March 2025: two eclipses, one equinox, five Saturdays
March 2025 was the eclipse month. A total lunar eclipse turned the full moon copper on Friday 14 March. A partial solar eclipse followed on Saturday 29 March. Two eclipses inside one month is rare scheduling. The grid underneath was generous too. It ran 31 days from Saturday 1 March to Monday 31 March. Five Saturdays, five Sundays and ten weekend days came with 21 business days, across ISO weeks 9 to 14.
Ten weekend days
Opening on a Saturday stacked the month's front edge with free days. The five Saturdays ran on the 1st, 8th, 15th, 22nd and 29th. Sundays came next, the 2nd, 9th, 16th, 23rd and 30th. Even the Mondays joined in, five of them, the last on Monday 31 March.
Ten weekend days out of 31 is a generous ration, and 21 business days still got done. The month stretched across six ISO weeks, 9 to 14, which happens whenever a 31-day month starts on a Saturday. A4 copes; it always does.
With ten free squares to mark, run two highlighters: one for work, one for everything else. The Saturdays earn their own pen. Week numbers 9 to 14 run down the left margin, six rows in all.
Eclipses, then the equinox
The lunar eclipse on Friday 14 March was total. The full moon slid into Earth's shadow and turned dull red, the one almanacs name the Blood Worm Moon. Fifteen days later, on Saturday 29 March, the new moon crossed the Sun's edge in a partial solar eclipse. That second date carried the month's new moon as well.
On Thursday 20 March, between the two eclipses, came the equinox: spring in the northern hemisphere, autumn in the southern. The same date reads differently in Melbourne and Manchester, and the calendar, diplomacy itself, declines to rank them.
The month in the wider world
Anora took five Oscars, including Best Picture, at the ninety-seventh Academy Awards on Sunday 2 March. The same day, Firefly's Blue Ghost lander touched down in Mare Crisium. It was the first fully successful commercial soft landing on the Moon, carrying ten NASA instruments. On the charts, Luther by Kendrick Lamar and SZA held number one across the whole month.
The month ended in grief. A magnitude 7.7 earthquake struck central Myanmar on Friday 28 March. Buildings fell in Mandalay and a tower collapsed in Bangkok; the death toll passed 3,700. Earlier in March, violence on the Syrian coast had killed hundreds of civilians.
March 2025 gave both hemispheres their change of season and both eclipses of the first half of the year. It did not stint, and it did not linger past Monday the 31st.