November 22

November 22 is the 327th day of the year, and the American record for it runs from 1797 to 1995 — a span of 198 years. The entry that anchors it: U.S. President John F. Kennedy is assassinated and Texas Governor John Connally is seriously wounded by Lee Harvey Oswald, 1963.

In the founding decades, the date sat close to the business of building a republic. In 1797, the Geisel School of Medicine, the fourth oldest medical school in the United States, was founded by the physician Nathan Smith.

As the country moved into the modern age, the date accumulated new kinds of firsts. In 1943, Cairo Conference — U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, and Chinese Premier Chiang Kai-shek meet in Cairo, Egypt, to discuss ways to defeat Japan.

In the postwar decades the date belonged to a nation of enormous reach and unfinished arguments. In 1963, U.S. President John F. Kennedy is assassinated and Texas Governor John Connally is seriously wounded by Lee Harvey Oswald, who also kills Dallas Police officer J. D. Tippit after fleeing the scene. Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson is sworn in as the 36th President of the United States afterwards. Then, in 1987, two television stations in Chicago had their broadcast signals hijacked with footage of an unknown person wearing a Max Headroom mask and costume. A year later, in 1988, the B-2 Spirit stealth bomber of the United States Air Force was first displayed in public at Air Force Plant 42 in Palmdale, California. A year later, in 1989, NASA launches Space Shuttle Discovery on STS-33, a classified mission for the United States Department of Defense.

In living memory, the date has kept adding to the record. In 1994, a Trans World Airlines McDonnell Douglas MD-80 and Cessna 441 Conquest II aircraft collide on the runway at St. Louis Lambert International Airport in Bridgeton, Missouri, killing two people and injuring eight. A year later, in 1995, Toy Story, the first feature film created using only computer-generated imagery, was released in theaters in the United States.

The date is also a birthday. Among the Americans born on November 22: Abigail Adams (1744), American wife of John Adams, 2nd First Lady of the United States; Cyrus Edwin Dallin (1861), American sculptor; John Nance Garner (1868), American politician, 32nd Vice President of the United States; Howard Brockway (1870), American composer; and Emil Beyer (1876), American gymnast and triathlete.

November 22 is also a date of endings. Among the Americans who died on it: Henry Wilson (1875), American politician, 18th Vice President of the United States; Mary Boykin Chesnut (1886), American author; George Washington Gale Ferris Jr. (1896), American engineer, invented the Ferris wheel; and Walter Reed (1902), American physician and entomologist.

Taken together, the 8 entries on November 22 span 198 years of American life. A date is an arbitrary container, but what fills it is not arbitrary at all.