November 12

November 12 is the 317th day of the year, and the American record for it runs from 1892 to 2001 — a span of 109 years. The entry that anchors it: Vietnam War, 1971.

In the postwar nineteenth century the date tracks a nation rebuilding. In 1892, William Heffelfinger was paid $500 by the Allegheny Athletic Association, becoming the first professional American football player.

In the first half of the twentieth century the date turns technological. In 1936, in California, the San Francisco–Oakland Bay Bridge opens to traffic. Eight years on, in 1944, Second World War — in Operation Catechism, the Royal Air Force sank the German battleship Tirpitz (video featured) near Tromsø, Norway, killing about 1,000 sailors on board.

The postwar entries show a nation both expanding and contesting itself. In 1971, Vietnam War — as part of Vietnamization, U.S. President Richard Nixon sets February 1, 1972 as the deadline for the removal of another 45,000 American troops from Vietnam. Eight years on, in 1979, Iran hostage crisis — in response to the hostage situation in Tehran, U.S. President Jimmy Carter orders a halt to all petroleum imports into the United States from Iran. A year later, in 1980, the NASA space probe Voyager I makes its closest approach to Saturn and takes the first images of its rings.

Closer to the present, the date is still accumulating. In 1997, Ramzi Yousef is found guilty of masterminding the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. Four years on, in 2001, American Airlines Flight 587 crashed into residential buildings five minutes after takeoff from John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York, killing a total of 265 people.

The date is also a birthday. Among the Americans born on November 12: Thaddeus William Harris (1795), American entomologist and botanist; Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815), American activist; DeWitt Wallace (1889), American publisher and philanthropist, co-founded Reader's Digest; James Luther Adams (1901), American minister and theologian; and Jack Oakie (1903), American actor.

November 12 is also a date of endings. Among the Americans who died on it: Percival Lowell (1916), American astronomer, mathematician, and author; John Cady (1933), American golfer; F. Holland Day (1933), American photographer and publisher; and Albert Bond Lambert (1946), American golfer and pilot.

8 entries, 109 years, one square on the calendar. November 12 is a reminder that history is experienced as an ordinary day before it is remembered as a date.