December 6

December 6 is the 341st day of the year, and the American record for it runs from 1790 to 2017 — a span of 227 years. The entry that anchors it: Slavery in the United States was officially abolished with the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, 1865.

In the years around independence, the date turns political. In 1790, the U.S. Congress moves from New York City to Philadelphia.

By the middle of the nineteenth century the date carries heavier freight. In 1865, Slavery in the United States was officially abolished with the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. The same year, Georgia ratifies the 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

In the postwar nineteenth century the date tracks a nation rebuilding. In 1884, the Washington Monument in Washington, D.C., is completed.

In the first half of the twentieth century the date turns technological. In 1904, President Theodore Roosevelt announced the Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine, justifying the exercise of "international police power" by the U.S. in the Western Hemisphere. Three years on, in 1907, a mine explosion in Monongah, West Virginia, killed 362 people and led to the establishment of the United States Bureau of Mines.

The postwar entries show a nation both expanding and contesting itself. In 1973, The Twenty-fifth Amendment — the United States House of Representatives votes 387–35 to confirm Gerald Ford as Vice President of the United States. (On November 27, the Senate confirmed him 92–3.)

Closer to the present, the date is still accumulating. In 2017, under President Donald Trump, the United States government officially recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.

The date is also a birthday. Among the Americans born on December 6: Gabriel Duvall (1752), American jurist and politician; John S. Mosby (1833), American colonel; Charles Martin Hall (1863), American chemist and engineer; William S. Hart (1864), American actor, director, producer, and screenwriter; and Albert Bond Lambert (1875), American golfer and pilot.

December 6 is also a date of endings. Among the Americans who died on it: Erastus Brigham Bigelow (1879), American businessman; Jefferson Davis (1889), American general and politician, President of the Confederate States of America; Gene Stratton-Porter (1924), American author and screenwriter; and Harold Ross (1951), American journalist and publisher, founded The New Yorker.

The date carries formal observance as well — National Day of Remembrance and Action on Violence Against Women (Canada). 8 entries, 227 years, one square on the calendar. December 6 is a reminder that history is experienced as an ordinary day before it is remembered as a date.