August 8

August 8 is the 221st day of the year, and the American record for it runs from 1647 to 2022 — a span of 375 years. The entry that anchors it: American Civil War, 1863.

The colonial record reaches this date first. In 1647, the Irish Confederate Wars and Wars of the Three Kingdoms: Battle of Dungan's Hill: English Parliamentary forces defeat Irish forces. Then, in 1695, the foundation for what is now known as the Wren Building, the oldest surviving college building in the United States, was laid in a ceremony at Middle Plantation, Virginia.

By the middle of the nineteenth century the date carries heavier freight. In 1863, American Civil War — following his defeat in the Battle of Gettysburg, General Robert E. Lee sends a letter of resignation to Confederate President Jefferson Davis (which is refused upon receipt) The same year, Tennessee Military Governor Andrew Johnson frees his personal slaves in Greeneville, Tennessee, despite them being exempt from the Emancipation Proclamation, now commemorated as Emancipation Day in the state.

In the first half of the twentieth century the date turns technological. In 1945, the London Charter is signed by France, the United Kingdom, the Soviet Union and the United States, establishing the laws and procedures for the Nuremberg trials.

The postwar entries show a nation both expanding and contesting itself. In 1974, President Richard Nixon, in a nationwide television address, announces his resignation from the office of the President of the United States effective noon the next day.

Closer to the present, the date is still accumulating. In 2000, Confederate submarine H.L. Hunley is raised to the surface after 136 years on the ocean floor and 30 years after its discovery by undersea explorer E. Lee Spence. Then, in 2022, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) executes a search warrant at former president Donald Trump's residence in Mar-a-Lago, Palm Beach, Florida.

The date is also a birthday. Among the Americans born on August 8: Esther Hobart Morris (1814), American suffragette and judge; Nelson A. Miles (1839), American general; Jean Leon Gerome Ferris (1863), American painter; Matthew Henson (1866), American explorer; and Bob Smith (1879), American physician and surgeon, co-founded Alcoholics Anonymous.

August 8 is also a date of endings. Among the Americans who died on it: Alexander William Doniphan (1887), American colonel, lawyer, and politician; John Henry Twachtman (1902), American painter and academic; William P. Frye (1911), American lawyer and politician; and Wilbert Robinson (1934), American baseball player, coach, and manager.

8 entries, 375 years, one square on the calendar. August 8 is a reminder that history is experienced as an ordinary day before it is remembered as a date.