February 25

February 25 is the 56th day of the year, and the American record for it runs from 1836 to 1994 — a span of 158 years. The entry that anchors it: Mississippi senator Hiram Rhodes Revels became the first African American to be seated in the U.S. Congress, 1870.

By the middle of the nineteenth century the date carries heavier freight. In 1836, Samuel Colt is granted a United States patent for his revolver firearm.

In the postwar nineteenth century the date tracks a nation rebuilding. In 1870, Mississippi senator Hiram Rhodes Revels became the first African American to be seated in the U.S. Congress.

In the first half of the twentieth century the date turns technological. In 1933, USS Ranger, the United States Navy's first purpose-built aircraft carrier, was launched.

The postwar entries show a nation both expanding and contesting itself. In 1948, Fearful of civil war and Soviet intervention in recent unrest, President Edvard Beneš ceded control of the government to the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia. Three years on, in 1951, the first Pan American Games are officially opened in Buenos Aires by Argentine President Juan Perón. Five years on, in 1956, in a speech to the 20th Congress of the Communist Party, Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev denounced the personality cult and dictatorship of his predecessor Joseph Stalin. Then, in 1986, Philippine dictator Ferdinand Marcos and his wife Imelda were ousted from power by the non-violent People Power Revolution, with Corazon Aquino succeeding as president.

Closer to the present, the date is still accumulating. In 1994, American-Israeli extremist Baruch Goldstein commits a mass shooting at the Cave of the Patriarchs mausoleum, leaving 29 dead and over 100 injured before he is disarmed and beaten to death by survivors.

The date is also a birthday. Among the Americans born on February 25: Emma Catherine Embury (1806), American author and poet; John St. John (1833), American lawyer and politician, 8th Governor of Kansas; Phoebus Levene (1869), Russian-American biochemist and physician; Enrico Caruso (1873), Italian-American tenor; the most popular operatic tenor of the early 20th century and the first great recording star.; and William Z. Foster (1881), American union leader and politician.

February 25 is also a date of endings. Among the Americans who died on it: Samuel Seabury (1796), American bishop; William Pinkney (1822), American politician and diplomat, 7th United States Attorney General; Philip P. Barbour (1841), American lawyer, judge, and politician, 12th Speaker of the United States House of Representatives; and Townsend Harris (1878), American merchant, politician, and diplomat, United States Ambassador to Japan.

The date carries formal observance as well — National Day (Kuwait). February 25 carries 8 entries spread across 158 years. None of the people in them knew they were sharing a date; that is a pattern only visible looking back.