October 11

October 11 is the 285th day of the year, and the American record for it runs from 1776 to 2000 — a span of 224 years. The entry that anchors it: Apollo 7, 1968.

In the founding decades, the date sat close to the business of building a republic. In 1776, American Revolutionary War — a British fleet defeated American ships at the Battle of Valcour Island on Lake Champlain, but gave American forces enough time to prepare their defenses for the Saratoga campaign.

Through the nineteenth century the date gathered the tensions that would define the era. In 1862, American Civil War — Confederate troops conduct a raid on Chambersburg, Pennsylvania.

In the decades after the Civil War, the date marked a country remaking itself. In 1890, in Washington, D.C., the Daughters of the American Revolution was founded.

As the country moved into the modern age, the date accumulated new kinds of firsts. In 1910, Piloted by Arch Hoxsey, Theodore Roosevelt becomes the first U.S. president to fly in an airplane.

In the postwar decades the date belonged to a nation of enormous reach and unfinished arguments. In 1968, Apollo 7, the first manned mission of NASA's Apollo program, and the first three-man American space mission, launched from Complex 34 in Cape Kennedy, Florida. Then, in 1987, the AIDS Memorial Quilt is first displayed during the Second National March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights. The same year, an estimated 750,000 people attended the "Great March" in Washington, D.C., to demand greater civil rights for the LGBT community.

In living memory, the date has kept adding to the record. In 2000, NASA launches STS-92, the 100th Space Shuttle mission.

The date is also a birthday. Among the Americans born on October 11: Stevenson Archer (1786), American judge and politician; Jean-Baptiste Lamy (1814), French-American archbishop; Theodore Thomas (1835), American conductor, founded the Chicago Symphony Orchestra; Henry J. Heinz (1844), American businessman, founded the H. J. Heinz Company; and Harlan F. Stone (1872), American lawyer and jurist, 12th Chief Justice of the United States.

October 11 is also a date of endings. Among the Americans who died on it: Hans Herr (1725), Swiss-American bishop; Casimir Pulaski (1779), Polish-American general; Meriwether Lewis (1809), American captain, explorer, and politician, 2nd Governor of Louisiana Territory; and John Ross Key (1821), American lieutenant, lawyer, and judge.

The date carries formal observance as well — General Pulaski Memorial Day (United States) and International Day of the Girl Child. Taken together, the 8 entries on October 11 span 224 years of American life. A date is an arbitrary container, but what fills it is not arbitrary at all.