November 9

November 9 is the 314th day of the year, and the American record for it runs from 1780 to 1998 — a span of 218 years. The entry that anchors it: The United States receives rights to Pearl Harbor, 1887.

In the years around independence, the date turns political. In 1780, American Revolutionary War — in the Battle of Fishdam Ford a force of British and Loyalist troops fail in a surprise attack against the South Carolina Patriot militia under Brigadier General Thomas Sumter.

In the postwar nineteenth century the date tracks a nation rebuilding. In 1887, the United States receives rights to Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.

In the first half of the twentieth century the date turns technological. In 1906, Theodore Roosevelt is the first sitting President of the United States to make an official trip outside the country, doing so to inspect progress on the Panama Canal. Then, in 1936, American fashion designer Ruth Harkness seeks and captures a nine-week-old panda cub in Sichuan; named Su Lin, he becomes the first live giant panda to enter the United States. Seven years on, in 1943, an agreement for the founding of the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration is signed by 44 countries in the White House, Washington, D.C.

The postwar entries show a nation both expanding and contesting itself. In 1960, Robert McNamara is named president of the Ford Motor Company, becoming the first non-Ford family member to serve in that post. He resigns a month later to join the newly elected John F. Kennedy administration. Seven years on, in 1967, Apollo program — NASA launches the unmanned Apollo 4 test spacecraft, atop the first Saturn V rocket, from Florida's Cape Kennedy.

Closer to the present, the date is still accumulating. In 1998, a U.S. federal judge, in the largest civil settlement in American history, orders 37 U.S. brokerage houses to pay US$1.03 billion to cheated NASDAQ investors to compensate for price fixing.

The date is also a birthday. Among the Americans born on November 9: Benjamin Banneker (1731), American farmer, surveyor, and author; Gail Borden (1801), American surveyor and publisher, invented condensed milk; Elijah Parish Lovejoy (1802), American minister, journalist, and activist; A. P. Hill (1825), American general; and Stanford White (1853), American architect and partner, co-founded McKim, Mead & White.

November 9 is also a date of endings. Among the Americans who died on it: Edwin Drake (1880), American businessman; Howard Pyle (1911), American author and illustrator; Henry Cabot Lodge (1924), American historian and politician; and Stephen Alencastre (1940), Portuguese-American bishop.

The date carries formal observance as well — World Freedom Day (United States). November 9 carries 8 entries spread across 218 years. None of the people in them knew they were sharing a date; that is a pattern only visible looking back.