November 2

November 2 is the 307th day of the year, and the American record for it runs from 1880 to 1984 — a span of 104 years. The entry that anchors it: U.S. President Ronald Reagan signs a bill creating Martin Luther King Jr. Day, 1983.

Reconstruction and the years that followed added their own entries. In 1880, James A. Garfield was elected as president of the United States; the election is the closest to date by popular vote margin. Nine years on, in 1889, North Dakota and South Dakota are admitted as the 39th and 40th U.S. states.

The early twentieth century brought industry, air travel and war to the date. In 1920, the Ocoee massacre commences in Orange County, Florida on the day of the 1920 United States presidential election.

After 1945 the date reflects a country operating at global scale. In 1949, the Dutch–Indonesian Round Table Conference ended with the Netherlands agreeing to transfer sovereignty of the Dutch East Indies to the United States of Indonesia. Eight years on, in 1957, a large number of people witnessed a fiery object in the sky near Levelland, Texas, which the United States Air Force said was ball lightning. Ten years on, in 1967, Vietnam War — US President Lyndon B. Johnson and "The Wise Men" conclude that the American people should be given more optimistic reports on the progress of the war. Then, in 1983, U.S. President Ronald Reagan signs a bill creating Martin Luther King Jr. Day. A year later, in 1984, the serial killer Velma Barfield became the first woman to be executed in the United States since 1962.

The date is also a birthday. Among the Americans born on November 2: Conrad Weiser (1696), American soldier, monk, and judge; Daniel Boone (1734), American hunter and explorer; James K. Polk (1795), American lawyer and politician, 11th President of the United States; John Light Atlee (1799), American physician and surgeon; and John J. Loud (1844), American inventor.

November 2 is also a date of endings. Among the Americans who died on it: Theodore Judah (1863), American engineer; Daniel Payne (1893), American educator and bishop of the African Methodist Episcopal Church; Thomas Midgley Jr. (1944), American chemist and engineer; and Jerome F. Donovan (1949), American lawyer and politician.

The date carries formal observance as well — International Day to End Impunity for Crimes Against Journalists (United Nations) and Statehood Day (North Dakota and South Dakota, United States). What holds these 8 entries together is nothing more than the calendar, and nothing less. 104 years separate the earliest from the latest, and each was once simply the present day.