June 24

June 24 is the 176th day of the year, and the American record for it runs from 1779 to 2022 — a span of 243 years. The entry that anchors it: In Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, 2022.

In the years around independence, the date turns political. In 1779, American Revolutionary War — the Great Siege of Gibraltar begins.

In the first half of the twentieth century the date turns technological. In 1937, the U.S. Navy's first two fast battleships, North Carolina and Washington, of the North Carolina class, were respectively ordered from the New York and Philadelphia Naval Shipyards. Six years on, in 1943, amid racial tensions, U.S. Army military police shot and killed a black serviceman after a confrontation at a pub in Bamber Bridge, England.

The postwar entries show a nation both expanding and contesting itself. In 1957, in Roth v. United States, the U.S. Supreme Court rules that obscenity is not protected by the First Amendment. Then, in 1975, Eastern Air Lines Flight 66 encounters severe wind shear and crashes on final approach to New York's JFK Airport killing 113 of the 124 passengers on board, making it the deadliest U.S. plane crash at the time. This accident led to decades of research into downburst and microburst phenomena and their effects on aircraft.

Closer to the present, the date is still accumulating. In 2010, at Wimbledon, John Isner of the United States defeats Nicolas Mahut of France, in the longest match in professional tennis history. Then, in 2021, a portion of a 12-story condominium building collapsed in Surfside, Florida, United States, killing 98 people and injuring 11 others. A year later, in 2022, in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, the U.S. Supreme Court rules that the U.S. Constitution does not assign the authority to regulate abortions to the federal government, thereby returning such authority to the individual states. This overturns the prior decisions in Roe v. Wade (1973) and Planned Parenthood v. Casey (1992)

The date is also a birthday. Among the Americans born on June 24: William Arnold (1587), English-American settler; William Hull (1753), American general and politician, 1st Governor of Michigan Territory; Thomas Blanchard (1788), American inventor; John Hughes (1797), Irish-American archbishop; and Willard Richards (1804), American religious leader.

June 24 is also a date of endings. Among the Americans who died on it: Matthew Thornton (1803), Irish-American judge and politician; Thomas McKean (1817), American lawyer and politician, 2nd Governor of Pennsylvania; Grover Cleveland (1908), American lawyer and politician, 22nd and 24th President of the United States; and Sarah Orne Jewett (1909), American novelist, short story writer, and poet.

The date carries formal observance as well — St John's Day and the second day of the Midsummer celebrations (although this is not the astronomical summer solstice, see June 20) (Roman Catholic Church, Europe), and its related observances: — Catalan Countries National Day (Andorra, Balearic Islands, Catalonia, Northern Catalonia, Valencia). June 24 carries 8 entries spread across 243 years. None of the people in them knew they were sharing a date; that is a pattern only visible looking back.