cultivated until Dutch growers in the late 16th century took mutant strains of the purple carrot, including yellow and white carrots and gradually developed them into the sweet, plump, orange variety we have today.

• Maria did not marry Georg von Trapp because she was in love with him. As she said in her autobiography Maria, she fell in love with the children at first sight, not their father. When he asked her to marry him, she was not sure if she should abandon her religious calling but was advised by the nuns to do God’s will and marry Georg. “I really and truly was not in love. I liked him but didn’t love him. However, I loved the children, so in a way I really married the children.  … [B]y and by I learned to love him more than I have ever loved before or after.”
• There were 10, not 7 von Trapp children.
• Georg, far from being the detached, cold-blooded patriarch of the family who disapproved of music, as portrayed in the first half of The Sound of Music, was actually a gentle, warmhearted parent who enjoyed musical activities with his family. While this change in his character might have made for a better story in emphasizing Maria’s healing effect on the von Trapps, it distressed his family greatly.
• The family did not secretly escape over the Alps to freedom in Switzerland, carrying their suitcases and musical instruments. As daughter Maria said in a 2003 interview printed in Opera News, “We did tell people that we were going to America to sing. And we did not climb over mountains with all our heavy suitcases and instruments. We left by train, pretending nothing.”

Q: What three-letter word has the greatest number of definitions in the Oxford English Dictionary?

A: Set, with 464 definitions.

How do horseshoe crabs come to have blue blood? The phrase traditionally means blood which flows in the veins of old and aristocratic families, and horseshoe crabs are certainly old (they lived with dinosaurs), and, in their way, aristocrats. But they don’t have veins. Their blood kind of sloshes around in their bodies carrying oxygen to various organs, as our blood does.

Our blood is red because we use hemoglobin to move oxygen around. Hemoglobin has iron in it, which gives off a reddish hue. (Think of rust.) Horseshoe crabs use a copper-based molecule called hemocyanin to distribute oxygen. In nature, copper turns things blue or blue-green. So that’s why their blood is blue; it’s copper-based.

It turns out a when a horseshoe crab gets gashed and its insides are exposed to germs (particularly ocean-going bacteria), its blood leaps into action. As soon as it senses any “negative bacteria” moving in, a particular blood cell explodes, releasing a mass of blood-clotting granules that instantly clot to seal out the bad guys, preventing further infection. It’s like having an instant Great Wall of China, springing up to keep out the Barbarians.

http://www.radiolab.org/blogs/radiolab-blogland/2012/jun/01/krulwich-wonders-what-vampire-said-horseshoe-crab-your-blood-blue/