February 28

February 28 is the 59th day of the year, and the American record for it runs from 1893 to 2026 — a span of 133 years. The entry that anchors it: The United Kingdom ends its protectorate over Egypt through a Unilateral Declaration of Independence, 1922.

In the postwar nineteenth century the date tracks a nation rebuilding. In 1893, USS Indiana, the lead ship of her class and the first battleship in the United States Navy comparable to foreign battleships of the time, was launched.

In the first half of the twentieth century the date turns technological. In 1922, the United Kingdom ends its protectorate over Egypt through a Unilateral Declaration of Independence.

The postwar entries show a nation both expanding and contesting itself. In 1958, a school bus in Floyd County, Kentucky hits a wrecker truck and plunges down an embankment into the rain-swollen Levisa Fork river. The driver and 26 children die in one of the worst school bus accidents in U.S. history. Five years on, in 1963, Chicago alderman Benjamin F. Lewis was murdered in his office by unknown assailants two days after having been reelected. Three years on, in 1966, a NASA T-38 Talon crashes into the McDonnell Aircraft factory while attempting a poor-visibility landing at Lambert Field, St. Louis, killing astronauts Elliot See and Charles Bassett. The same year, American test pilots Charles Bassett and Elliot See die in a plane crash in St. Louis, Missouri.

Closer to the present, the date is still accumulating. In 1997, two heavily armed bank robbers exchanged gunfire with officers of the Los Angeles Police Department in North Hollywood, in one of the most intense gun battles in American police history. Then, in 2026, the United States and Israel launched strikes against Iran, killing Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and other senior officials.

The date is also a birthday. Among the Americans born on February 28: William Zorach (1887), Lithuanian-American sculptor and painter; Ben Hecht (1894), American director, producer, and screenwriter; Philip Showalter Hench (1896), American physician and endocrinologist, Nobel Prize laureate; Linus Pauling (1901), American chemist and activist, Nobel Prize laureate; and Bugsy Siegel (1906), American gangster.

February 28 is also a date of endings. Among the Americans who died on it: Charles Bassett (1966), American captain, engineer, and astronaut; Elliot See (1966), American commander, engineer, and astronaut; Eddie "Rochester" Anderson (1977), American actor and comedian; and Zara Cully (1978), American actress.

8 entries, 133 years, one square on the calendar. February 28 is a reminder that history is experienced as an ordinary day before it is remembered as a date.