April 30

April 30 is the 121st day of the year, and the American record for it runs from 1789 to 2004 — a span of 215 years. The entry that anchors it: Watergate scandal, 1973.

The revolutionary generation left its own mark on the date. In 1789, on the balcony of Federal Hall on Wall Street in New York City, George Washington takes the oath of office to become the first President of the United States.

The antebellum decades brought the date closer to the country’s central argument. In 1803, Louisiana Purchase — the United States purchases the Louisiana Territory from France for $15 million, more than doubling the size of the young nation. Then, in 1864, American Civil War — Confederate forces led by General E. Kirby Smith attack federal troops retreating across the Saline at Jenkins' Ferry, Arkansas.

Reconstruction and the years that followed added their own entries. In 1894, a crowd of workers, unemployed due to the Panic of 1893, concluded the first significant popular protest march on Washington D.C.

The early twentieth century brought industry, air travel and war to the date. In 1939, NBC inaugurates its regularly scheduled television service in New York City, broadcasting President Franklin D. Roosevelt's N.Y. World's Fair opening day ceremonial address.

After 1945 the date reflects a country operating at global scale. In 1973, Watergate scandal — U.S. President Richard Nixon fires White House Counsel John Dean; other top aides, most notably H. R. Haldeman and John Ehrlichman, resign. Two years on, in 1975, American forces completed a helicopter evacuation of U.S. citizens, South Vietnamese civilians and others from Saigon, just before North Vietnamese troops captured the city and ended the Vietnam War.

The most recent entries fall within living memory. In 2004, U.S. media release graphic photos of American soldiers committing war crimes against Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison.

The date is also a birthday. Among the Americans born on April 30: Joseph Dart (1799), American businessman and entrepreneur; Mary Haviland Stilwell Kuesel (1866), American pioneer dentist; Alice B. Toklas (1877), American memoirist; John Crowe Ransom (1888), American poet, critic, and academic; and Reverend Gary Davis (1896), American singer and guitarist.

April 30 is also a date of endings. Among the Americans who died on it: Emma Smith (1879), American religious leader; Joseph Leidy (1891), American paleontologist and author; Casey Jones (1900), American railroad engineer; and Bessie Coleman (1926), American pilot.

The date carries formal observance as well — Honesty Day (United States). What holds these 8 entries together is nothing more than the calendar, and nothing less. 215 years separate the earliest from the latest, and each was once simply the present day.