July 8

July 8 is the 190th day of the year, and the American record for it runs from 1775 to 2011 — a span of 236 years. The entry that anchors it: The United States Declaration of Independence received its first formal public reading, 1776.

The earliest entries here predate the republic entirely. In 1775, the Olive Branch Petition is signed by the Continental Congress of the Thirteen Colonies of North America.

The revolutionary generation left its own mark on the date. In 1776, the United States Declaration of Independence received its first formal public reading, in Philadelphia.

The antebellum decades brought the date closer to the country’s central argument. In 1830, Frederick W. Seward, American lawyer and politician, 6th United States Assistant Secretary of State (died 1915)

The early twentieth century brought industry, air travel and war to the date. In 1908, Nelson Rockefeller, American businessman and politician, 41st Vice President of the United States (died 1979) Ten years on, in 1918, Paul B. Fay, American businessman, soldier, and diplomat, 12th United States Secretary of the Navy (died 2009)

After 1945 the date reflects a country operating at global scale. In 1948, the United States Air Force accepts its first female recruits into a program called the Women's Air Force (WAF) Then, in 1970, Richard Nixon delivers a special congressional message enunciating Native American self-determination as official US Indian policy, leading to the Indian Self-Determination and Education Assistance Act of 1975.

The most recent entries fall within living memory. In 2011, Space Shuttle Atlantis is launched in the final mission of the U.S. Space Shuttle program.

July 8 is also a date of endings. Among the Americans who died on it: Edward Wooster (1689), English-American settler; Elihu Yale (1721), American-English merchant and philanthropist; Ben Holladay (1887), American businessman; and Walter Kittredge (1905), American violinist and composer.

The record for July 8 runs 236 years deep across 8 entries. Read in sequence, the date stops being a coincidence and starts being a through-line.