What Happened This Month?

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By Edith, still writing from her couch north of Boston. The way we Wickeds work our calendar is that each of us is responsible for wrangling one month twice a year. The wrangler sets up the Wicked Wednesday group posts, and generally make sure all the weekdays have a topic or a guest. March is my month this year. I’ve been a little out of it, and only last week noticed we had  big honking gap on March 7! Gulp. Scrambling to come up with a topic, I thought I’d see what has happened in the month of March over the last dozen centuries.

If I were really clever I’d make it a mash-up quiz. But I’m not, and I haven’t done my taxes yet, so  we’re sticking to the facts, ma’am. From the delightful History Place web site, I have learned the following positive facts:

  • peace-corps1March 1, 1961 – President John F. Kennedy established the Peace Corps.
  • March 3, 1917 – Marshmallow Fluff is born.
  • March 4, 1789 – The first meeting of the new Congress under the new U.S. Constitution took place in New York City.
  • March 6, 1475 – Renaissance genius Michelangelo was born in Caprese, Italy.
  • March 10, 1903 – Politician and playwright Claire Boothe Luce  was born in New York 796px-clare_booth_luce_by_van_vechtenCity. She served in the House of Representatives from 1943 to 1947 and then became the first woman appointed as U.S. ambassador to a major country (Italy). [Photograph from the Carl Van Vechten Photographs collection at the Library of Congress.]
  • March 12, 1888 – The Great Blizzard of ’88 struck the northeastern U.S. (an event that took place a scant month before my novel Delivering the Truth opens!).
  • March 14, 1833. The first female dentist, Lucy Hobbs, was born in New York state. She received her degree in 1866 from the Ohio College of Dental Surgery and was a women’s rights advocate.
  • March 22, 1972 – The Equal Rights Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was passed by the U.S. Senate and then sent to the states for ratification.
  • March 25, 1807 – The British Parliament abolished the slave trade following a long campaign against it by Quakers and others.

There were certainly some disastrous and violent events in March over the centuries, but let’s not dwell on them. Other notables besides Luce and Hobbs born in the month, which I found listed on a site about history in March, include Alexander Graham Bell (3rd), Einstein (14th), Grover Cleveland (18th), Wyatt Earp (19th), Johann Sebastian Bach (21st), Van Gogh (30th), and Franz Josef Hayden (31st). Funny, notice how they’re all men?reese_witherspoon_at_tiff_2014

So I went searching for famous women born in the month and found Miriam Makeba (4th), Reese Witherspoon (22nd), Sarah Jessica Parker (25th), Keira Knightley (26th), Mariah Carey (27th), Lady Gaga, (28th), and Celine Dion, (30th). Women celebrities sure back loaded this month!

But of course the most famous birthday of all is month is that of none other than our own Sherry Harris! AND her fabulous cozy-mystery-loving mom, Martha.

So have a great birthday month, Sherry!

Readers and Wickeds, what happened (or will happen this year) for you in March? Did I miss any big positive historical events from March pasts?

Published by Edith Maxwell

Agatha Award -winning author Edith Maxwell writes the historical Quaker Midwife Mysteries (Beyond the Page) and short crime fiction. As Maddie Day she writes the Dot and Amelia Mysteries, the Country Store Mysteries series, the Cozy Capers Book Group Mysteries, and the Cece Barton Mysteries (all from Kensington Publishing). She lives north of Boston in an antique house with her beau and cat Martin, where she writes, gardens, cooks, and wastes time on Facebook.

32 Thoughts

    2. Happy birthday!! May wonderful joys leap out at you when you least expect them.

  2. ‘Tis the birthday month of the world’s greatest husband – mine!

  3. At the end of March I’m going to have a consultation with a surgeon to see if I’m a candidate for the lasik procedure. I’m hoping I am since I’ve worn some form of corrective lenses since kindergarten. And I also hope I can adjust to mono-vision so that I’ll be able to see distance as well as up close without lenses. That will be monumental for me. ( :

    1. I’ve been wearing one contact for many years for that very thing. Hope you can adjust because it’s great. Good luck.

  4. My daughter was born in March–I’ve always called her a solstice baby. Right on time, too. And if memory serves, the zodiacal calendar begins in March (I may be wrong–it’s still early. But I think it was true in the Middle Ages.).

  5. March is Women’s History Month so I consulted the calendar of one of my favorite organizations–the Women’s History Project. (Slogan: Write Women Back In to History.) Here are a couple of events from Marches past. March 12, 1912: Juliette Gordon Low assembled 18 girls together in Savannah, Georgia for the first ever Girl Scout meeting. March 13, 1986–Susan Butcher won the first of 3 straight and 4 total Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Races in Alaska. For lots more good stuff http://www.nwhp.org
    P.S. My daughter Debbie was born during a howling blizzard in Gloucester MA March 9. Almost named her “Gale!”

  6. Loved seeing Juliet Gordon Lowe here. I was a Girl Scout for many years and knew all about her. I was always drawn to the stories of women who did something with their lives And she did!

    1. I was a scout from Brownies through high school, Triss, and then for a year afterwards as an exchange student in Brazil. It really shaped my life.

  10. Edith, I think it’s interesting as someone who lives in New England, that the second items noted on your list was the creation of Marshmallow Fluff. I’ve read on this blog about Fluff and peanut butter that I had to try it. Not bad.

    Happy birthday to Sherry, her mother, and Mark.

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