November 25

November 25 is the 330th day of the year, and the American record for it runs from 1783 to 1986 — a span of 203 years. The entry that anchors it: American Indian Wars, 1876.

In the founding decades, the date sat close to the business of building a republic. In 1783, American Revolutionary War — the last British troops leave New York City, three months after the signing of the Treaty of Paris.

Through the nineteenth century the date gathered the tensions that would define the era. In 1863, American Civil War — Confederate forces were defeated at the Battle of Missionary Ridge in Chattanooga, Tennessee, opening the door to the Union's invasion of the Deep South. A year later, in 1864, American Civil War — a group of Confederate operatives calling themselves the Confederate Army of Manhattan starts fires in more than 20 locations in an unsuccessful attempt to burn down New York City.

In the decades after the Civil War, the date marked a country remaking itself. In 1876, American Indian Wars — in retaliation for the American defeat at the Battle of the Little Bighorn, United States Army troops sack the sleeping village of Cheyenne Chief Dull Knife at the headwaters of the Powder River.

As the country moved into the modern age, the date accumulated new kinds of firsts. In 1943, World War II — Statehood of Bosnia and Herzegovina is re-established at the State Anti-fascist Council for the National Liberation of Bosnia and Herzegovina.

In the postwar decades the date belonged to a nation of enormous reach and unfinished arguments. In 1951, the left-wing Japanese novelist Wataru Kaji disappeared, leading to a government inquiry in which CIA involvement was investigated; Kaji stated he was kidnapped and held against his will by intelligence officers, which the United States denied. Then, in 1963, State funeral of John F. Kennedy; after lying in state at the United States Capitol, a Requiem Mass takes place at Cathedral of St. Matthew the Apostle and the President is buried at Arlington National Cemetery. Then, in 1986, Iran–Contra affair — U.S. Attorney General Edwin Meese announces that profits from covert weapons sales to Iran were illegally diverted to the anti-communist Contra rebels in Nicaragua.

The date is also a birthday. Among the Americans born on November 25: Robert Townsend (1753), American spy; John Bigelow (1817), American lawyer and politician, United States Ambassador to France; Andrew Carnegie (1835), Scottish-American businessman and philanthropist; Henry Ware Eliot (1843), American businessman and philanthropist; and Carrie Nation (1846), American activist.

November 25 is also a date of endings. Among the Americans who died on it: Stephanus Van Cortlandt (1700), American lawyer and politician, 10th Mayor of New York City; Thomas A. Hendricks (1885), American lawyer and politician, 21st Vice President of the United States; Edward P. Allen (1909), American lawyer and politician; and Gaston Chevrolet (1920), French-American racing driver and businessman.

The date carries formal observance as well — International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women. Read end to end, November 25 is less a list than a cross-section: 8 entries that happen to share a square on the calendar, separated by as much as 203 years. The coincidence is arbitrary; the accumulation is not.