March 1

March 1 is the 61st day of the year, and the American record for it runs from 1845 to 2005 — a span of 160 years. The entry that anchors it: Yellowstone National Park, 1872.

The antebellum decades brought the date closer to the country’s central argument. In 1845, United States President John Tyler signs a bill authorizing the United States to annex the Republic of Texas.

Reconstruction and the years that followed added their own entries. In 1867, Nebraska is admitted as the 37th U.S. state. Five years on, in 1872, Yellowstone National Park, located mostly in the present-day U.S. state of Wyoming, was established by President Ulysses S. Grant.

The early twentieth century brought industry, air travel and war to the date. In 1910, the deadliest avalanche in United States history buries a Great Northern Railway train in northeastern King County, Washington, killing 96 people. Seven years on, in 1917, the Zimmermann Telegram is reprinted in newspapers across the United States after the U.S. government releases its unencrypted text.

After 1945 the date reflects a country operating at global scale. In 1950, in a trial lasting less than 90 minutes, German–British physicist Klaus Fuchs was convicted of violating the Official Secrets Act by supplying information from the Manhattan Project to the Soviet Union. Then, in 1974, Watergate scandal — seven are indicted for their role in the Watergate break-in and charged with conspiracy to obstruct justice.

The most recent entries fall within living memory. In 2005, in Roper v. Simmons, the U.S. Supreme Court rules that the execution of juveniles found guilty of any crime is unconstitutional.

The date is also a birthday. Among the Americans born on March 1: William Cushing (1732), American lawyer and judge; Wilford Woodruff (1807), American religious leader, 4th President of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints; William Dean Howells (1837), American novelist, playwright, and critic; Augustus Saint-Gaudens (1848), Irish-American sculptor and academic; and Theresa Bernstein (1890), Polish-American painter and author.

March 1 is also a date of endings. Among the Americans who died on it: John H. Bankhead (1920), American lawyer and politician; Homer Plessy (1925), American political activist (born 1862 or 1863); Frank Teschemacher (1932), American Jazz musician; and George S. Rentz (1942), American commander.

The date carries formal observance as well — National Pig Day (United States). What holds these 8 entries together is nothing more than the calendar, and nothing less. 160 years separate the earliest from the latest, and each was once simply the present day.