September 14

September 14 is the 258th day of the year, and the American record for it runs from 1782 to 2003 — a span of 221 years. The entry that anchors it: U.S. president William McKinley dies after being mortally wounded on September 6 by anarchist Leon Czolgosz and is succeeded by Vice President Theodore Roosevelt, 1901.

In the founding decades, the date sat close to the business of building a republic. In 1782, American Revolutionary War — Review of the French troops under General Rochambeau by General George Washington at Verplanck's Point, New York.

Through the nineteenth century the date gathered the tensions that would define the era. In 1814, Battle of Baltimore — the poem Defence of Fort McHenry is written by Francis Scott Key. The poem is later used as the lyrics of The Star-Spangled Banner. Then, in 1862, American Civil War — the Battle of South Mountain, part of the Maryland Campaign, is fought. A year later, in 1863, American Civil War — the Little Rock campaign ended with the Union Army capturing Little Rock, Arkansas.

As the country moved into the modern age, the date accumulated new kinds of firsts. In 1901, U.S. president William McKinley dies after being mortally wounded on September 6 by anarchist Leon Czolgosz and is succeeded by Vice President Theodore Roosevelt.

In the postwar decades the date belonged to a nation of enormous reach and unfinished arguments. In 1979, Afghan president Nur Muhammad Taraki was overthrown and later killed on the orders of Hafizullah Amin, who succeeded him. Three years on, in 1982, President-elect of Lebanon Bachir Gemayel is assassinated.

In living memory, the date has kept adding to the record. In 2003, Bissau-Guinean President Kumba Ialá is ousted from power in a bloodless military coup led by General Veríssimo Correia Seabra.

The date is also a birthday. Among the Americans born on September 14: Jeremiah Dummer (1643), American silversmith; Eliphalet Dyer (1721), American colonel, lawyer, and politician; Mary Hall Barrett Adams (1816), American book editor and letter writer; Julia Platt (1857), American embryologist and politician; and Hamlin Garland (1860), American novelist, poet, essayist, and short story writer.

September 14 is also a date of endings. Among the Americans who died on it: John Harvard (1638), English-American minister and philanthropist; Aaron Burr (1836), American colonel and politician, 3rd Vice President of the United States; James Fenimore Cooper (1851), American novelist, short story writer, and historian; and William Seward Burroughs I (1898), American businessman, founded the Burroughs Corporation.

Read end to end, September 14 is less a list than a cross-section: 8 entries that happen to share a square on the calendar, separated by as much as 221 years. The coincidence is arbitrary; the accumulation is not.