November 7

November 7 is the 312th day of the year, and the American record for it runs from 1861 to 2000 — a span of 139 years. The entry that anchors it: American Civil War, 1861.

Through the nineteenth century the date gathered the tensions that would define the era. In 1861, American Civil War — Future U.S. president Ulysses S. Grant engaged in his first combat leadership role in the Battle of Belmont in Mississippi County, Missouri. The same year, Battle of Belmont — in Belmont, Missouri, Union forces led by General Ulysses S. Grant overrun a Confederate camp but are forced to retreat when Confederate reinforcements arrive.

As the country moved into the modern age, the date accumulated new kinds of firsts. In 1916, Woodrow Wilson is reelected as President of the United States. Then, in 1944, Franklin D. Roosevelt is elected for a record fourth term as President of the United States.

In the postwar decades the date belonged to a nation of enormous reach and unfinished arguments. In 1972, United States presidential election — U.S. President Richard Nixon is re-elected in the largest landslide victory at the time. A year later, in 1973, the United States Congress overrides President Richard Nixon's veto of the War Powers Resolution, which limits presidential power to wage war without congressional approval. Then, in 1989, Douglas Wilder wins the governor's seat in Virginia, becoming the first elected African American governor in the United States.

In living memory, the date has kept adding to the record. In 2000, the controversial US presidential election is later resolved in the Bush v. Gore Supreme Court case, electing George W. Bush as the 43rd President of the United States.

The date is also a birthday. Among the Americans born on November 7: Alfred Kelley (1789), American legislator, canal builder, and railroad magnate; Platt Rogers Spencer (1800), American calligrapher and educator; Andrew Dickson White (1832), American historian, academic, and diplomat, co-founded Cornell University; William Plankinton (1843), American businessman, industrialist and banker; and Chris von der Ahe (1851), German-American businessman.

November 7 is also a date of endings. Among the Americans who died on it: Elijah Parish Lovejoy (1837), American minister and journalist; Henry Ward Ranger (1916), American painter and academic; Sam Thompson (1922), American baseball player; and Harold Weber (1933), American golfer and architect.

The date carries formal observance as well — National Day, after Treaty of the Pyrenees. (Northern Catalonia, France). Read end to end, November 7 is less a list than a cross-section: 8 entries that happen to share a square on the calendar, separated by as much as 139 years. The coincidence is arbitrary; the accumulation is not.