November 24

November 24 is the 329th day of the year, and the American record for it runs from 1863 to 1969 — a span of 106 years. The entry that anchors it: World War II, 1941.

By the middle of the nineteenth century the date carries heavier freight. In 1863, American Civil War — as part of the Chattanooga campaign in Chattanooga, Tennessee, Union forces captured Lookout Mountain, helping them to begin breaking the Confederate siege of the city.

In the first half of the twentieth century the date turns technological. In 1917, in Milwaukee, nine members of the Milwaukee Police Department are killed by a bomb, the most deaths in a single event in U.S. police history until the September 11 attacks in 2001. Eight years on, in 1925, the Eugene O'Neill Theatre opened on Broadway, New York, with a production of the musical Mayflowers. Seven years on, in 1932, in Washington, D.C., the FBI Scientific Crime Detection Laboratory (better known as the FBI Crime Lab) officially opens. Nine years on, in 1941, World War II — the United States grants Lend-Lease to the Free French Forces.

The postwar entries show a nation both expanding and contesting itself. In 1950, the "Great Appalachian Storm", a large extratropical cyclone, struck the east coast of the United States before moving northeast. Then, in 1963, during a live television broadcast, businessman Jack Ruby shot and fatally wounded Lee Harvey Oswald, who assassinated U.S. president John F. Kennedy, fueling numerous conspiracy theories. Six years on, in 1969, Apollo program — the Apollo 12 command module splashes down safely in the Pacific Ocean, ending the second crewed mission to land on the Moon.

The date is also a birthday. Among the Americans born on November 24: Zachary Taylor (1784), American general and politician, 12th President of the United States; John Alfred Brashear (1840), American scientist, telescope maker and educator; Frances Hodgson Burnett (1849), English-American novelist and playwright; Cass Gilbert (1859), American architect, designed the United States Supreme Court Building and Woolworth Building; and Scott Joplin (1868), American pianist and composer.

November 24 is also a date of endings. Among the Americans who died on it: James Caldwell (1781), American minister; Joseph Brant (1807), American tribal leader; August Belmont (1890), German-American banker and politician, 16th United States Ambassador to the Netherlands; and Hiram Maxim (1916), American-English engineer, invented the Maxim gun.

8 entries, 106 years, one square on the calendar. November 24 is a reminder that history is experienced as an ordinary day before it is remembered as a date.