December 25

December 25 is the 360th day of the year, and the American record for it runs from 1776 to 2007 — a span of 231 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 — General George Washington and the Continental Army cross the Delaware River at night to attack Hessian forces serving Great Britain at Trenton, New Jersey, the next day.

Through the nineteenth century the date gathered the tensions that would define the era. In 1815, the Handel and Haydn Society, oldest continually performing arts organization in the United States, gives its first performance. Then, in 1826, the Eggnog Riot at the United States Military Academy concludes after beginning the previous evening.

In the decades after the Civil War, the date marked a country remaking itself. In 1868, Pardons for ex-Confederates — United States President Andrew Johnson grants an unconditional pardon to all Confederate veterans.

As the country moved into the modern age, the date accumulated new kinds of firsts. In 1941, Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, appointed commander of the U.S. Pacific Fleet on December 17, arrives at Pearl Harbor.

In the postwar decades the date belonged to a nation of enormous reach and unfinished arguments. In 1968, Apollo program — Apollo 8 performs the first successful Trans-Earth injection (TEI) maneuver, sending the crew and spacecraft on a trajectory back to Earth from Lunar orbit.

In living memory, the date has kept adding to the record. In 1996, the body of American child beauty queen JonBenét Ramsey was found in her family's Boulder, Colorado, home. Her murder remains unsolved. Then, in 2007, a tiger at the San Francisco Zoo escaped from its enclosure and attacked three patrons before it was shot and killed.

The date is also a birthday. Among the Americans born on December 25: Filippo Mazzei (1730), Italian-American physician and philosopher; Benjamin Pierce (1757), American general and politician, 17th Governor of New Hampshire; L. L. Langstroth (1810), American apiarist, clergyman and teacher; Clara Barton (1821), American nurse and humanitarian, founder of the American Red Cross; and Stephen F. Chadwick (1825), American lawyer and politician, 5th Governor of Oregon.

December 25 is also a date of endings. Among the Americans who died on it: Miles Burke (1928), American boxer; Agnes Ayres (1940), American actress; Richard S. Aldrich (1941), American lawyer and politician; and W. C. Fields (1946), American actor, comedian, juggler, and screenwriter.

Read end to end, December 25 is less a list than a cross-section: 8 entries that happen to share a square on the calendar, separated by as much as 231 years. The coincidence is arbitrary; the accumulation is not.