January 15

January 15 is the 15th day of the year, and the American record for it runs from 1777 to 1973 — a span of 196 years. The entry that anchors it: American Civil War, 1865.

In the founding decades, the date sat close to the business of building a republic. In 1777, American Revolutionary War — New Connecticut (present-day Vermont) declares its independence. Five years on, in 1782, Superintendent of Finance Robert Morris addresses the U.S. Congress to recommend establishment of a national mint and decimal coinage.

Through the nineteenth century the date gathered the tensions that would define the era. In 1865, American Civil War — the Union Army captured Fort Fisher, the last seaport of the Confederacy.

As the country moved into the modern age, the date accumulated new kinds of firsts. In 1910, construction was completed on the Buffalo Bill Dam, then the tallest dam in the world, on the Shoshone River in the U.S. state of Wyoming. Then, in 1943, the highest-capacity office building in the world, the headquarters of the United States Department of Defense known as the Pentagon, was dedicated. The same year, the Pentagon is dedicated in Arlington County, Virginia.

In the postwar decades the date belonged to a nation of enormous reach and unfinished arguments. In 1947, the mutilated corpse of the Black Dahlia, a 22-year-old woman whose murder is one of the most famous unsolved crimes in the United States, was found in Leimert Park, Los Angeles. Then, in 1973, Vietnam War — Citing progress in peace negotiations, President Richard Nixon announces the suspension of offensive action in North Vietnam.

The date is also a birthday. Among the Americans born on January 15: Philip Livingston (1716), American merchant and politician; William Bickerton (1815), English-American religious leader, third President of the Church of Jesus Christ; Samuel Arza Davenport (1834), American lawyer and politician; Jo Abbott (1840), American judge, politician and Confederate army officer; and Ruby Laffoon (1869), American lawyer and politician, 43rd Governor of Kentucky.

January 15 is also a date of endings. Among the Americans who died on it: Lord Stirling (1783), American Revolutionary War Major General; Eliza McCardle Johnson (1876), American wife of Andrew Johnson, 18th First Lady of the United States; Mathew Brady (1896), American photographer and journalist; and George Cope (1929), American painter.

Taken together, the 8 entries on January 15 span 196 years of American life. A date is an arbitrary container, but what fills it is not arbitrary at all.