April 24

April 24 is the 115th day of the year, and the American record for it runs from 1704 to 2011 — a span of 307 years. The entry that anchors it: The Library of Congress, 1800.

The earliest entries here predate the republic entirely. In 1704, the first regular newspaper in British Colonial America, The Boston News-Letter, is published.

The antebellum decades brought the date closer to the country’s central argument. In 1800, the Library of Congress, the de facto national library of the United States, was established as part of an act of Congress providing for the transfer of the nation's capital from Philadelphia to Washington, D.C. The same year, the United States Library of Congress is established when President John Adams signs legislation to appropriate $5,000 to purchase "such books as may be necessary for the use of Congress"

After 1945 the date reflects a country operating at global scale. In 1967, Vietnam War — American General William Westmoreland says in a news conference that the enemy had "gained support in the United States that gives him hope that he can win politically that which he cannot win militarily" Then, in 1980, eight U.S. servicemen died in Operation Eagle Claw, a failed attempt to rescue the captives in the Iran hostage crisis.

The most recent entries fall within living memory. In 1996, in the United States, the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 is passed into law. Eight years on, in 2004, the United States lifts economic sanctions imposed on Libya 18 years previously, as a reward for its cooperation in eliminating weapons of mass destruction. Seven years on, in 2011, Secret documents relating to detainees at the United States' Guantanamo Bay detention camp were released on WikiLeaks and several independent news organizations.

The date is also a birthday. Among the Americans born on April 24: Peter Vivian Daniel (1784), American lawyer and jurist; Susanna Bokoyni (1879), Hungarian-American circus performer; Gideon Sundback (1880), Swedish-American engineer and businessman, developed the zipper; Thomas Cronan (1885), American triple jumper; and Benjamin Lee Whorf (1897), American linguist, anthropologist, and engineer.

April 24 is also a date of endings. Among the Americans who died on it: Eleazar Wheelock (1779), American minister and academic, founded Dartmouth College; G. Stanley Hall (1924), American psychologist and academic; George Grey Barnard (1938), American sculptor; and Charles Jordan (1944), American magician.

What holds these 8 entries together is nothing more than the calendar, and nothing less. 307 years separate the earliest from the latest, and each was once simply the present day.