February 21

February 21 is the 52nd day of the year, and the American record for it runs from 1828 to 1975 — a span of 147 years. The entry that anchors it: Watergate scandal, 1975.

The antebellum decades brought the date closer to the country’s central argument. In 1828, the inaugural issue of the Cherokee Phoenix, the first newspaper in a Native American language, was published. Then, in 1842, John Greenough is granted the first U.S. patent for the sewing machine. Then, in 1862, American Civil War — the Confederate Army began an attempt to gain control of the Southwest with a major victory in the Battle of Valverde. The same year, American Civil War — Battle of Valverde is fought near Fort Craig in New Mexico Territory.

After 1945 the date reflects a country operating at global scale. In 1947, in New York City, Edwin Land demonstrates the first "instant camera", the Polaroid Land Camera, to a meeting of the Optical Society of America. Then, in 1965, American Black nationalist Malcolm X was assassinated while giving a speech in New York City's Audubon Ballroom. Seven years on, in 1972, United States President Richard Nixon visits China to normalize Sino-American relations. Three years on, in 1975, Watergate scandal — Former United States Attorney General John N. Mitchell and former White House aides H. R. Haldeman and John Ehrlichman are sentenced to prison.

The date is also a birthday. Among the Americans born on February 21: Charles Scribner I (1821), American publisher, founded Charles Scribner's Sons; Harry Stack Sullivan (1892), American psychiatrist and psychoanalyst; Celia Lovsky (1893), Austrian-American actress; Anaïs Nin (1903), French-American essayist and memoirist; and W. H. Auden (1907), English-American poet, playwright, and composer.

February 21 is also a date of endings. Among the Americans who died on it: James Timberlake (1891), American lieutenant and police officer; George Ellery Hale (1938), American astronomer and academic; Fannie Charles Dillon (1947), American composer; and Malcolm X (1965), American minister and activist.

The record for February 21 runs 147 years deep across 8 entries. Read in sequence, the date stops being a coincidence and starts being a through-line.