December 18

December 18 is the 353rd day of the year, and the American record for it runs from 1777 to 2017 — a span of 240 years. The entry that anchors it: The Supreme Court of the United States issued its decision in Korematsu v. United States supporting Franklin D. Roosevelt's Executive Order 9066 which cleared the way for the incarceration of nearly all 120, 1944.

In the years around independence, the date turns political. In 1777, the United States celebrates its first Thanksgiving, marking the recent victory by the American rebels over British General John Burgoyne at Saratoga in October. Ten years on, in 1787, New Jersey becomes the third state to ratify the U.S. Constitution.

By the middle of the nineteenth century the date carries heavier freight. In 1865, US Secretary of State William Seward proclaims the adoption of the Thirteenth Amendment, prohibiting slavery throughout the United States.

In the first half of the twentieth century the date turns technological. In 1917, the resolution containing the language of the Eighteenth Amendment to enact Prohibition is passed by the United States Congress. Then, in 1944, the Supreme Court of the United States issued its decision in Korematsu v. United States supporting Franklin D. Roosevelt's Executive Order 9066 which cleared the way for the incarceration of nearly all 120,000 Japanese Americans, two-thirds of whom were U.S. citizens, born and raised in the United States.

The postwar entries show a nation both expanding and contesting itself. In 1958, the United States launched SCORE, the world's first communications satellite. Then, in 1972, Vietnam War — President Richard Nixon announces that the United States will engage North Vietnam in Operation Linebacker II, a series of Christmas bombings, after peace talks collapsed with North Vietnam on the 13th.

Closer to the present, the date is still accumulating. In 2017, Amtrak Cascades passenger train 501, derailed near DuPont, Washington, a city in United States near Olympia, Washington killing six people, and injuring 70 others.

The date is also a birthday. Among the Americans born on December 18: Charles Griffin (1825), American general; John S. Harris (1825), American surveyor and politician; Lyman Abbott (1835), American minister, theologian, and author; Edward MacDowell (1860), American pianist and composer; and Foxhall P. Keene (1867), American polo player and horse breeder.

December 18 is also a date of endings. Among the Americans who died on it: Louis Moreau Gottschalk (1869), American pianist and composer; Ernest Lawson (1939), Canadian-American painter; Leo Reisman (1961), American violinist and bandleader; and Charles Dvorak (1969), American pole vaulter and coach.

The date carries formal observance as well — National Day (Qatar). 8 entries, 240 years, one square on the calendar. December 18 is a reminder that history is experienced as an ordinary day before it is remembered as a date.