December 14

December 14 is the 349th day of the year, and the American record for it runs from 1819 to 2008 — a span of 189 years. The entry that anchors it: American Civil Rights Movement, 1964.

The antebellum decades brought the date closer to the country’s central argument. In 1819, Alabama becomes the 22nd U.S. state. Then, in 1836, the Toledo War unofficially ends as the "Frostbitten Convention" votes to accept Congress' terms for admitting Michigan as a U.S. state. Then, in 1863, American Civil War — the Confederate victory under General James Longstreet at the Battle of Bean's Station in East Tennessee ends the Knoxville Campaign, but achieves very little as Longstreet returns to Virginia next spring.

After 1945 the date reflects a country operating at global scale. In 1962, NASA's Mariner 2 becomes the first spacecraft to fly by Venus. Two years on, in 1964, American Civil Rights Movement — Heart of Atlanta Motel v. United States: The Supreme Court of the United States rules that Congress can use the Constitution's Commerce Clause to fight discrimination. Eight years on, in 1972, Upon completing the third extra-vehicular activity of Apollo 17, American astronaut Gene Cernan became the last person to date to walk on the Moon. The same year, Apollo program — Eugene Cernan is the most recent person to walk on the Moon, after he and Harrison Schmitt complete the third and final extravehicular activity (EVA) of the Apollo 17 mission.

The most recent entries fall within living memory. In 2008, during a press conference in Baghdad, Iraqi journalist Muntadhar al-Zaidi threw his shoes at U.S. president George W. Bush and Iraqi prime minister Nouri al-Maliki, yelling "This is for the widows and orphans and all those killed in Iraq"

The date is also a birthday. Among the Americans born on December 14: Philander Chase (1775), American bishop and educator, founded Kenyon College; Erastus Corning (1794), American businessman and politician; Daniel H. Reynolds (1832), American general, lawyer, and politician; Mary Tappan Wright (1851), American novelist and short story writer; and Louis Marshall (1856), American lawyer and activist.

December 14 is also a date of endings. Among the Americans who died on it: George Washington (1799), American general and politician, 1st President of the United States; Martin Baum (1831), American businessman and politician, 5th Mayor of Cincinnati; Louis Agassiz (1873), Swiss-American zoologist and geologist; and George Gipp (1920), American football player.

What holds these 8 entries together is nothing more than the calendar, and nothing less. 189 years separate the earliest from the latest, and each was once simply the present day.