March 13

March 13 is the 73rd day of the year, and the American record for it runs from 1862 to 2020 — a span of 158 years. The entry that anchors it: The Act Prohibiting the Return of Slaves is passed by the United States Congress, 1862.

The antebellum decades brought the date closer to the country’s central argument. In 1862, the Act Prohibiting the Return of Slaves is passed by the United States Congress, effectively annulling the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 and setting the stage for the Emancipation Proclamation.

After 1945 the date reflects a country operating at global scale. In 1957, Cuban student revolutionaries storm the presidential palace in Havana in a failed attempt on the life of President Fulgencio Batista. Then, in 1969, Apollo 9 returns safely to Earth after testing the Lunar Module. Then, in 1986, Claiming the right of innocent passage, the American warships Yorktown and Caron entered Soviet territorial waters in the Black Sea. Three years on, in 1989, Space Shuttle Discovery launches on STS-29 carrying the TDRS-4 satellite.

The most recent entries fall within living memory. In 1993, the 1993 Storm of the Century affects the eastern United States, dropping feet of snow in many areas. Then, in 2020, President Donald Trump declares the COVID-19 pandemic to be a national emergency in the United States. The same year, Katerina Sakellaropoulou is sworn in as the first female President of Greece amid strict COVID-19 measures.

The date is also a birthday. Among the Americans born on March 13: Abigail Fillmore (1798), American wife of Millard Fillmore, 14th First Lady of the United States; James Curtis Hepburn (1815), American physician, linguist, and missionary; Percival Lowell (1855), American astronomer and mathematician; B. H. Roberts (1857), English-American historian and politician; and William Glackens (1870), American painter and illustrator.

March 13 is also a date of endings. Among the Americans who died on it: David Swinson Maynard (1873), American physician, lawyer, and businessman; Leland Stanford Jr. (1884), American son of Leland Stanford; Benjamin Harrison (1901), American general and politician, 23rd President of the United States; and Susan B. Anthony (1906), American activist.

What holds these 8 entries together is nothing more than the calendar, and nothing less. 158 years separate the earliest from the latest, and each was once simply the present day.