August 10

August 10 is the 223rd day of the year, and the American record for it runs from 1835 to 2020 — a span of 185 years. The entry that anchors it: Japanese American internment, 1988.

The antebellum decades brought the date closer to the country’s central argument. In 1835, P. T. Barnum begins his career as a showman and circus entrepreneur by exhibiting Joice Heth, an octogenerian African slave whom he claims was George Washington's nursemaid. Then, in 1861, Battle of Wilson's Creek — a mixed force of Confederate, Missouri State Guard, and Arkansas State troops defeat outnumbered attacking Union forces in the southwestern part of Missouri. The same year, American Civil War — the first major battle west of the Mississippi River, the Battle of Wilson's Creek, was fought.

The early twentieth century brought industry, air travel and war to the date. In 1901, the U.S. Steel recognition strike by the Amalgamated Association of Iron and Steel Workers begins.

After 1945 the date reflects a country operating at global scale. In 1949, an amendment to the National Security Act of 1947 enhances the authority of the United States Secretary of Defense over the Army, Navy and Air Force, and replaces the National Military Establishment with the Department of Defense. Then, in 1961, Vietnam War — the U.S. Army begins Operation Ranch Hand, spraying an estimated 20 million US gallons (76,000 m3) of defoliants and herbicides over rural areas of South Vietnam in an attempt to deprive the Viet Cong of food and vegetation cover. Then, in 1988, Japanese American internment — U.S. President Ronald Reagan signs the Civil Liberties Act of 1988, providing $20,000 payments to Japanese Americans who were either interned in or relocated by the United States during World War II.

The most recent entries fall within living memory. In 2020, Derecho in Iowa becomes the most costly thunderstorm disaster in U.S. history.

The date is also a birthday. Among the Americans born on August 10: John Kirk Townsend (1809), American ornithologist and explorer; Jay Cooke (1821), American financier, founded Jay Cooke & Company; William Harnett (1848), Irish-American painter and educator; William Manuel Johnson (1872), American bassist; and Herbert Hoover (1874), American engineer and politician, 31st President of the United States.

August 10 is also a date of endings. Among the Americans who died on it: John J. Loud (1916), American inventor; Rin Tin Tin (1932), American acting dog; Robert H. Goddard (1945), American physicist and engineer; and Kan'ichi Asakawa (1948), Japanese-American historian, author, and academic.

The date carries formal observance as well — National Day (Singapore). What holds these 8 entries together is nothing more than the calendar, and nothing less. 185 years separate the earliest from the latest, and each was once simply the present day.