December 10

December 10 is the 345th day of the year, and the American record for it runs from 1817 to 2021 — a span of 204 years. The entry that anchors it: American Civil War, 1861.

Through the nineteenth century the date gathered the tensions that would define the era. In 1817, Mississippi becomes the 20th U.S. state. Then, in 1861, American Civil War — the Confederate States of America accept a rival state government's pronouncement that declares Kentucky to be the 12th state of the Confederacy. Three years on, in 1864, Sherman's March to the Sea — Major General William Tecumseh Sherman's Union Army troops reach the outer Confederate defenses of Savannah, Georgia.

In the decades after the Civil War, the date marked a country remaking itself. In 1890, the New York World Building, the then-tallest building in the United States at a height of 110 meters, was completed in New York City. Eight years on, in 1898, Spanish–American War — the Treaty of Paris is signed, officially ending the conflict. Spain cedes administration of Cuba to the United States, and the United States agrees to pay Spain $20 million for the Philippines.

As the country moved into the modern age, the date accumulated new kinds of firsts. In 1906, U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt is awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his role in the mediation of the Russo-Japanese War, becoming the first American to win a Nobel Prize in any field. Five years on, in 1911, Calbraith Perry Rodgers completed the first transcontinental flight across the United States.

In living memory, the date has kept adding to the record. In 2021, a widespread, deadly, and violent tornado outbreak slams the Central, Midwestern, and Southern regions of the United States. Eighty-nine people are killed by the tornadoes, with most of the fatalities occurring in Kentucky, where a single tornado kills 57 people, and injures hundreds of others. Another tornado in Edwardsville, Illinois strikes an Amazon warehouse, killing six workers.

The date is also a birthday. Among the Americans born on December 10: Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet (1787), American educator, founded the American School for the Deaf; William Lloyd Garrison (1805), American journalist and activist, founded The Liberator; Caroline Mehitable Fisher Sawyer (1811), American poet, biographer, and editor; Emily Dickinson (1830), American poet; and Melvil Dewey (1851), American librarian, created the Dewey Decimal System.

December 10 is also a date of endings. Among the Americans who died on it: Red Cloud (1909), American tribal chief (of the Oglala nation); Horace Elgin Dodge (1920), American businessman, co-founded Dodge; Harry Crosby (1929), American publisher and poet; and John Grieb (1939), American gymnast and triathlete.

Taken together, the 8 entries on December 10 span 204 years of American life. A date is an arbitrary container, but what fills it is not arbitrary at all.