January 25

January 25 is the 25th day of the year, and the American record for it runs from 1819 to 2018 — a span of 199 years. The entry that anchors it: In Washington, 1961.

The antebellum decades brought the date closer to the country’s central argument. In 1819, University of Virginia chartered by Commonwealth of Virginia, with Thomas Jefferson one of its founders.

The early twentieth century brought industry, air travel and war to the date. In 1915, Alexander Graham Bell inaugurates U.S. transcontinental telephone service, speaking from New York to Thomas Watson in San Francisco.

After 1945 the date reflects a country operating at global scale. In 1949, the first Emmy Awards are presented in the United States; the venue is the Hollywood Athletic Club. Then, in 1961, in Washington, D.C., US President John F. Kennedy delivers the first live presidential television news conference.

The most recent entries fall within living memory. In 1990, Avianca Flight 52 ran out of fuel on approach to John F. Kennedy International Airport and crashed into the village of Cove Neck, New York, resulting in the deaths of 73 people. Six years on, in 1996, Billy Bailey becomes the last person to be hanged in the United States. Seven years on, in 2003, Invasion of Iraq — a group of people leave London, England, for Baghdad, Iraq, to serve as human shields, intending to prevent the U.S.-led coalition troops from bombing certain locations. Then, in 2018, an Ariane 5 rocket is launched carrying SES-14, Al Yah 3, and NASA's Global-scale Observations of the Limb and Disk, but the satellites end up in the wrong orbit.

The date is also a birthday. Among the Americans born on January 25: William Colgate (1783), English-American businessman and philanthropist, founded Colgate-Palmolive; J. Marion Sims (1813), American gynecologist and physician; Anna Gardner (1816), American abolitionist and teacher; Charles Reed Bishop (1822), American businessman, philanthropist, and politician, founded the Bishop Museum; and Charles Curtis (1860), American lawyer and politician, 31st Vice President of the United States.

January 25 is also a date of endings. Among the Americans who died on it: Paul Dudley (1751), American lawyer, jurist, and politician; Richard S. Ewell (1872), American general; W. G. Read Mullan (1910), American Jesuit and academic (1860); and Frank Avery Hutchins (1914), American librarian and educator.

What holds these 8 entries together is nothing more than the calendar, and nothing less. 199 years separate the earliest from the latest, and each was once simply the present day.