May 20

May 20 is the 141st day of the year, and the American record for it runs from 1775 to 2013 — a span of 238 years. The entry that anchors it: U.S. President Abraham Lincoln signs the Homestead Act into law, 1862.

Before there was a United States, the date already carried weight in the colonies. In 1775, the Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence is allegedly signed in Charlotte, North Carolina.

Through the nineteenth century the date gathered the tensions that would define the era. In 1861, American Civil War — the state of Kentucky proclaims its neutrality, which will last until September 3 when Confederate forces enter the state. A year later, in 1862, U.S. President Abraham Lincoln signs the Homestead Act into law, opening eighty-four million acres (340,000 km2) of public land to settlers.

As the country moved into the modern age, the date accumulated new kinds of firsts. In 1902, Cuba gains independence from the United States. Tomás Estrada Palma becomes the country's first President.

In the postwar decades the date belonged to a nation of enormous reach and unfinished arguments. In 1958, Capital Airlines Flight 300 collides in mid-air with a United States Air Force Lockheed T-33 over Brunswick, Maryland, killing 12.

In living memory, the date has kept adding to the record. In 1996, in deciding Romer v. Evans, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down a constitutional amendment in Colorado that prevented protected status under the law for homosexuals or bisexuals. The same year, Civil rights — the Supreme Court of the United States rules in Romer v. Evans against a law that would have prevented any city, town or county in the state of Colorado from taking any legislative, executive, or judicial action to protect the rights of gays and lesbians. Then, in 2013, a tornado struck Moore, Oklahoma, United States, killing 24 people and causing an estimated $2 billion of damage.

The date is also a birthday. Among the Americans born on May 20: Simon Fraser (1776), American-Canadian fur trader and explorer; William Fargo (1818), American businessman and politician, co-founded Wells Fargo and American Express; Emile Berliner (1851), German-American inventor, invented the Gramophone record; Pat Leahy (1877), Irish-American Olympic jumper; and John Marshall Harlan II (1899), American lawyer and jurist, Associate Justice of the US Supreme Court.

May 20 is also a date of endings. Among the Americans who died on it: Ernest Hogan (1909), American actor and composer; Rudy Lewis (1964), American singer; Gilda Radner (1989), American actress and comedian; and Malik Sealy (2000), American basketball player and actor.

The date carries formal observance as well — National Day (Cameroon). Taken together, the 8 entries on May 20 span 238 years of American life. A date is an arbitrary container, but what fills it is not arbitrary at all.