March 26

March 26 is the 86th day of the year, and the American record for it runs from 1812 to 2010 — a span of 198 years. The entry that anchors it: The United States Army launches Explorer 3, 1958.

By the middle of the nineteenth century the date carries heavier freight. In 1812, the Boston Gazette printed a cartoon coining the term "gerrymander", named after Governor Elbridge Gerry, who approved the legislation that created oddly shaped electoral districts.

In the first half of the twentieth century the date turns technological. In 1942, the American tanker Dixie Arrow is torpedoed and sunk off Cape Hatteras, North Carolina, by the German U-boat U-71.

The postwar entries show a nation both expanding and contesting itself. In 1958, the United States Army launches Explorer 3. Then, in 1970, South Vietnamese President Nguyễn Văn Thiệu implements a land reform program to solve the problem of land tenancy. Nine years on, in 1979, Anwar al-Sadat, Menachem Begin and Jimmy Carter sign the Egypt–Israel peace treaty in Washington, D.C. Three years on, in 1982, a groundbreaking ceremony for the Vietnam Veterans Memorial is held in Washington, D.C.

Closer to the present, the date is still accumulating. In 1999, a jury began deliberations in the trial of Jack Kevorkian, an American practitioner of physician-assisted suicide who was charged with murder in the death of a terminally ill patient. Then, in 2010, the South Korean Navy corvette Cheonan is torpedoed, killing 46 sailors. After an international investigation, the President of the United Nations Security Council blames North Korea.

The date is also a birthday. Among the Americans born on March 26: William Blount (1749), American politician; Benjamin Thompson (1753), American-French physicist and politician, Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies; Nathaniel Bowditch (1773), American mathematician and navigator; David Humphreys Storer (1804), American physician and academic; and Dewitt Clinton Senter (1830), American politician, 18th Governor of Tennessee.

March 26 is also a date of endings. Among the Americans who died on it: Samuel Ward (1776), American politician, 31st and 33rd Governor of the Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations; John Addison Thomas (1858), American lieutenant, engineer, and politician, 3rd United States Assistant Secretary of State; Uriah P. Levy (1862), American commander; and Anson Stager (1885), American general and businessman, co-founded Western Union.

The date carries formal observance as well — Independence Day and National Day (Bangladesh), celebrates the declaration of independence from Pakistan in 1971.; National Science Appreciation Day (United States); Prince Kūhiō Day (Hawaii, United States); and Purple Day (Canada and United States). March 26 carries 8 entries spread across 198 years. None of the people in them knew they were sharing a date; that is a pattern only visible looking back.