January 1

January 1 is the 1st day of the year, and the American record for it runs from 1776 to 1932 — a span of 156 years. The entry that anchors it: American Civil War, 1863.

The revolutionary generation left its own mark on the date. In 1776, American Revolutionary War — Norfolk, Virginia, is burned to the ground by combined Royal Navy and Continental Army action. The same year, General George Washington hoists the first United States flag, the Continental Union Flag, at Prospect Hill. The same year, American Revolutionary War — the town of Norfolk, Virginia, was burned and destroyed by the combined actions of British and Whig forces. Five years on, in 1781, American Revolutionary War — one thousand five hundred soldiers of the 6th Pennsylvania Regiment under General Anthony Wayne's command rebel against the Continental Army's winter camp in Morristown, New Jersey in the Pennsylvania Line Mutiny of 1781.

The antebellum decades brought the date closer to the country’s central argument. In 1808, as a result of the lobbying efforts by the abolitionist movement, the importation of slaves into the United States was officially banned, although slavery itself remained permitted. Then, in 1863, American Civil War — the Emancipation Proclamation takes effect in Confederate territory.

Reconstruction and the years that followed added their own entries. In 1892, the immigration station on Ellis Island in New York Harbor opened, and would process almost 12 million immigrants to the United States over the course of its existence.

The early twentieth century brought industry, air travel and war to the date. In 1932, the United States Post Office Department issues a set of 12 stamps commemorating the 200th anniversary of George Washington's birth.

The date is also a birthday. Among the Americans born on January 1: Paul Revere (1735), American silversmith and engraver; Anthony Wayne (1745), American general and politician; Betsy Ross (1752), American seamstress, sewed flags for the Pennsylvania Navy during the Revolutionary War; Edward Dickinson (1803), American politician and father of poet Emily Dickinson; and George Bliss (1813), American politician.

January 1 is also a date of endings. Among the Americans who died on it: Roswell B. Mason (1892), American lawyer and politician, 25th Mayor of Chicago; Alfred Ely Beach (1896), American publisher and lawyer, created the Beach Pneumatic Transit; Ignatius L. Donnelly (1901), American politician and promoter of pseudoscience and pseudohistory; and Willie Keeler (1923), American baseball player.

The date carries formal observance as well — The last day of Kwanzaa (African Americans). What holds these 8 entries together is nothing more than the calendar, and nothing less. 156 years separate the earliest from the latest, and each was once simply the present day.