February 22

February 22 is the 53rd day of the year, and the American record for it runs from 1770 to 1980 — a span of 210 years. The entry that anchors it: Samuel Byck attempted to hijack an aircraft at Baltimore/Washington International Airport with the intention of crashing it into the White House to assassinate U.S. president Richard Nixon, 1974.

The colonial record reaches this date first. In 1770, British customs officer Ebenezer Richardson fires blindly into a crowd during a protest in North End, Boston, fatally wounding 11-year-old Christopher Seider; the first American fatality of the American Revolution.

By the middle of the nineteenth century the date carries heavier freight. In 1819, by the Adams–Onís Treaty, Spain sells Florida to the United States for five million U.S. dollars. Then, in 1862, American Civil War — Jefferson Davis is officially inaugurated for a six-year term as the President of the Confederate States of America in Richmond, Virginia. He was previously inaugurated as a provisional president on February 18, 1861.

In the postwar nineteenth century the date tracks a nation rebuilding. In 1889, President Grover Cleveland signs a bill admitting North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana and Washington as U.S. states.

In the first half of the twentieth century the date turns technological. In 1942, World War II — President Franklin D. Roosevelt orders General Douglas MacArthur out of the Philippines as the Japanese victory becomes inevitable.

The postwar entries show a nation both expanding and contesting itself. In 1973, Cold War — following President Richard Nixon's visit to the People's Republic of China, the two countries agree to establish liaison offices. A year later, in 1974, Samuel Byck attempted to hijack an aircraft at Baltimore/Washington International Airport with the intention of crashing it into the White House to assassinate U.S. president Richard Nixon, but he was stopped by police. Six years on, in 1980, at the Winter Olympics in Lake Placid, New York, the United States ice hockey team defeated the Soviet team in an unlikely victory that became known as the Miracle on Ice.

The date is also a birthday. Among the Americans born on February 22: George Washington (1732), American general and politician, 1st President of the United States; Rembrandt Peale (1778), American painter and curator; James Russell Lowell (1819), American poet and critic; Jean-Baptiste Salpointe (1825), French-American archbishop; and Mary W. Bacheler (1860), American physician and Baptist medical missionary.

February 22 is also a date of endings. Among the Americans who died on it: John Jacob Astor III (1890), American businessman and philanthropist; Harriet Converse Moody (1932), American businesswoman and arts patron; Nick LaRocca (1961), American trumpet player and composer; and Felix Frankfurter (1965), Austrian-American lawyer and jurist.

The date carries formal observance as well — Washington's Birthday, federal holiday in the United States. A holiday on February 22 as well as the third Monday in February.. 8 entries, 210 years, one square on the calendar. February 22 is a reminder that history is experienced as an ordinary day before it is remembered as a date.