July 14

July 14 is the 196th day of the year, and the American record for it runs from 1798 to 2015 — a span of 217 years. The entry that anchors it: In Diamond, 1943.

The revolutionary generation left its own mark on the date. In 1798, the Sedition Act became law, making it a federal crime to write, publish, or utter false or malicious statements about the U.S. federal government.

Reconstruction and the years that followed added their own entries. In 1881, while on the run from a death sentence, American outlaw Billy the Kid was shot and killed by Sherriff Pat Garrett in Fort Sumner, New Mexico.

The early twentieth century brought industry, air travel and war to the date. In 1911, Harry Atwood, an exhibition pilot for the Wright brothers, is greeted by president William Howard Taft after he lands his aeroplane on the South Lawn of the White House, having flown from Boston. Then, in 1943, in Diamond, Missouri, the George Washington Carver National Monument becomes the first United States National Monument in honor of an African American.

After 1945 the date reflects a country operating at global scale. In 1950, Korean War — North Korean troops began attacking the headquarters of the American 24th Infantry Division in present-day Daejeon, South Korea.

The most recent entries fall within living memory. In 2003, Valerie Plame's identity as a CIA operative was leaked to and published by journalist Robert Novak. Then, in 2014, Lightning strikes started four fires in the Methow Valley in the U.S. state of Washington, collectively known as the Carlton Complex Fire. A year later, in 2015, NASA's New Horizons probe performs the first flyby of Pluto, and thus completes the initial survey of the Solar System.

The date is also a birthday. Among the Americans born on July 14: Mordecai Manuel Noah (1785), American journalist, playwright, and diplomat; Kate M. Gordon (1861), American activist; Florence Bascom (1862), American geologist and educator; Arthur Capper (1865), American journalist and politician, 20th Governor of Kansas; and Donald Meek (1878), Scottish-American stage and film actor.

July 14 is also a date of endings. Among the Americans who died on it: Edmond-Charles Genêt (1834), French-American diplomat; William H. Bonney aka Billy the Kid (1881), American gunfighter and outlaw (born 1859 or 1860); Quentin Roosevelt (1918), American lieutenant and pilot; and Dhan Gopal Mukerji (1936), Indian-American author and scholar.

The record for July 14 runs 217 years deep across 8 entries. Read in sequence, the date stops being a coincidence and starts being a through-line.