October 2

October 2 is the 276th day of the year, and the American record for it runs from 1780 to 2006 — a span of 226 years. The entry that anchors it: Seven days after suffering a "physical collapse" following a speech in Pueblo, 1919.

In the founding decades, the date sat close to the business of building a republic. In 1780, American Revolutionary War — John André, a British Army officer, is hanged as a spy by the Continental Army. Nine years on, in 1789, the United States Bill of Rights is sent to the various States for ratification.

Through the nineteenth century the date gathered the tensions that would define the era. In 1864, American Civil War — Confederates defeat a Union attack on Saltville, Virginia. A massacre of wounded Union prisoners ensues.

As the country moved into the modern age, the date accumulated new kinds of firsts. In 1919, seven days after suffering a "physical collapse" following a speech in Pueblo, Colorado, U.S. president Woodrow Wilson has a catastrophic stroke at the White House, leaving him physically and mentally incapacitated for the remainder of his presidency.

In the postwar decades the date belonged to a nation of enormous reach and unfinished arguments. In 1967, Thurgood Marshall is sworn in as the first African-American justice of the United States Supreme Court.

In living memory, the date has kept adding to the record. In 1996, the Electronic Freedom of Information Act Amendments are signed by U.S. President Bill Clinton. Six years on, in 2002, the Beltway sniper attacks begin in Washington, D.C., extending over three weeks and killing 10 people. Four years on, in 2006, five Amish girls are murdered in a shooting at a school in Pennsylvania, United States.

The date is also a birthday. Among the Americans born on October 2: Nat Turner (1800), American slave and uprising leader; Alexander P. Stewart (1821), American general; Cordell Hull (1871), American politician, United States Secretary of State, Nobel Prize laureate; Martha Brookes Hutcheson (1871), American landscaper and author; and Stephen Warfield Gambrill (1873), American lawyer and politician.

October 2 is also a date of endings. Among the Americans who died on it: Samuel Adams (1803), American politician, Governor of Massachusetts; John Marin (1953), American painter; William R. Orthwein (1955), American swimmer and water polo player; and Jessie Arms Botke (1971), American painter.

The date carries formal observance as well — Gandhi's birthday-related observances: — International Day of Non-Violence and International Day of Non-Violence. Read end to end, October 2 is less a list than a cross-section: 8 entries that happen to share a square on the calendar, separated by as much as 226 years. The coincidence is arbitrary; the accumulation is not.