May 29

May 29 is the 150th day of the year, and the American record for it runs from 1780 to 2015 — a span of 235 years. The entry that anchors it: Rhode Island becomes the last of North America's original Thirteen Colonies to ratify the Constitution and become one of the United States, 1790.

In the founding decades, the date sat close to the business of building a republic. In 1780, American Revolutionary War — at the Waxhaws Massacre, the British continue attacking after the Continentals lay down their arms, killing 113 and critically wounding all but 53 that remained. Ten years on, in 1790, Rhode Island becomes the last of North America's original Thirteen Colonies to ratify the Constitution and become one of the United States.

Through the nineteenth century the date gathered the tensions that would define the era. In 1852, Swedish operatic soprano Jenny Lind concluded a successful concert tour of the United States under the management of showman P. T. Barnum.

In the postwar decades the date belonged to a nation of enormous reach and unfinished arguments. In 1988, U.S. President Ronald Reagan begins his first visit to the Soviet Union when he arrives in Moscow for a superpower summit with the Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev. A year later, in 1989, Signing of an agreement between Egypt and the United States that allows for the manufacture of F-16 Falcon parts in Egypt.

In living memory, the date has kept adding to the record. In 2001, the U.S. Supreme Court rules that the disabled golfer Casey Martin can use a cart to ride in tournaments. Three years on, in 2004, the National World War II Memorial is dedicated in Washington, D.C. Then, in 2015, one World Observatory at One World Trade Center opens.

The date is also a birthday. Among the Americans born on May 29: Patrick Henry (1736), American lawyer and politician, 1st Governor of Virginia; John H. Balsley (1823), American carpenter and inventor; Clark Voorhees (1871), American painter; Max Brand (1893), American journalist and author; and Josef von Sternberg (1894), Austrian-American director, producer, and screenwriter.

May 29 is also a date of endings. Among the Americans who died on it: Israel Putnam (1790), American general; Winfield Scott (1866), American general, lawyer, and politician; Bruce Price (1903), American architect, designed the Château Frontenac and American Surety Building; and Robert Bacon (1919), American colonel and politician, 39th United States Secretary of State.

The date carries formal observance as well — International Day of United Nations Peacekeepers (International). Read end to end, May 29 is less a list than a cross-section: 8 entries that happen to share a square on the calendar, separated by as much as 235 years. The coincidence is arbitrary; the accumulation is not.