May 23

May 23 is the 144th day of the year, and the American record for it runs from 1788 to 1980 — a span of 192 years. The entry that anchors it: American Civil War, 1862.

In the founding decades, the date sat close to the business of building a republic. In 1788, South Carolina became the eighth state to ratify the United States Constitution.

Through the nineteenth century the date gathered the tensions that would define the era. In 1846, Mexican–American War — President Mariano Paredes of Mexico unofficially declares war on the United States. Then, in 1862, American Civil War — Confederate troops under Stonewall Jackson defeated a Union force at the Battle of Front Royal in Virginia, taking around 700 prisoners.

As the country moved into the modern age, the date accumulated new kinds of firsts. In 1900, American Civil War — Sergeant William Harvey Carney is awarded the Medal of Honor for his heroism in the Assault on the Battery Wagner in 1863. Then, in 1934, American bank robbers Bonnie and Clyde are ambushed by police and killed in Bienville Parish, Louisiana. Five years on, in 1939, the U.S. Navy submarine Squalus sank off Portsmouth, New Hampshire, during tests, causing 26 men to drown.

In the postwar decades the date belonged to a nation of enormous reach and unfinished arguments. In 1946, the start of a two-day tornado outbreak across the Central United States that spawned at least 15 significant tornadoes. Then, in 1980, the Shining, the psychological horror film directed by Stanley Kubrick, premiered on 10 screens in New York City and Los Angeles.

The date is also a birthday. Among the Americans born on May 23: Margaret Fuller (1810), American journalist and critic; James Buchanan Eads (1820), American engineer, designed the Eads Bridge; Lorenzo Sawyer (1820), American lawyer and judge; Ambrose Burnside (1824), American general and politician, 30th Governor of Rhode Island; and William O'Connor (1864), American fencer.

May 23 is also a date of endings. Among the Americans who died on it: William Bradford (1752), English-American printer; James Otis Jr. (1783), American lawyer and politician; Gotthilf Heinrich Ernst Muhlenberg (1815), American clergyman and botanist; and Kit Carson (1868), American general.

The date carries formal observance as well — Aromanian National Day. Read end to end, May 23 is less a list than a cross-section: 8 entries that happen to share a square on the calendar, separated by as much as 192 years. The coincidence is arbitrary; the accumulation is not.