October 29

October 29 is the 303rd day of the year, and the American record for it runs from 1792 to 2012 — a span of 220 years. The entry that anchors it: Francisco Martin Duran fires over two dozen shots at the White House, 1994.

In the founding decades, the date sat close to the business of building a republic. In 1792, William Robert Broughton, a member of George Vancouver's expedition, observed a peak in the present-day U.S. state of Oregon and named it Mount Hood after British admiral Samuel Hood.

Through the nineteenth century the date gathered the tensions that would define the era. In 1863, American Civil War — the Battle of Wauhatchie, one of the few night battles of the war, concluded with the Union Army opening a supply line to troops in Chattanooga, Tennessee.

In the postwar decades the date belonged to a nation of enormous reach and unfinished arguments. In 1960, a C-46 airliner carrying the Cal Poly Mustangs football team crashed during takeoff from Toledo Express Airport in Ohio, U.S., resulting in 22 deaths.

In living memory, the date has kept adding to the record. In 1994, Francisco Martin Duran fires over two dozen shots at the White House; he is later convicted of trying to kill U.S. President Bill Clinton. Four years on, in 1998, ATSC HDTV broadcasting in the United States is inaugurated with live coverage of the launch of the STS-95 space shuttle mission. Six years on, in 2004, the Arabic-language news network Al Jazeera broadcasts an excerpt from a 2004 Osama bin Laden video in which the terrorist leader first admits direct responsibility for the September 11, 2001 attacks and references the 2004 U.S. presidential election. Eight years on, in 2012, Hurricane Sandy, the largest Atlantic hurricane on record, made landfall in New Jersey and caused nearly $75 billion in damages, becoming the second-most destructive storm in U.S. history. The same year, Hurricane Sandy hits the east coast of the United States, killing hundreds, while leaving nearly $70 billion in damages and causing major power outages.

The date is also a birthday. Among the Americans born on October 29: Dan Emmett (1815), American composer; Harriet Powers (1837), American folk artist and quilter; Alva B. Adams (1879), American lawyer and politician; John DeWitt (1881), American football player and hammer thrower; and Fanny Brice (1891), American actress and singer.

October 29 is also a date of endings. Among the Americans who died on it: Nathan Bedford Forrest (1877), American general and KKK leader; William Harnett (1892), American painter; Henry George (1897), American journalist, philosopher, and economist; and Leon Czolgosz (1901), American assassin of William McKinley.

The date carries formal observance as well — National Cat Day (United States). Taken together, the 8 entries on October 29 span 220 years of American life. A date is an arbitrary container, but what fills it is not arbitrary at all.