May 16

May 16 is the 137th day of the year, and the American record for it runs from 1771 to 1991 — a span of 220 years. The entry that anchors it: Continental Army officer Lachlan McIntosh fatally wounds Button Gwinnett, 1777.

The colonial record reaches this date first. In 1771, the Battle of Alamance, a pre-American Revolutionary War battle between local militia and a group of rebels called The "Regulators", occurs in present-day Alamance County, North Carolina.

In the years around independence, the date turns political. In 1777, Continental Army officer Lachlan McIntosh fatally wounds Button Gwinnett, a signer of the United States Declaration of Independence, in a duel in Savannah, Georgia.

By the middle of the nineteenth century the date carries heavier freight. In 1863, American Civil War — during the Vicksburg campaign, the decisive Union victory by Ulysses S. Grant at the Battle of Champion Hill drives the Confederate army under John C. Pemberton back towards Vicksburg, Mississippi.

In the postwar nineteenth century the date tracks a nation rebuilding. In 1866, the United States Congress authorized the minting of the Shield nickel, the country's first five-cent piece to be made of a copper–nickel alloy. Two years on, in 1868, the United States Senate fails to convict President Andrew Johnson by one vote.

In the first half of the twentieth century the date turns technological. In 1918, the Sedition Act of 1918 is passed by the U.S. Congress, making criticism of the government during wartime an imprisonable offense. It will be repealed less than two years later. Then, in 1929, the first Academy Awards ceremony was held at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel in Los Angeles, California.

Closer to the present, the date is still accumulating. In 1991, Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom addresses a joint session of the United States Congress. She is the first British monarch to address the U.S. Congress.

The date is also a birthday. Among the Americans born on May 16: William H. Seward (1801), American lawyer and politician, 24th United States Secretary of State; Elizabeth Palmer Peabody (1804), American educator who founded the first U.S. kindergarten; Levi P. Morton (1824), American banker and politician, 22nd United States Vice President; Edmund Kirby Smith (1824), American general; and David Edward Hughes (1831), Welsh-American physicist, co-invented the microphone.

May 16 is also a date of endings. Among the Americans who died on it: Jacob Leisler (1691), German-American politician, 8th Colonial Governor of New York; Reuben Chapman (1882), American lawyer and politician, 13th Governor of Alabama; Levi P. Morton (1920), American politician, 22nd United States Vice President; and Joseph Strauss (1938), American engineer, co designed The Golden Gate Bridge.

The date carries formal observance as well — National Day, declared by Salva Kiir Mayardit (South Sudan). 8 entries, 220 years, one square on the calendar. May 16 is a reminder that history is experienced as an ordinary day before it is remembered as a date.