February 27

February 27 is the 58th day of the year, and the American record for it runs from 1776 to 1973 — a span of 197 years. The entry that anchors it: A challenge to the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, 1922.

The revolutionary generation left its own mark on the date. In 1776, American Revolutionary War — the Battle of Moore's Creek Bridge in North Carolina breaks up a Loyalist militia. Six years on, in 1782, American Revolutionary War — the House of Commons of Great Britain votes against further war in America.

The antebellum decades brought the date closer to the country’s central argument. In 1801, Pursuant to the District of Columbia Organic Act of 1801, Washington, D.C. is placed under the jurisdiction of the U.S. Congress. Then, in 1859, United States representative Daniel Sickles, after learning of an affair between his wife and United States Attorney Philip Barton Key II, murders him in Washington, D.C. Five years on, in 1864, American Civil War — the first Northern prisoners arrive at the Confederate prison at Andersonville, Georgia.

The early twentieth century brought industry, air travel and war to the date. In 1922, a challenge to the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, allowing women the right to vote, is rebuffed by the Supreme Court of the United States in Leser v. Garnett. Then, in 1939, United States labor law — the U.S. Supreme Court rules in NLRB v. Fansteel Metallurgical Corp. that the National Labor Relations Board has no authority to force an employer to rehire workers who engage in sit-down strikes.

After 1945 the date reflects a country operating at global scale. In 1973, the American Indian Movement occupies Wounded Knee in protest of the federal government.

The date is also a birthday. Among the Americans born on February 27: José Antonio Navarro (1795), American merchant and politician; Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807), American poet and educator; George Herbert Mead (1863), American sociologist and philosopher; Irving Fisher (1867), American economist and statistician; and Alice Hamilton (1869), American physician and academic.

February 27 is also a date of endings. Among the Americans who died on it: Henry Dunster (1659), English-American clergyman and academic; Samuel Parris (1720), English-American minister; Nicholas Biddle (1844), American banker and politician; and Joshua W. Alexander (1936), American judge and politician, 2nd United States Secretary of Commerce.

The record for February 27 runs 197 years deep across 8 entries. Read in sequence, the date stops being a coincidence and starts being a through-line.