February 29

February 29 is the 60th day of the year, and the American record for it runs from 1704 to 2020 — a span of 316 years. The entry that anchors it: James Madison University is founded at Harrisonburg, 1908.

Before there was a United States, the date already carried weight in the colonies. In 1704, Queen Anne's War — French and Native American forces raided the English settlement of Deerfield, Massachusetts, killing more than 50 colonists.

In the founding decades, the date sat close to the business of building a republic. In 1796, the Jay Treaty between the United States and Great Britain comes into force, facilitating ten years of peaceful trade between the two nations.

As the country moved into the modern age, the date accumulated new kinds of firsts. In 1908, James Madison University is founded at Harrisonburg, Virginia, United States as The State Normal and Industrial School for Women by the Virginia General Assembly. Then, in 1940, in a ceremony held in Berkeley, California, physicist Ernest Lawrence receives the 1939 Nobel Prize in Physics from Sweden's consul general in San Francisco. The same year, at the 12th Academy Awards, Hattie McDaniel became the first African American to be awarded an Oscar, winning Best Supporting Actress for her role as Mammy in Gone with the Wind. Four years on, in 1944, World War II — the Admiralty Islands campaign began when American forces assaulted Los Negros Island, the third largest of the Admiralty Islands.

In living memory, the date has kept adding to the record. In 2004, Haitian president Jean-Bertrand Aristide was overthrown following popular rebel uprising. Then, in 2020, the United States and the Taliban sign the Doha Agreement for bringing peace to Afghanistan.

The date is also a birthday. Among the Americans born on February 29: Ann Lee (1736), English-American religious leader, founder of the Shakers; Emmeline B. Wells (1828), American journalist, poet and activist; Dickey Pearce (1836), American baseball player and manager; Herman Hollerith (1860), American statistician and businessman, co-founder of the Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company; and Richard S. Aldrich (1884), American lawyer and politician.

February 29 is also a date of endings. Among the Americans who died on it: Pat Garrett (1908), American sheriff; Ernie Courtney (1920), American baseball player; Ina Coolbrith (1928), American poet and librarian; and Melvin Purvis (1960), American police officer and FBI agent.

Read end to end, February 29 is less a list than a cross-section: 8 entries that happen to share a square on the calendar, separated by as much as 316 years. The coincidence is arbitrary; the accumulation is not.