August 27

August 27 is the 240th day of the year, and the American record for it runs from 1776 to 2011 — a span of 235 years. The entry that anchors it: American Revolutionary War, 1776.

In the founding decades, the date sat close to the business of building a republic. In 1776, American Revolutionary War — British forces under General William Howe flank and defeat the Continental Army under General George Washington during the Battle of Long Island, with the 1st Maryland Regiment sustaining heavy casualties to cover retreating American troops.

Through the nineteenth century the date gathered the tensions that would define the era. In 1832, Black Hawk, the leader of the Sauk tribe of Native Americans, surrendered to U.S. authorities to end the Black Hawk War. Then, in 1859, Edwin Drake successfully drilled for oil in Titusville, Pennsylvania, resulting in the Pennsylvania oil rush, the first oil boom in the United States.

In the decades after the Civil War, the date marked a country remaking itself. In 1893, the Sea Islands hurricane strikes the United States near Savannah, Georgia, killing between 1,000 and 2,000 people.

As the country moved into the modern age, the date accumulated new kinds of firsts. In 1918, Battle of Ambos Nogales — U.S. Army forces skirmish against Mexican Carrancistas as part of the Mexican Border War.

In the postwar decades the date belonged to a nation of enormous reach and unfinished arguments. In 1962, the Mariner 2 unmanned space mission is launched to Venus by NASA.

In living memory, the date has kept adding to the record. In 2003, the first six-party talks, involving South and North Korea, the United States, China, Japan and Russia, convene to find a peaceful resolution to the security concerns of the North Korean nuclear weapons program. Eight years on, in 2011, Hurricane Irene strikes the United States east coast, killing 47 and causing an estimated $15.6 billion in damage.

The date is also a birthday. Among the Americans born on August 27: John Joachim Zubly (1724), Swiss-American pastor, planter, and politician; Edward Beecher (1803), American minister and theologian; Hannibal Hamlin (1809), American publisher and politician, 15th Vice President of the United States; William Hayden English (1822), American politician, U.S. Representative from Indiana and Democratic vice-presidential nominee; and James Henry Breasted (1865), American archaeologist and historian.

August 27 is also a date of endings. Among the Americans who died on it: John Laurens (1782), American Revolutionary and abolitionist; Rufus Wilmot Griswold (1857), American anthologist, poet, and critic; William Whiting Boardman (1871), American lawyer and politician; and William Chapman Ralston (1875), American businessman and financier, founded the Bank of California.

The date carries formal observance as well — Lyndon Baines Johnson Day (Texas, United States). Read end to end, August 27 is less a list than a cross-section: 8 entries that happen to share a square on the calendar, separated by as much as 235 years. The coincidence is arbitrary; the accumulation is not.