June 25

June 25 is the 177th day of the year, and the American record for it runs from 1788 to 2013 — a span of 225 years. The entry that anchors it: Battle of the Little Bighorn, 1876.

In the founding decades, the date sat close to the business of building a republic. In 1788, Virginia becomes the tenth state to ratify the United States Constitution.

In the decades after the Civil War, the date marked a country remaking itself. In 1876, Battle of the Little Bighorn — 300 men of the U.S. 7th Cavalry Regiment under Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer are wiped out by 5,000 Lakota, Cheyenne and Arapaho, led by Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse.

As the country moved into the modern age, the date accumulated new kinds of firsts. In 1910, the United States Congress passed the Mann Act, which prohibited the interstate transport of females for "immoral purposes" Then, in 1944, World War II — U.S. Navy and Royal Navy ships bombarded Cherbourg, France, to support U.S. Army units engaged in the Battle of Cherbourg.

In the postwar decades the date belonged to a nation of enormous reach and unfinished arguments. In 1948, the United States Congress passes the Displaced Persons Act to allow World War II refugees to immigrate to the United States above quota restrictions. Then, in 1960, two cryptographers working for the U.S. National Security Agency left on vacation to Mexico, and proceeded to defect to the Soviet Union.

In living memory, the date has kept adding to the record. In 1998, in Clinton v. City of New York, the United States Supreme Court decides that the Line Item Veto Act of 1996 is unconstitutional. Then, in 2013, in response to a Freedom of Information Act request, the CIA acknowledged the existence of Area 51, a secretive U.S. Air Force facility in Nevada and a subject of various UFO, and other, conspiracy theories.

The date is also a birthday. Among the Americans born on June 25: Rose O'Neill (1874), American cartoonist, illustrator, artist, and writer; Henry H. Arnold (1886), American general; George Abbott (1887), American director, producer, and screenwriter; Kay Sage (1898), American painter and poet; and Georgia Hale (1900), American silent film actress and real estate investor.

June 25 is also a date of endings. Among the Americans who died on it: Ebenezer Pemberton (1835), American educator; David Heaton (1870), American lawyer and politician; James Calhoun (1876), American lieutenant; and Boston Custer (1876), American civilian army contractor.

The date carries formal observance as well — National Catfish Day (United States). Taken together, the 8 entries on June 25 span 225 years of American life. A date is an arbitrary container, but what fills it is not arbitrary at all.