July 16

July 16 is the 198th day of the year, and the American record for it runs from 1779 to 2015 — a span of 236 years. The entry that anchors it: President George Washington signed the Residence Act, 1790.

In the founding decades, the date sat close to the business of building a republic. In 1779, American Revolutionary War — Light infantry of the Continental Army seize a fortified British Army position in a midnight bayonet attack at the Battle of Stony Point. Then, in 1790, President George Washington signed the Residence Act, selecting a new permanent site along the Potomac River for the capital of the United States, which later became Washington, D.C.

Through the nineteenth century the date gathered the tensions that would define the era. In 1861, American Civil War — at the order of President Abraham Lincoln, Union troops begin a 25-mile march into Virginia for what will become the First Battle of Bull Run, the first major land battle of the war. A year later, in 1862, American Civil War — David Farragut is promoted to rear admiral, becoming the first officer in United States Navy to hold an admiral rank.

As the country moved into the modern age, the date accumulated new kinds of firsts. In 1915, at Treasure Island on the Delaware River in the United States, the First Order of the Arrow ceremony takes place and the Order of the Arrow is founded to honor American Boy Scouts who best exemplify the Scout Oath and Law. Then, in 1945, Manhattan Project — the Atomic Age begins when the United States successfully detonates a plutonium-based test nuclear weapon near Alamogordo, New Mexico.

In the postwar decades the date belonged to a nation of enormous reach and unfinished arguments. In 1969, the Apollo 11 lunar landing mission is launched from Cape Kennedy in Florida, USA.

In living memory, the date has kept adding to the record. In 2015, four U.S. Marines and a United States Navy Sailor are killed in the a shooting spree targeting military installations in Chattanooga, Tennessee.

The date is also a birthday. Among the Americans born on July 16: Samuel Huntington (1731), American jurist and politician, 18th governor of Connecticut; Cyrus Griffin (1748), American lawyer, judge, and politician, 16th President of the Continental Congress; Mary Baker Eddy (1821), American religious leader and author, founded Christian Science; Ida B. Wells (1862), American journalist and activist; and John Maxwell (1871), American golfer.

July 16 is also a date of endings. Among the Americans who died on it: Sarah Allen (1849), African-American missionary for the African Methodist Episcopal Church; Ned Buntline (1886), American journalist and author; Ellen G. White (1915), American author and co-founder of the Seventh-day Adventist Church; and John P. Marquand (1960), American author.

Read end to end, July 16 is less a list than a cross-section: 8 entries that happen to share a square on the calendar, separated by as much as 236 years. The coincidence is arbitrary; the accumulation is not.