January 23

January 23 is the 23rd day of the year, and the American record for it runs from 1789 to 2018 — a span of 229 years. The entry that anchors it: Charles Lindbergh testifies before the U.S. Congress and recommends that the United States negotiate a neutrality pact with Adolf Hitler, 1941.

In the years around independence, the date turns political. In 1789, Georgetown College, the first Catholic university in the United States, is founded in Georgetown, Maryland (now a part of Washington, D.C.) when Bishop John Carroll, Rev. Robert Molyneux, and Rev. John Ashton purchase land for the proposed academy for the education of youth.

By the middle of the nineteenth century the date carries heavier freight. In 1849, Elizabeth Blackwell graduated from Geneva Medical College in New York, making her the first woman to receive a medical degree in the United States.

In the postwar nineteenth century the date tracks a nation rebuilding. In 1870, American Indian Wars — in the Marias Massacre, the United States Army killed about 200 Piegan Blackfeet, mostly women, children, and the elderly. The same year, in Montana, U.S. cavalrymen kill 173 Native Americans, mostly women and children, in what becomes known as the Marias Massacre.

In the first half of the twentieth century the date turns technological. In 1941, Charles Lindbergh testifies before the U.S. Congress and recommends that the United States negotiate a neutrality pact with Adolf Hitler.

Closer to the present, the date is still accumulating. In 1997, Madeleine Albright was sworn in as the first female United States Secretary of State, becoming the highest-ranking woman in the history of the U.S. government at that time. Then, in 2018, the China–United States trade war begins when President Donald Trump places tariffs on Chinese solar panels and washing machines. The same year, a 7.9 Mw earthquake occurs in the Gulf of Alaska. It is tied as the sixth-largest earthquake ever recorded in the United States, but there are no reports of significant damage or fatalities.

The date is also a birthday. Among the Americans born on January 23: John Hancock (1737), American general and politician, first Governor of Massachusetts; Marianne Cope (1838), German-American nun and saint; John Marks Moore (1853), American politician; John Browning (1855), American weapons designer, founded the Browning Arms Company; and Frank Shuman (1862), American inventor and engineer.

January 23 is also a date of endings. Among the Americans who died on it: Edward Rutledge (1800), American captain and politician, 39th Governor of South Carolina; Lucius Quintus Cincinnatus Lamar II (1893), American lawyer and politician, 16th United States Secretary of the Interior; Alexander Woollcott (1943), American actor, playwright, and critic; and Alexander Onassis (1973), American-Greek businessman.

8 entries, 229 years, one square on the calendar. January 23 is a reminder that history is experienced as an ordinary day before it is remembered as a date.