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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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."

TIME

March 19, 1965

MLK on the March

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March 31 Is Cesar Chavez Day

Each year, people across America honor Cesar Chavez on the anniversary of his birth. "He was a street-corner tough who now claims as his models Emiliano Zapata, Gandhi, Nehru and Martin Luther King," TIME explained in a 1969 cover story about his work. "He tells his people: 'We make a solemn promise: to enjoy our rightful part of the riches of this land, to throw off the yoke of being considered as agricultural implements or slaves. We are free men and we demand justice.'"

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