February 4

February 4 is the 35th day of the year, and the American record for it runs from 1789 to 2003 — a span of 214 years. The entry that anchors it: American Civil War, 1861.

In the years around independence, the date turns political. In 1789, George Washington is unanimously elected as the first President of the United States by the U.S. Electoral College.

By the middle of the nineteenth century the date carries heavier freight. In 1801, John Marshall, whose court opinions helped lay the basis for U.S. constitutional law and made the Supreme Court a coequal branch of government, took office as chief justice. Then, in 1861, American Civil War — in Montgomery, Alabama, delegates from six breakaway U.S. states meet and initiate the process that would form the Confederate States of America on February 8.

In the postwar nineteenth century the date tracks a nation rebuilding. In 1899, the Philippine–American War began when an American soldier, under orders to keep insurgents away from his unit's encampment, fired on a Filipino soldier in Manila.

In the first half of the twentieth century the date turns technological. In 1945, World War II — American forces liberated the Santo Tomas Internment Camp in Manila, the largest Japanese-run internment camp for enemy civilians in the Philippines.

The postwar entries show a nation both expanding and contesting itself. In 1967, Lunar Orbiter program — Lunar Orbiter 3 lifts off from Cape Canaveral's Launch Complex 13 on its mission to identify possible landing sites for the Surveyor and Apollo spacecraft. Seven years on, in 1974, American newspaper heiress and socialite Patty Hearst was kidnapped by the Symbionese Liberation Army, which she later joined.

Closer to the present, the date is still accumulating. In 2003, the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia adopts a new constitution, becoming a loose confederacy between Montenegro and Serbia.

The date is also a birthday. Among the Americans born on February 4: Oliver Ames (1831), American financier and politician, 35th Governor of Massachusetts; Bill Haywood (1869), American labor organizer; Eddie Cochems (1877), American football player and coach; Reinhold Rudenberg (1883), German-American inventor and a pioneer of electron microscopy; and Virginia M. Alexander (1899), American physician and founder of the Aspiranto Health Home.

February 4 is also a date of endings. Among the Americans who died on it: Henry Kuttner (1958), American author and screenwriter; Una O'Connor (1959), Irish-American actress; Neal Cassady (1968), American novelist and poet; and Louise Bogan (1970), American poet and critic.

The date carries formal observance as well — Rosa Parks Day (California and Missouri, United States) and International Day of Human Fraternity. 8 entries, 214 years, one square on the calendar. February 4 is a reminder that history is experienced as an ordinary day before it is remembered as a date.