March 6

March 6 is the 66th day of the year, and the American record for it runs from 1820 to 2009 — a span of 189 years. The entry that anchors it: The Missouri Compromise is signed into law by United States President James Monroe. The compromise allows Missouri to enter the Union as a slave state, 1820.

Through the nineteenth century the date gathered the tensions that would define the era. In 1820, the Missouri Compromise is signed into law by United States President James Monroe. The compromise allows Missouri to enter the Union as a slave state, brings Maine into the Union as a free state, and makes the rest of the northern part of the Louisiana Purchase territory slavery-free. Then, in 1836, Texas Revolution — Mexican troops captured the Alamo Mission in San Antonio from Texian forces after a 13-day siege. Then, in 1857, the Supreme Court of the United States rules 7–2 in the Dred Scott v. Sandford case that the Constitution does not confer citizenship on black people.

As the country moved into the modern age, the date accumulated new kinds of firsts. In 1945, World War II — Cologne is captured by American troops. On the same day, Operation Spring Awakening, the last major German offensive of the war, begins.

In the postwar decades the date belonged to a nation of enormous reach and unfinished arguments. In 1964, in a radio broadcast, Nation of Islam leader Elijah Muhammad announced that American boxer Cassius Clay would change his name to Muhammad Ali.

In living memory, the date has kept adding to the record. In 2009, as part of their investigation into an athletic scandal at Florida State University, the National Collegiate Athletic Association released a report alleging that 61 student athletes had engaged in academic fraud.

The date is also a birthday. Among the Americans born on March 6: Henry Laurens (1724), English-American merchant and politician, 5th President of the Continental Congress; Lucy Barnes (1780), American writer; William Claflin (1818), American businessman and politician, 27th Governor of Massachusetts; Philip Sheridan (1831), Irish-American general; and F. Burrall Hoffman (1882), American architect, co-designed Villa Vizcaya.

March 6 is also a date of endings. Among the Americans who died on it: Charles Farrar Browne (1867), American-English author and educator; Louisa May Alcott (1888), American novelist and poet; John Henninger Reagan (1905), American surveyor, judge, and politician, 3rd Confederate States of America Secretary of the Treasury; and John Philip Sousa (1932), American conductor and composer.

Read end to end, March 6 is less a list than a cross-section: 6 entries that happen to share a square on the calendar, separated by as much as 189 years. The coincidence is arbitrary; the accumulation is not.