August 13

August 13 is the 226th day of the year, and the American record for it runs from 1779 to 2004 — a span of 225 years. The entry that anchors it: The Apollo 11 astronauts enjoy a ticker-tape parade in New York City. That evening, 1969.

The revolutionary generation left its own mark on the date. In 1779, American Revolutionary War — the Royal Navy defeats the Penobscot Expedition with the most significant loss of United States naval forces prior to the attack on Pearl Harbor.

Reconstruction and the years that followed added their own entries. In 1889, William Gray of Hartford, Connecticut is granted United States Patent Number 408,709 for "Coin-controlled apparatus for telephones."

The early twentieth century brought industry, air travel and war to the date. In 1900, the steamer Deutschland of Hamburg America Lines sets a new record for the eastward passage when it docks in Plymouth, England, five days, 11 hours and 45 minutes after sailing from New York, breaking by three hours, six minutes its previous mark in its maiden voyage in July. Six years on, in 1906, members of the U.S. Army's all-black 25th Infantry Regiment were accused of killing a white bartender and wounding a white police officer in Brownsville, Texas, despite exculpatory evidence. Then, in 1918, Opha May Johnson became the first woman to enlist in the United States Marine Corps. Then, in 1942, Major General Eugene Reybold of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers authorizes the construction of facilities that would house the "Development of Substitute Materials" project, better known as the Manhattan Project.

After 1945 the date reflects a country operating at global scale. In 1969, the Apollo 11 astronauts enjoy a ticker-tape parade in New York City. That evening, at a state dinner in Los Angeles, they are awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by U.S. President Richard Nixon.

The most recent entries fall within living memory. In 2004, Merely 22 hours after Tropical Storm Bonnie struck the U.S. state of Florida, Hurricane Charley inflicted further damage to the region.

The date is also a birthday. Among the Americans born on August 13: Lucy Stone (1818), American abolitionist and suffragist; John J. Robison (1824), American politician in Michigan; Felix Adler (1851), German-American religious leader and educator; Annie Oakley (1860), American target shooter; and George Luks (1867), American painter and illustrator.

August 13 is also a date of endings. Among the Americans who died on it: John Cruger (1744), Danish-American businessman and politician, 39th Mayor of New York City; Collis Potter Huntington (1900), American railway magnate; Mary Hunter Austin (1934), American author and playwright; and Francis J. McCormick (1958), American football, basketball player, and coach.

The record for August 13 runs 225 years deep across 8 entries. Read in sequence, the date stops being a coincidence and starts being a through-line.