January 13

January 13 is the 13th day of the year, and the American record for it runs from 1833 to 2021 — a span of 188 years. The entry that anchors it: United States President Andrew Jackson writes to Vice President elect Martin Van Buren expressing his opposition to South Carolina's defiance of federal authority in the Nullification Crisis, 1833.

The antebellum decades brought the date closer to the country’s central argument. In 1833, United States President Andrew Jackson writes to Vice President elect Martin Van Buren expressing his opposition to South Carolina's defiance of federal authority in the Nullification Crisis.

Reconstruction and the years that followed added their own entries. In 1888, the National Geographic Society is founded in Washington, D.C. Five years on, in 1893, U.S. Marines land in Honolulu, Hawaii from the USS Boston to prevent the queen from abrogating the Bayonet Constitution.

After 1945 the date reflects a country operating at global scale. In 1966, Robert C. Weaver becomes the first African American Cabinet member when he is appointed United States Secretary of Housing and Urban Development. Three years on, in 1969, British rock band Led Zeppelin released their first album, Led Zeppelin, in the United States. Nine years on, in 1978, United States Food and Drug Administration requires all blood donations to be labeled "paid" or "volunteer" donors. Four years on, in 1982, shortly after takeoff, Air Florida Flight 90, a Boeing 737 jet, crashes into Washington, D.C.'s 14th Street Bridge and falls into the Potomac River, killing 78 including four motorists.

The most recent entries fall within living memory. In 2021, Outgoing U.S. President Donald Trump is impeached for a second time on a charge of incitement of insurrection following the January 6 United States Capitol attack one week prior.

The date is also a birthday. Among the Americans born on January 13: John Davis (1787), American lawyer and politician, 14th Governor of Massachusetts; Thomas Dyer (1805), American lawyer and politician, 18th Mayor of Chicago; Salmon P. Chase (1808), American jurist and politician, 6th Chief Justice of the United States; Ernestine Rose (1810), American suffragist, abolitionist, and freethinker; and Ross Granville Harrison (1870), American biologist and anatomist.

January 13 is also a date of endings. Among the Americans who died on it: William Mason (1860), American surgeon and politician; Stephen Foster (1864), American composer and songwriter; Schuyler Colfax (1885), American journalist and politician, 17th Vice President of the United States; and Solomon Bundy (1889), American lawyer and politician.

The date carries formal observance as well — Stephen Foster Memorial Day (United States). What holds these 8 entries together is nothing more than the calendar, and nothing less. 188 years separate the earliest from the latest, and each was once simply the present day.