November 6

November 6 is the 311th day of the year, and the American record for it runs from 1860 to 2012 — a span of 152 years. The entry that anchors it: Abraham Lincoln is elected the 16th president of the United States with only 40% of the popular vote, 1860.

By the middle of the nineteenth century the date carries heavier freight. In 1860, Abraham Lincoln is elected the 16th president of the United States with only 40% of the popular vote, defeating John C. Breckinridge, John Bell, and Stephen A. Douglas in a four-way race. Three years on, in 1863, American Civil War — a Union brigade defeated a Confederate force at the Battle of Droop Mountain in Pocahontas County, West Virginia.

In the postwar nineteenth century the date tracks a nation rebuilding. In 1869, in New Brunswick, New Jersey, Rutgers College defeats Princeton University (then known as the College of New Jersey), 6–4, in the first official intercollegiate American football game.

In the first half of the twentieth century the date turns technological. In 1900, President William McKinley is re-elected, along with his vice-presidential running mate, Governor Theodore Roosevelt of New York. Then, in 1944, the B Reactor at the Hanford Site in the U.S. state of Washington began producing plutonium, with the facility later going on to create more for nearly the entire American nuclear arsenal.

The postwar entries show a nation both expanding and contesting itself. In 1963, Nguyễn Ngọc Thơ was appointed by the junta of General Dương Văn Minh to head the South Vietnamese government, five days after Minh deposed and assassinated President Ngô Đình Diệm. Eight years on, in 1971, the United States Atomic Energy Commission tests the largest U.S. underground hydrogen bomb, code-named Cannikin, on Amchitka Island in the Aleutians.

Closer to the present, the date is still accumulating. In 2012, Tammy Baldwin became the first openly gay politician to be elected to the United States Senate.

The date is also a birthday. Among the Americans born on November 6: Joseph Smith III (1832), American religious leader; Nelson W. Aldrich (1841), American businessman and politician; Charles Dow (1851), American journalist and economist; John Philip Sousa (1854), American composer and bandleader; and James Naismith (1861), Canadian-American physician and educator, invented basketball.

November 6 is also a date of endings. Among the Americans who died on it: Gouverneur Morris (1816), American scholar, politician, and diplomat, United States Ambassador to France; Clarence Williams (1965), American singer-songwriter, pianist, and producer; Chauncey Sparks (1968), American politician and 41st Governor of Alabama; and Gene Tierney (1991), American actress.

The date carries formal observance as well — International Day for Preventing the Exploitation of the Environment in War and Armed Conflict. 8 entries, 152 years, one square on the calendar. November 6 is a reminder that history is experienced as an ordinary day before it is remembered as a date.