December 4

December 4 is the 339th day of the year, and the American record for it runs from 1783 to 1992 — a span of 209 years. The entry that anchors it: American Civil War, 1861.

In the founding decades, the date sat close to the business of building a republic. In 1783, at Fraunces Tavern in New York City, U.S. General George Washington bids farewell to his officers.

Through the nineteenth century the date gathered the tensions that would define the era. In 1861, American Civil War — the 109 electors of the several states of the Confederate States of America unanimously elect Jefferson Davis as President and Alexander H. Stephens as Vice President. Two years on, in 1863, American Civil War — Confederate General James Longstreet lifts his unsuccessful siege of Knoxville, Tennessee after failing to capture the city. Two years on, in 1865, North Carolina ratifies 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, followed two days later by Georgia, and U.S. slaves were legally free within two weeks.

As the country moved into the modern age, the date accumulated new kinds of firsts. In 1918, U.S. President Woodrow Wilson sails for the World War I peace talks in Versailles, becoming the first US president to travel to Europe while in office. Then, in 1943, World War II — U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt closes down the Works Progress Administration, because of the high levels of wartime employment in the United States.

In the postwar decades the date belonged to a nation of enormous reach and unfinished arguments. In 1983, US Navy aircraft from USS John F. Kennedy and USS Independence attack Syrian missile sites in Lebanon in response to an F-14 being fired on by an SA-7. One A-6 Intruder and A-7 Corsair are shot down. One American pilot is killed, one is rescued, and one is captured.

In living memory, the date has kept adding to the record. In 1992, U.S. president George H. W. Bush ordered American troops into Somalia to help provide humanitarian aid and restore order during the ongoing Somali Civil War.

The date is also a birthday. Among the Americans born on December 4: John Cotton (1585), English-American minister and theologian; Jesse Burkett (1868), American baseball player, coach, and manager; Joe Corbett (1875), American baseball player and coach; Robert Redfield (1897), American anthropologist of Mexico; and Cornell Woolrich (1903), American author.

December 4 is also a date of endings. Among the Americans who died on it: Charles Dow (1902), American journalist and publisher, co-founded the Dow Jones & Company; Roger Bresnahan (1944), American baseball player and manager; Thomas Hunt Morgan (1945), American geneticist and biologist, Nobel Prize laureate; and Frank Benford (1948), American physicist and engineer.

Taken together, the 8 entries on December 4 span 209 years of American life. A date is an arbitrary container, but what fills it is not arbitrary at all.