February 16

February 16 is the 47th day of the year, and the American record for it runs from 1804 to 2006 — a span of 202 years. The entry that anchors it: American Civil War, 1862.

By the middle of the nineteenth century the date carries heavier freight. In 1804, First Barbary War — Lieutenant Stephen Decatur led a U.S. Navy raid to destroy the captured USS Philadelphia in the harbor of Tripoli, denying her use to the Barbary States. Then, in 1862, American Civil War — General Ulysses S. Grant captures Fort Donelson, Tennessee.

In the first half of the twentieth century the date turns technological. In 1937, Wallace H. Carothers receives a United States patent for nylon. Eight years on, in 1945, the Alaska Equal Rights Act of 1945, the first anti-discrimination law in the United States, was signed into law.

The postwar entries show a nation both expanding and contesting itself. In 1960, the U.S. Navy submarine USS Triton begins Operation Sandblast, setting sail from New London, Connecticut, to begin the first submerged circumnavigation of the globe.

Closer to the present, the date is still accumulating. In 1996, a Chicago-bound Amtrak train, the Capitol Limited, collides with a MARC commuter train bound for Washington, D.C., killing 11 people. The same year, Eleven people died in a train collision in Silver Spring, Maryland, leading to the creation of comprehensive U.S. federal rules for the design of passenger cars. Ten years on, in 2006, the last Mobile army surgical hospital (MASH) is decommissioned by the United States Army.

The date is also a birthday. Among the Americans born on February 16: Phineas Quimby (1802), American mystic and philosopher; Henry Wilson (1812), American colonel and politician, 18th Vice President of the United States; Henry Adams (1838), American journalist, historian, and author; Henry M. Leland (1843), American engineer and businessman, founded Cadillac and Lincoln; and George Kennan (1845), American journalist and explorer.

February 16 is also a date of endings. Among the Americans who died on it: William Pennington (1862), American lawyer and politician, 13th Governor of New Jersey, 23rd Speaker of the United States House of Representatives; Eddie Foy Sr. (1928), American actor and dancer; Edgar Speyer (1932), American-English financier and philanthropist; and Josef Hofmann (1957), Polish-American pianist and composer.

8 entries, 202 years, one square on the calendar. February 16 is a reminder that history is experienced as an ordinary day before it is remembered as a date.