February 26

February 26 is the 57th day of the year, and the American record for it runs from 1919 to 2019 — a span of 100 years. The entry that anchors it: World Trade Center bombing, 1993.

As the country moved into the modern age, the date accumulated new kinds of firsts. In 1919, President Woodrow Wilson signs an act of Congress establishing the Grand Canyon National Park. Ten years on, in 1929, President Calvin Coolidge signs legislation establishing the 96,000 acres (390 km2) Grand Teton National Park in Wyoming.

In the postwar decades the date belonged to a nation of enormous reach and unfinished arguments. In 1966, Apollo program — Launch of AS-201, the first flight of the Saturn IB rocket. Then, in 1987, Iran–Contra affair — the Tower Commission rebukes President Ronald Reagan for not controlling his national security staff.

In living memory, the date has kept adding to the record. In 1993, World Trade Center bombing — in New York City, a truck bomb parked below the North Tower of the World Trade Center explodes, killing six and injuring over a thousand people. Then, in 2008, in the first significant cultural visit from the United States to North Korea since the Korean War, the New York Philharmonic Orchestra performed in Pyongyang. Four years on, in 2012, African-American teenager Trayvon Martin was killed by neighborhood-watch coordinator George Zimmerman in Sanford, Florida, prompting a nationwide controversy. Seven years on, in 2019, Indian Air Force fighter-jets target Jaish-e-Mohammed terrorist training camps in Balakot, Pakistan.

The date is also a birthday. Among the Americans born on February 26: Nathan Kelley (1808), American architect, designed the Ohio Statehouse; Levi Strauss (1829), German-American fashion designer, founded Levi Strauss & Co.; Buffalo Bill (1846), American soldier and hunter; John Harvey Kellogg (1852), American surgeon, co-created Corn flakes; and Herbert Henry Dow (1866), Canadian-American businessman, founded the Dow Chemical Company.

February 26 is also a date of endings. Among the Americans who died on it: Esek Hopkins (1802), American admiral; Robert R. Livingston (1813), American lawyer and politician, 1st United States Secretary of Foreign Affairs; Sybil Ludington (1839), American figure of the American Revolutionary War; and Richard Jordan Gatling (1903), American engineer, invented the Gatling gun.

Taken together, the 8 entries on February 26 span 100 years of American life. A date is an arbitrary container, but what fills it is not arbitrary at all.