November 4

November 4 is the 309th day of the year, and the American record for it runs from 1791 to 2008 — a span of 217 years. The entry that anchors it: World War II, 1939.

In the founding decades, the date sat close to the business of building a republic. In 1791, Northwest Indian War — the Western Confederacy of American Indians wins a major victory over the United States in the Battle of the Wabash.

Through the nineteenth century the date gathered the tensions that would define the era. In 1864, American Civil War — Nathan Bedford Forrest led a cavalry division in an attack on a Union Army supply base at Johnsonville, Tennessee, resulting in the capture of 150 prisoners. The same year, American Civil War — Confederate troops bombard a Union supply base and destroy millions of dollars in materiel at the Battle of Johnsonville.

As the country moved into the modern age, the date accumulated new kinds of firsts. In 1912, the keel of USS Nevada was laid down, beginning construction on the United States Navy's first "super-dreadnought" Then, in 1924, in a special election in Wyoming, Nellie Tayloe Ross became the first woman to be elected as a governor in the United States. Then, in 1939, World War II — U.S. president Franklin D. Roosevelt orders the United States Customs Service to implement the Neutrality Act of 1939, allowing cash-and-carry purchases of weapons by belligerents.

In the postwar decades the date belonged to a nation of enormous reach and unfinished arguments. In 1980, Ronald Reagan is elected as the 40th President of the United States, defeating incumbent Jimmy Carter.

In living memory, the date has kept adding to the record. In 2008, Barack Obama became the first person of biracial or African-American descent to be elected President of the United States.

The date is also a birthday. Among the Americans born on November 4: Benjamin Robbins Curtis (1809), American lawyer and jurist; Stephen Johnson Field (1816), American lawyer and jurist, 5th Chief Justice of California; Henry J. Lutcher (1836), American businessman; Alice Gossage (1861), American journalist; and Will Rogers (1879), American actor and screenwriter.

November 4 is also a date of endings. Among the Americans who died on it: William Shippen (1801), American medical doctor and anatomist; Eugene Field (1895), American journalist, author, and poet; John H. Ketcham (1906), American general and politician; and Richard Conner (1924), American sergeant, Medal of Honor recipient.

Taken together, the 8 entries on November 4 span 217 years of American life. A date is an arbitrary container, but what fills it is not arbitrary at all.