WTF Is It Now?!?

This day in Hissssssstory:

44 B.C. On the "Ides of March," Julius Caesar is stabbed to death in the senate house by a group of conspirators led by Cimber, Casca, Cassius, and Marcus Junius Brutus.
1820 Maine became the 23rd state.
1892 The first escalator, the Reno Inclined Elevator, was patented by Jesse W. Reno of New York.
1917 Nicholas II, the last czar of Russia, is forced to abdicate his throne.
1937 The first blood bank was established, in Chicago, at Cook County Hospital.
1990 Mikhail Gorbachev was elected the first executive president of the Soviet Union. On the same day, the Soviet parliament ruled that Lithuania's declaration of independence was invalid and that Soviet law was still in force in the Baltic republic.
?? A day also to remember St Longinus. According to medieval sources, he was the Roman centurion who pierced Christ's side with his sword. Unusually for a serving officer, he was blind, but the blood ran into his eyes and restored his sight. He became a zealous Christian, and later had his tongue cut off and teeth pulled out by order of the Roman Governor Octavius.
- - Infoplease and The Fortean Times

2002 Trent "Helmet Hair" Lott, while taking his morning crap, mumbles how he just "gave birth to a Democrat". Dries teary eyes as he thinks back to last night's defeat of the Pickering nomination, vows revenge. In short, a typical day begins.