January 24

January 24 is the 24th day of the year, and the American record for it runs from 1835 to 2003 — a span of 168 years. The entry that anchors it: About 20, 1987.

Through the nineteenth century the date gathered the tensions that would define the era. In 1835, Slaves in Salvador da Bahia, Brazil, stage a revolt, which is instrumental in ending slavery there 50 years later.

As the country moved into the modern age, the date accumulated new kinds of firsts. In 1916, in Brushaber v. Union Pacific Railroad Co., the Supreme Court of the United States declares the federal income tax constitutional. Then, in 1933, the 20th Amendment to the United States Constitution is ratified, changing the beginning and end of terms for all elected federal offices. Nine years on, in 1942, World War II — the Allies bombard Bangkok, leading Thailand, then under Japanese control, to declare war against the United States and United Kingdom. A year later, in 1943, World War II — Franklin D. Roosevelt and Winston Churchill conclude a conference in Casablanca.

In the postwar decades the date belonged to a nation of enormous reach and unfinished arguments. In 1987, about 20,000 protestors marched in a civil rights demonstration in Forsyth County, Georgia, United States.

In living memory, the date has kept adding to the record. In 1990, Japan launched the Hiten spacecraft, the first lunar probe launched by a country other than the Soviet Union or the United States. Then, in 2003, the United States Department of Homeland Security officially begins operation.

The date is also a birthday. Among the Americans born on January 24: Andrew Ellicott (1754), American soldier and surveyor; Edith Wharton (1862), American novelist and short story writer; Helena Maud Brown Cobb (1869), American educator and missionary; Henry King (1886), American actor, director, producer, and screenwriter; and Charles Hawes (1889), American historian and author.

January 24 is also a date of endings. Among the Americans who died on it: Alfred Carlton Gilbert (1961), American pole vaulter and businessman, founded the A. C. Gilbert Company; Caresse Crosby (1970), American fashion designer and publisher, co-founded the Black Sun Press; Bill W. (1971), American activist, co-founder of Alcoholics Anonymous; and J. Carrol Naish (1973), American actor.

Read end to end, January 24 is less a list than a cross-section: 8 entries that happen to share a square on the calendar, separated by as much as 168 years. The coincidence is arbitrary; the accumulation is not.