April 20

April 20 is the 111th day of the year, and the American record for it runs from 1789 to 2008 — a span of 219 years. The entry that anchors it: American Civil War, 1861.

In the founding decades, the date sat close to the business of building a republic. In 1789, George Washington arrives at Grays Ferry, Philadelphia, while en route to Manhattan for his inauguration.

Through the nineteenth century the date gathered the tensions that would define the era. In 1836, U.S. Congress passes an act creating the Wisconsin Territory. Then, in 1861, American Civil War — Robert E. Lee resigns his commission in the United States Army in order to command the forces of the state of Virginia.

In the decades after the Civil War, the date marked a country remaking itself. In 1898, U.S. President William McKinley signs a joint resolution to Congress for declaration of war against Spain, beginning the Spanish–American War.

As the country moved into the modern age, the date accumulated new kinds of firsts. In 1945, World War II — U.S. troops capture Leipzig, Germany, only to later cede the city to the Soviet Union.

In the postwar decades the date belonged to a nation of enormous reach and unfinished arguments. In 1972, Apollo program — the Apollo 16 Lunar Module Orion, commanded by John Young and piloted by Charles Duke, lands on the Moon.

In living memory, the date has kept adding to the record. In 2007, Johnson Space Center shooting — William Phillips barricades himself with a handgun in NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas, before killing a male hostage and himself. A year later, in 2008, Fernando Lugo became the first candidate not from the Colorado Party candidate to be elected President of Paraguay in 61 years.

The date is also a birthday. Among the Americans born on April 20: David Brainerd (1718), American missionary; Cornelius Harnett (1723), American merchant, farmer, and politician; Heinrich Göbel (1818), German-American mechanic and engineer; Daniel Chester French (1850), American sculptor, designed the Lincoln statue; and Siegmund Lubin (1851), Polish-American businessman, founded the Lubin Manufacturing Company.

April 20 is also a date of endings. Among the Americans who died on it: Chief Pontiac (1769), American tribal leader; Alexander H. Bailey (1874), American lawyer, judge, and politician; Karl Ferdinand Braun (1918), German-American physicist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate; and Elmer Gedeon (1944), American baseball player and pilot.

Taken together, the 8 entries on April 20 span 219 years of American life. A date is an arbitrary container, but what fills it is not arbitrary at all.