March 23

March 23 is the 83rd day of the year, and the American record for it runs from 1775 to 2005 — a span of 230 years. The entry that anchors it: American Civil War, 1862.

The colonial record reaches this date first. In 1775, American Revolutionary War — "Give me liberty or give me death!" – at St. John's Episcopal Church, Richmond, Virginia.

By the middle of the nineteenth century the date carries heavier freight. In 1806, after traveling through the Louisiana Purchase and reaching the Pacific Ocean, explorers Lewis and Clark and their Corps of Discovery begin their arduous journey home. Then, in 1862, American Civil War — General Stonewall Jackson of the Confederate States Army lost the First Battle of Kernstown, but was still able to prevent the Union Army from reinforcing the Peninsula campaign.

In the first half of the twentieth century the date turns technological. In 1909, Theodore Roosevelt leaves New York for a post-presidency safari in Africa. The trip is sponsored by the Smithsonian Institution and National Geographic Society.

The postwar entries show a nation both expanding and contesting itself. In 1965, NASA launches Gemini 3, the United States' first two-man space flight (crew: Gus Grissom and John Young) Then, in 1977, British journalist David Frost began a series of interviews with former U.S. president Richard Nixon, starting with the Watergate scandal. Six years on, in 1983, Strategic Defense Initiative — President Ronald Reagan makes his initial proposal to develop technology to intercept enemy missiles.

Closer to the present, the date is still accumulating. In 2005, a fire and explosion at an oil refinery in Texas City, the third-largest in the United States, killed 15 workers.

The date is also a birthday. Among the Americans born on March 23: Schuyler Colfax (1823), American journalist and politician, 17th Vice President of the United States; Susan Jane Cunningham (1842), American mathematician; Nathaniel Reed (1862), American criminal; J. C. Leyendecker (1874), German-American painter and illustrator; and Lacey Hearn (1881), American sprinter.

March 23 is also a date of endings. Among the Americans who died on it: Henry C. Lord (1884), American businessman; Gilbert N. Lewis (1946), American chemist; Franklin Pierce Adams (1960), American journalist and author; and Albert Bloch (1961), American painter and educator.

8 entries, 230 years, one square on the calendar. March 23 is a reminder that history is experienced as an ordinary day before it is remembered as a date.