March Holidays

The month of March is the home of many holidays and occasions with women’s history month, St. Patrick’s day, and many others. However, one day in particular stands out as an important date to remember. The first holiday that lands on March 14, is pi day. Pi is a mathematical term that when calculated will result in the irrational number 3.14159…. since the first three numbers are 3,1,4, the date was chosen. Hence, 3/14/21. Pi was officially discovered by the mathematician named Archimedes in the year of 250 B.C. It’s used in many computations (ex. How to find the area of a circle) and has been used for years since Ancient Egypt. People celebrate by reciting lines of pi, eating actual pie, pi day trivia and other fun activities.

The other exciting event that happens on March 14 is daylight savings. Daylight saving time (DST), is the practice of advancing clocks during warmer months so that darkness falls at a later clock time. The typical implementation of DST is to set clocks forward by one hour in the spring ("spring forward") and set clocks back by one hour in autumn ("fall back", from the North American English word "fall" for autumn) to return to standard time. As a result, there is one 23-hour day in late winter or early spring and one 25-hour day in the autumn. George Hudson proposed the idea of daylight saving in 1895. The German Empire and Austria-Hungary organized the first nationwide implementation starting on April 30, 1916. Many countries have used it at various times since then, particularly since the 1970s energy crisis. DST is generally not observed near the equator, where sunrise and sunset times do not vary enough to justify it.

Written by Allison Lee '25