November 18

November 18 is the 323rd day of the year, and the American record for it runs from 1901 to 2013 — a span of 112 years. The entry that anchors it: U.S. President Richard Nixon asks the U.S. Congress for $155 million in supplemental aid for the Cambodian government, 1970.

In the first half of the twentieth century the date turns technological. In 1901, Britain and the United States sign the Hay–Pauncefote Treaty, which nullifies the Clayton–Bulwer Treaty and withdraws British objections to an American-controlled canal in Panama.

The postwar entries show a nation both expanding and contesting itself. In 1961, Vietnam War — United States President John F. Kennedy sends 18,000 military advisors to South Vietnam. Nine years on, in 1970, U.S. President Richard Nixon asks the U.S. Congress for $155 million in supplemental aid for the Cambodian government. Eight years on, in 1978, the McDonnell Douglas F/A-18 Hornet makes its first flight, at the Naval Air Test Center in Maryland, United States. The same year, Jim Jones led more than 900 members of the Peoples Temple to mass murder/suicide in Jonestown, Guyana, hours after some of its members assassinated U.S. Congressman Leo Ryan.

Closer to the present, the date is still accumulating. In 1993, in the United States, the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) is approved by the House of Representatives. Ten years on, in 2003, with its ruling in Goodridge v. Department of Public Health, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court made the state the first in the U.S. to legalize same-sex marriage. Ten years on, in 2013, NASA launches the MAVEN probe to Mars.

The date is also a birthday. Among the Americans born on November 18: Asa Gray (1810), American botanist and academic; John Matthew Moore (1862), American politician; Clarence Day (1874), American author and poet; Amelita Galli-Curci (1882), Italian-American soprano; and Carl Vinson (1883), American judge and politician.

November 18 is also a date of endings. Among the Americans who died on it: Philip Schuyler (1804), American general and senator; Rose Philippine Duchesne (1852), French-American nun and saint; Chester A. Arthur (1886), American general, lawyer, and politician, 21st President of the United States; and Henry A. Wallace (1965), American agronomist and bureaucrat, 33rd Vice President of the United States, 11th US Secretary of Agriculture.

The date carries formal observance as well — National Day (Oman). 8 entries, 112 years, one square on the calendar. November 18 is a reminder that history is experienced as an ordinary day before it is remembered as a date.