October 30

October 30 is the 304th day of the year, and the American record for it runs from 1831 to 2014 — a span of 183 years. The entry that anchors it: President Roosevelt approves $1 billion in Lend-Lease aid to the Allied nations, 1941.

The antebellum decades brought the date closer to the country’s central argument. In 1831, Nat Turner is arrested for leading the bloodiest slave rebellion in United States history.

The early twentieth century brought industry, air travel and war to the date. In 1938, Orson Welles broadcasts a radio adaptation of H. G. Wells's The War of the Worlds, causing a massive panic in some of the audience in the United States. Three years on, in 1941, President Roosevelt approves $1 billion in Lend-Lease aid to the Allied nations.

After 1945 the date reflects a country operating at global scale. In 1953, President Eisenhower approves the top-secret document NSC 162/2 concerning the maintenance of a strong nuclear deterrent force against the Soviet Union. Then, in 1983, as the military dictatorship came to an end, Argentina's first democratic election in a decade resulted in Raúl Alfonsín being elected president. Two years on, in 1985, Space Shuttle Challenger lifts off for mission STS-61-A, its final successful mission.

The most recent entries fall within living memory. In 2010, American comedians Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert hosted the Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear in Washington, D.C. Four years on, in 2014, four people are killed when a Beechcraft Super King Air crashes at Wichita Dwight D. Eisenhower National Airport in Wichita, Kansas.

The date is also a birthday. Among the Americans born on October 30: John Adams (1735), American lawyer and politician, 2nd President of the United States; Buck Freeman (1871), American baseball player; Elizabeth Madox Roberts (1881), American poet and author; William Halsey Jr. (1882), American admiral; and Ezra Pound (1885), American poet and critic.

October 30 is also a date of endings. Among the Americans who died on it: William H. Webb (1899), American shipbuilder and philanthropist; James S. Sherman (1912), American lawyer and politician, 27th Vice President of the United States; Ella Wheeler Wilcox (1919), American author and poet; and Fred Beebe (1957), American baseball player and coach.

The date carries formal observance as well — Mischief Night (Ireland, Canada, United Kingdom, United States and other places). The record for October 30 runs 183 years deep across 8 entries. Read in sequence, the date stops being a coincidence and starts being a through-line.