January 12

January 12 is the 12th day of the year, and the American record for it runs from 1915 to 1991 — a span of 76 years. The entry that anchors it: World War II, 1942.

As the country moved into the modern age, the date accumulated new kinds of firsts. In 1915, the United States House of Representatives rejects a proposed constitutional amendment to require states to give women the right to vote. Then, in 1932, Hattie Caraway becomes the first woman elected to the United States Senate. Ten years on, in 1942, World War II — United States President Franklin D. Roosevelt creates the National War Labor Board.

In the postwar decades the date belonged to a nation of enormous reach and unfinished arguments. In 1966, Lyndon B. Johnson states that the United States should stay in South Vietnam until Communist aggression there is ended. Three years on, in 1969, the New York Jets of the American Football League defeat the Baltimore Colts of the National Football League to win Super Bowl III in what is considered to be one of the greatest upsets in sports history. Two years on, in 1971, The Harrisburg Seven — Rev. Philip Berrigan and five other activists are indicted on charges of conspiring to kidnap Henry Kissinger and of plotting to blow up the heating tunnels of federal buildings in Washington, D.C. Then, in 1986, Space Shuttle program — Congressman and future NASA Administrator Bill Nelson lifts off from Kennedy Space Center aboard Columbia on mission STS-61-C as a payload specialist.

In living memory, the date has kept adding to the record. In 1991, Persian Gulf War — an act of the U.S. Congress authorizes the use of American military force to drive Iraq out of Kuwait.

The date is also a birthday. Among the Americans born on January 12: Samuel Langdon (1723), American minister, theologian, and academic; John Singer Sargent (1856), American painter and academic; Laura Adams Armer (1874), American author and photographer; Jack London (1876), American novelist and journalist; and Frank J. Corr (1877), American lawyer and politician, 45th Mayor of Chicago.

January 12 is also a date of endings. Among the Americans who died on it: Hugh Mercer (1777), Scottish-American general and physician; Hiram Walker (1899), American businessman, founded Canadian Club; Oscar Florianus Bluemner (1938), German-American painter and illustrator; and Ralph Hitz (1940), Austrian-American hotelier.

Read end to end, January 12 is less a list than a cross-section: 8 entries that happen to share a square on the calendar, separated by as much as 76 years. The coincidence is arbitrary; the accumulation is not.