March the 15th is the Ides of March. In the Roman Calendar, each month had three division days: kalends, nones, and ides. For months that had thirty-one days, the ides occurred on the fifteenth of the month. Julius Caesar was assassinated on the ides of March in 44 B.C. A group of Roman senators, led by Cassius and Brutus, thought Caesar was becoming arrogant and tyrannical, and they devised a plot to assassinate him at a senate meeting on March 15. Many of the conspirators were close friends of Caesar, including Brutus. At the meeting, the group of senators circled around Caesar and pretended to submit a petition. Suddenly, one of them grabbed Caesar's robe and yanked it off his neck, which was the signal to begin the attack. All of the conspirators were hiding daggers, and they each stabbed him as he staggered across the floor.
Invasion of the body snatchers:
A situation in which normal behavior is strangely lacking or altered. From a sci-fi movie classic (1956): a small town is taken over by alien replicas of the residents which emerge from giant pods. The copies are perfect but passionless, zombielike.
As the story unfolds we learn that the only way to avoid being metamorphosed into a pod is to stay awake. Soon the only real people left are the town doctor and his girlfriend. But then she dozes off...
The Body snatcher is also another term for a grave robber. In the 18th and 19th centuries, 'resurrection men' robbed graves for corpses to sell to medical schools and anatomists. Occasionally they didn't wait for the burial and resorted to murder. Also, during the Vietnam War, the term was bestowed on medics who came to pick up the wounded or the dead.
~Merriam Webster's Dictionary of Allusions.
