The TIME Magazine Vault

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The Flowers of Spring

Though spring may officially start at the equinox, TIME noted in 1966 that some people measure the start of the season in their own way: "[To] millions of U.S. gardeners, spring officially begins the minute they stroll through the local flower show and receive their newest seed catalogue—and many of them have. In Milwaukee, nearly 100,000 people recently walked out of snow and subfreezing temperatures straight into a lush garden where a stone Saint Francis of Assisi stood by a gurgling waterfall and fields of flowering forsythia and geraniums. In Kansas City, Mo., the theme was 'A Circus of Flowers,' with a candy-striped circus tent summoning up a gay, summer air. For the opening of Cleveland's 23rd show, neither blizzards nor bone-chilling winds sweeping off of ice-covered Lake Erie could deter 18,000 hardy hobbyists."

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July 4, 1969

March 31 Is Cesar Chavez Day

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March 14: Albert Einstein’s Birthday

These days Albert Einstein's March 14 birthday is also celebrated as Pi Day, but during his lifetime Einstein disdained any sort of birthday celebrations. "Still walking his daily mile across a Princeton meadow to the Institute for Advanced Study, Albert Einstein quietly approached his 72nd birthday," TIME reported in 1951. "Looking more than ever like a benign, wise old sea lion, he was too busy working on new problems to take much note of the churning outside world which he has helped to change so much."

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March 26, 1965

The First Spacewalk

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TIME

March 29, 1937: TIME at the Circus

In 1937, when TIME reported on a business battle brewing under the big top, the star of the show was cat handler Clyde Beatty. "A tiger with ominously writhing tail left its post, slunk toward the small figure in white," the magazine reported of his famous act. "Beatty put his head down almost to the sawdust, pretended to be staring the animal into submission. Actually he was giving invisible 'cues.' The tiger bellied down, backed slowly away."