February 12

February 12 is the 43rd day of the year, and the American record for it runs from 1733 to 2001 — a span of 268 years. The entry that anchors it: African American United States Army veteran Isaac Woodard is severely beaten by a South Carolina police officer to the point where he loses his vision in both eyes. The incident later galvanizes the civil rights movement and partially inspires Orson Welles' film Touch of Evil, 1946.

The earliest entries here predate the republic entirely. In 1733, Georgia Day — Englishman James Oglethorpe founds Georgia, the 13th colony of the Thirteen Colonies, by settling at Savannah.

The antebellum decades brought the date closer to the country’s central argument. In 1818, Bernardo O'Higgins formally approves the Chilean Declaration of Independence near Concepción, Chile. Seven years on, in 1825, the Creek cede the last of their lands in Georgia to the United States government by the Treaty of Indian Springs, and migrate west. Then, in 1855, the precursor of Michigan State University in East Lansing was founded as the United States' first agricultural college.

After 1945 the date reflects a country operating at global scale. In 1946, African American United States Army veteran Isaac Woodard is severely beaten by a South Carolina police officer to the point where he loses his vision in both eyes. The incident later galvanizes the civil rights movement and partially inspires Orson Welles' film Touch of Evil. Then, in 1966, Rabbi Morris Adler is fatally shot by a disgruntled congregant at Congregation Shaarey Zedek in Southfield, Michigan, United States.

The most recent entries fall within living memory. In 1999, United States President Bill Clinton is acquitted by the United States Senate in his impeachment trial. Two years on, in 2001, the NASA space probe NEAR Shoemaker touched down on Eros, becoming the first spacecraft to land on an asteroid.

The date is also a birthday. Among the Americans born on February 12: John Winthrop the Younger (1606), English-American lawyer and politician, Governor of Connecticut; Cotton Mather (1663), English-American minister and author; Peter Cooper (1791), American businessman and philanthropist, founded Cooper Union; Abraham Lincoln (1809), American lawyer and statesman, 16th President of the United States; and William Wetmore Story (1819), American sculptor, architect, poet and editor.

February 12 is also a date of endings. Among the Americans who died on it: Ethan Allen (1789), American farmer, general, and politician; Randolph Caldecott (1886), English-American painter and illustrator; Grant Wood (1942), American painter and academic; and Moses Gomberg (1947), Ukrainian-American chemist and academic.

The date carries formal observance as well — Georgia Day (Georgia (U.S. state)) and Lincoln's Birthday (United States). What holds these 8 entries together is nothing more than the calendar, and nothing less. 268 years separate the earliest from the latest, and each was once simply the present day.