August 17

August 17 is the 230th day of the year, and the American record for it runs from 1862 to 1998 — a span of 136 years. The entry that anchors it: American Civil War, 1863.

By the middle of the nineteenth century the date carries heavier freight. In 1862, American Civil War — Major General J. E. B. Stuart is assigned command of all the cavalry of the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia. A year later, in 1863, American Civil War — in Charleston, South Carolina, Union batteries and ships bombard Confederate-held Fort Sumter. A year later, in 1864, Battle of Gainesville — Confederate forces defeat Union troops near Gainesville, Florida.

In the first half of the twentieth century the date turns technological. In 1907, Pike Place Market, one of the oldest continuously operated public farmers' markets in the U.S. and a popular tourist attraction, opened in Seattle, Washington. Then, in 1943, World War II — the U.S. Eighth Air Force suffers the loss of 60 bombers on the Schweinfurt–Regensburg mission. The same year, Winston Churchill and Franklin D. Roosevelt met in a secret conference in Quebec.

The postwar entries show a nation both expanding and contesting itself. In 1988, President of Pakistan Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq and U.S. Ambassador Arnold Raphel are killed in a plane crash.

Closer to the present, the date is still accumulating. In 1998, Lewinsky scandal — US President Bill Clinton admits in taped testimony that he had an "improper physical relationship" with White House intern Monica Lewinsky; later that same day he admits before the nation that he "misled people" about the relationship.

The date is also a birthday. Among the Americans born on August 17: Davy Crockett (1786), American soldier and politician; Henry Cadwalader Chapman (1845), American physician and naturalist; Gene Stratton-Porter (1863), American author and photographer; Julia Marlowe (1865), English-American actress; and John A. Sampson (1873), American gynecologist and academic.

August 17 is also a date of endings. Among the Americans who died on it: Jonathan Trumbull (1785), English-American merchant and politician, 16th Governor of Connecticut; Alcée Louis la Branche (1861), American politician and diplomat, 1st United States Ambassador to Texas; Ray Chapman (1920), American baseball player; and Adam Gunn (1935), American decathlete.

August 17 carries 8 entries spread across 136 years. None of the people in them knew they were sharing a date; that is a pattern only visible looking back.