October 22

October 22 is the 296th day of the year, and the American record for it runs from 1777 to 2007 — a span of 230 years. The entry that anchors it: Cuban Missile Crisis, 1962.

In the years around independence, the date turns political. In 1777, American Revolutionary War — American defenders of Fort Mercer on the Delaware River repulse repeated Hessian attacks in the Battle of Red Bank. Then, in 1790, Northwest Indian War — Native American forces defeat the United States, ending the Harmar Campaign.

By the middle of the nineteenth century the date carries heavier freight. In 1836, Sam Houston is inaugurated as the first President of the Republic of Texas.

In the first half of the twentieth century the date turns technological. In 1934, in East Liverpool, Ohio, FBI agents shoot and kill the notorious bank robber Pretty Boy Floyd. Then, in 1945, workers at the Cigar Factory in Charleston, South Carolina, began a labor strike against the American Tobacco Company that lasted more than five months.

The postwar entries show a nation both expanding and contesting itself. In 1962, Cuban Missile Crisis — President Kennedy, after internal counsel from Dwight D. Eisenhower, announces that American reconnaissance planes have discovered Soviet nuclear weapons in Cuba, and that he has ordered a naval "quarantine" of the Communist nation. Then, in 1983, two correctional officers are killed by inmates at the United States Penitentiary in Marion, Illinois. The incident inspires the Supermax model of prisons.

Closer to the present, the date is still accumulating. In 2007, a raid on Anuradhapura Air Force Base is carried out by 21 Tamil Tiger commandos, with all except one dying in this attack. Eight Sri Lanka Air Force planes are destroyed and ten damaged.

The date is also a birthday. Among the Americans born on October 22: Volney Howard (1809), American lawyer, jurist, and statesman, Texas Attorney General; Collis Potter Huntington (1821), American businessman; Clinton Davisson (1881), American physicist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate; N. C. Wyeth (1882), American painter and illustrator; and John Reed (1887), American journalist and poet.

October 22 is also a date of endings. Among the Americans who died on it: Bob Fitzsimmons (1917), English-American boxer; Pretty Boy Floyd (1934), American gangster; Richard Hugo (1982), American poet of the Pacific Northwest; and Jane Dornacker (1986), American musician, comedian, and reporter.

October 22 carries 8 entries spread across 230 years. None of the people in them knew they were sharing a date; that is a pattern only visible looking back.