June 5

June 5 is the 157th day of the year, and the American record for it runs from 1864 to 2001 — a span of 137 years. The entry that anchors it: Louis Brandeis is sworn in as a Justice of the United States Supreme Court, 1916.

The antebellum decades brought the date closer to the country’s central argument. In 1864, Battle of Piedmont — Union forces under General David Hunter defeat a Confederate army at Piedmont, Virginia, taking nearly 1,000 prisoners.

The early twentieth century brought industry, air travel and war to the date. In 1916, Louis Brandeis is sworn in as a Justice of the United States Supreme Court; he is the first American Jew to hold such a position. Then, in 1942, World War II — the United States declares war on Bulgaria, Hungary, and Romania.

After 1945 the date reflects a country operating at global scale. In 1947, at a speech at Harvard University, United States Secretary of State George Marshall called for economic aid to war-torn Europe, outlining a recovery program that became known as the Marshall Plan. Then, in 1968, U.S. senator Robert F. Kennedy was fatally shot by Palestinian immigrant Sirhan Sirhan at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles. Eight years on, in 1976, the Teton Dam in eastern Idaho, U.S., collapsed as its reservoir was being filled for the first time, resulting in the deaths of eleven people and 13,000 cattle, and causing up to $2 billion in damage. The same year, the Teton Dam in Idaho, United States, collapses. Eleven people are killed as a result of flooding.

The most recent entries fall within living memory. In 2001, Tropical Storm Allison makes landfall on the upper-Texas coastline as a strong tropical storm and dumps large amounts of rain over Houston. The storm causes $5.5 billion in damages, making Allison the second costliest tropical storm in U.S. history.

The date is also a birthday. Among the Americans born on June 5: Pat Garrett (1850), American sheriff; Willard Miller (1877), Canadian-American sailor, Medal of Honor recipient; Frederick Lorz (1884), American runner; Ruth Benedict (1887), American anthropologist; and William Boyd (1895), American actor and producer.

June 5 is also a date of endings. Among the Americans who died on it: Stephen Crane (1900), American poet, novelist, and short story writer; O. Henry (1910), American short story writer; Chris von der Ahe (1913), German-American businessman; and Nils Olaf Chrisander (1947), Swedish-American actor and director.

What holds these 8 entries together is nothing more than the calendar, and nothing less. 137 years separate the earliest from the latest, and each was once simply the present day.