March 12

March 12 is the 72nd day of the year, and the American record for it runs from 1912 to 2020 — a span of 108 years. The entry that anchors it: Great Depression, 1933.

As the country moved into the modern age, the date accumulated new kinds of firsts. In 1912, the Girl Guides (later renamed the Girl Scouts of the USA) are founded in the United States. Then, in 1928, the failure of the St. Francis Dam northwest of Los Angeles resulted in a flood that killed 400 people. Five years on, in 1933, Great Depression — Franklin D. Roosevelt addresses the nation for the first time as President of the United States. This is also the first of his "fireside chats"

In the postwar decades the date belonged to a nation of enormous reach and unfinished arguments. In 1947, Cold War — U.S. president Harry S. Truman proclaimed the Truman Doctrine to help stem the spread of communism. Then, in 1967, General Suharto seized power from President Sukarno when the Provisional People's Consultative Assembly sworn him in as acting president of Indonesia.

In living memory, the date has kept adding to the record. In 2006, U.S. Army soldiers gang-raped a 14-year-old Iraqi girl and murdered her along with her family members. Three years on, in 2009, Financier Bernie Madoff pleads guilty to one of the largest frauds in Wall Street's history. Then, in 2020, the United States suspends travel from Europe due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The date is also a birthday. Among the Americans born on March 12: George Tyler Wood (1795), American military officer and politician; Jane Pierce (1806), American wife of Franklin Pierce, 15th First Lady of the United States; Hilary A. Herbert (1834), American politician, Secretary of the Navy; Simon Newcomb (1835), Canadian-American astronomer and mathematician; and William V. Ranous (1857), American actor and director.

March 12 is also a date of endings. Among the Americans who died on it: Asa Griggs Candler (1929), American businessman and politician, 44th Mayor of Atlanta; Mihajlo Pupin (1935), Serbian-American physicist and chemist; Charlie Parker (1955), American saxophonist and composer; and Josephine Hull (1957), American actress.

The date carries formal observance as well — National Day (Mauritius). Read end to end, March 12 is less a list than a cross-section: 8 entries that happen to share a square on the calendar, separated by as much as 108 years. The coincidence is arbitrary; the accumulation is not.