April 11

April 11 is the 102nd day of the year, and the American record for it runs from 1881 to 2001 — a span of 120 years. The entry that anchors it: US President Lyndon B. Johnson signs the Civil Rights Act of 1968, 1968.

In the decades after the Civil War, the date marked a country remaking itself. In 1881, Spelman College is founded in Atlanta, Georgia, as the Atlanta Baptist Female Seminary, an institute of higher education for African-American women.

As the country moved into the modern age, the date accumulated new kinds of firsts. In 1919, Paris Peace Conference — Woodrow Wilson overturns Japan's Racial Equality Proposal, stating that unanimous support was required.

In the postwar decades the date belonged to a nation of enormous reach and unfinished arguments. In 1951, U.S. president Harry S. Truman relieved General of the Army Douglas MacArthur of his commands for making public statements about the Korean War that contradicted the administration's policies. Then, in 1965, Almost 50 confirmed tornadoes struck six states in the Midwestern United States during the Palm Sunday tornado outbreak, killing over 270 people and injuring 1,500 others. Three years on, in 1968, US President Lyndon B. Johnson signs the Civil Rights Act of 1968, prohibiting discrimination in the sale, rental, and financing of housing. Two years on, in 1970, Apollo Program — Apollo 13 is launched.

In living memory, the date has kept adding to the record. In 1996, while attempting to set a record as the youngest person to pilot an airplane across the United States, the aircraft flown by seven-year-old Jessica Dubroff crashed in Cheyenne, Wyoming, killing her and two others. Five years on, in 2001, the detained crew of a United States EP-3E aircraft that landed in Hainan, China, after a collision with a J-8 fighter, is released.

The date is also a birthday. Among the Americans born on April 11: David Zeisberger (1721), Czech-American clergyman and missionary; Edward Everett (1794), English-American educator and politician, 15th Governor of Massachusetts; Elmer E. Ellsworth (1837), American army officer and law clerk; William Wallace Campbell (1862), American astronomer and academic; and Charles Evans Hughes (1862), American lawyer and politician, 44th United States Secretary of State.

April 11 is also a date of endings. Among the Americans who died on it: Edward Canby (1873), American general; James Anthony Bailey (1906), American businessman, co-founded Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus; Francis Pharcellus Church (1906), American journalist and publisher, co-founded Armed Forces Journal and The Galaxy Magazine; and Richard Harding Davis (1916), American journalist and author.

Read end to end, April 11 is less a list than a cross-section: 8 entries that happen to share a square on the calendar, separated by as much as 120 years. The coincidence is arbitrary; the accumulation is not.