anyone else notice today's the ides of march?

As a kid, I've always been fascinated by history. In school, while all my classmates bemoaned the daily US history lecture, I relished in the information. Even though it never seemed to matter to most people, since it was in the past, I've always enjoyed the significance of seemingly minor events, of which individually would have passed unnoticed, but when linked together created such large ripples that they would alter the course of history. Franz Ferdinand, who was the nephew of the Austro-Hungarian emperor, was assassinated by a group called the Black Hand. And because they were a Serbian nationalist group, the empire declared war on Serbia. Then Russia, which was bound by a treaty, was forced to mobilize which meant that Germany had to declare war on Russia. Then France declared war on Germany, and that was World War I; because the emperor's nephew was killed.

I enjoy everything from decade-long eras of which volumes have been written, to the little morsels of trivial facts that dotted each page of my history book. Everything was consumed with the same level of excitement and anticipation. By the time I got to college, the only things keeping me from majoring in history were the fact that I probably wouldn't be able to find steady employment after graduation and I hated writing term papers. While I wasn't able to pursue my passion for history in college, I still harbor deep enjoyment for the events that not only shaped our past, but paved the road for our future.

I wasn't really sure if anyone else knows or cares, but today is the Ides of March, a random day in march, and a date with events that precipitated the end of the Roman Republic.