August 4

August 4 is the 217th day of the year, and the American record for it runs from 1790 to 2007 — a span of 217 years. The entry that anchors it: U.S. President Jimmy Carter signs legislation creating the United States Department of Energy, 1977.

The revolutionary generation left its own mark on the date. In 1790, a newly passed tariff act creates the Revenue Cutter Service (the forerunner of the United States Coast Guard)

The antebellum decades brought the date closer to the country’s central argument. In 1830, American surveyor James Thompson produced the first plat of Chicago for the Illinois and Michigan Canal Commissioners.

Reconstruction and the years that followed added their own entries. In 1873, American Indian Wars — while protecting a railroad survey party in Montana, the United States 7th Cavalry, under Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer clashes for the first time with the Cheyenne and Lakota people near the Tongue River; only one man on each side is killed.

After 1945 the date reflects a country operating at global scale. In 1964, Vietnam War — the National Security Agency falsely claimed that a U.S. Navy destroyer was attacked a second time by North Vietnamese vessels in the Gulf of Tonkin, leading Congress to authorize the use of military force. The same year, Second Gulf of Tonkin Incident — U.S. destroyers USS Maddox and USS Turner Joy mistakenly report coming under attack in the Gulf of Tonkin. Then, in 1975, the Japanese Red Army takes more than 50 hostages at the AIA Building housing several embassies in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. The hostages include the U.S. consul and the Swedish Chargé d'affaires. The gunmen win the release of five imprisoned comrades and fly with them to Libya. Two years on, in 1977, U.S. President Jimmy Carter signs legislation creating the United States Department of Energy.

The most recent entries fall within living memory. In 2007, NASA's Phoenix Mars lander is launched.

The date is also a birthday. Among the Americans born on August 4: James Springer White (1821), American religious leader, co-founded the Seventh-day Adventist Church; John Henry Twachtman (1853), American painter, etcher, and academic; Jake Beckley (1867), American baseball player and coach; Albert M. Greenfield (1887), Ukrainian-American businessman and philanthropist; and Ezra Taft Benson (1899), American religious leader, 13th President of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

August 4 is also a date of endings. Among the Americans who died on it: Andrew Hamilton (1741), Scottish-American lawyer and politician; Timothy Ruggles (1795), American lawyer, jurist, and politician; Samuel J. Tilden (1886), American lawyer and politician, 25th Governor of New York; and Alfred Henry Maurer (1932), American painter.

The date carries formal observance as well — Coast Guard Day (United States) and Barack Obama Day in Illinois in the United States. What holds these 8 entries together is nothing more than the calendar, and nothing less. 217 years separate the earliest from the latest, and each was once simply the present day.