March 22

March 22 is the 82nd day of the year, and the American record for it runs from 1765 to 2017 — a span of 252 years. The entry that anchors it: The United States Congress votes to override President Ronald Reagan's veto of the Civil Rights Restoration Act of 1987, 1988.

The earliest entries here predate the republic entirely. In 1765, the Parliament of Great Britain passed the Stamp Act, requiring that many printed materials in the Thirteen Colonies in British America carry a tax stamp.

The revolutionary generation left its own mark on the date. In 1794, the Slave Trade Act, which banned the export of slaves from the United States, was signed by George Washington.

After 1945 the date reflects a country operating at global scale. In 1972, the United States Congress sends the Equal Rights Amendment to the states for ratification. The same year, in Eisenstadt v. Baird, the United States Supreme Court decides that unmarried persons have the right to possess contraceptives. Ten years on, in 1982, NASA's Space Shuttle Columbia is launched from the Kennedy Space Center on its third mission, STS-3. Six years on, in 1988, the United States Congress votes to override President Ronald Reagan's veto of the Civil Rights Restoration Act of 1987.

The most recent entries fall within living memory. In 1996, NASA's Space Shuttle Atlantis is launched on its 16th mission, STS-76. Then, in 2017, Syrian civil war — five hundred members of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) are airlifted south of the Euphrates by United States Air Force helicopters, beginning the Battle of Tabqa.

The date is also a birthday. Among the Americans born on March 22: Charles Carroll (1723), American lawyer and politician; David Swinson Maynard (1808), American physician and lawyer; Stephen Pearl Andrews (1812), American author and activist; Thomas Crawford (1814), American sculptor, designed the Statue of Freedom; and Braxton Bragg (1817), American general.

March 22 is also a date of endings. Among the Americans who died on it: Stephen Decatur (1820), American commander; Mike Todd (1958), American film producer; John Harlin (1966), American mountaineer and pilot; and Johannes Villemson (1971), Estonian-American runner.

The record for March 22 runs 252 years deep across 8 entries. Read in sequence, the date stops being a coincidence and starts being a through-line.