March 28

March 28 is the 88th day of the year, and the American record for it runs from 1646 to 2003 — a span of 357 years. The entry that anchors it: American Civil War, 1862.

The earliest entries here predate the republic entirely. In 1646, Irish Confederate Wars — Donough MacCarty, 1st Earl of Clancarty, signed the First Ormond Peace for the Confederates in exchange for greater freedom of religion.

The antebellum decades brought the date closer to the country’s central argument. In 1862, American Civil War — in the Battle of Glorieta Pass, Union forces stop the Confederate invasion of the New Mexico Territory. The battle began on March 26.

After 1945 the date reflects a country operating at global scale. In 1946, Cold War — the United States Department of State releases the Acheson–Lilienthal Report, outlining a plan for the international control of nuclear power. Then, in 1963, Civil rights movement — over one hundred high school students conducted a sit-in protest in Rome, Georgia. Then, in 1978, the US Supreme Court hands down 5–3 decision in Stump v. Sparkman, a controversial case involving involuntary sterilization and judicial immunity.

The most recent entries fall within living memory. In 1990, United States President George H. W. Bush posthumously awards Jesse Owens the Congressional Gold Medal. Four years on, in 1994, in South Africa, African National Congress security guards kill dozens of Inkatha Freedom Party protesters. Nine years on, in 2003, in a friendly fire incident, two American A-10 Thunderbolt II aircraft attack British tanks participating in the 2003 invasion of Iraq, killing one soldier.

The date is also a birthday. Among the Americans born on March 28: Henry Schoolcraft (1793), American geographer, geologist, and ethnologist; John Neumann (1811), Czech-American bishop and saint; Wade Hampton III (1818), American general and politician, 77th Governor of South Carolina; Henry D. Washburn (1832), American politician and general; and Frederick Pabst (1836), German-American brewer, founded the Pabst Brewing Company.

March 28 is also a date of endings. Among the Americans who died on it: George Henry Thomas (1870), American general; Edmund Kirby Smith (1893), American general; Albert Pinkham Ryder (1917), American painter; and Charles Hubbard (1923), American archer.

The record for March 28 runs 357 years deep across 8 entries. Read in sequence, the date stops being a coincidence and starts being a through-line.