October 8

October 8 is the 282nd day of the year, and the American record for it runs from 1862 to 2014 — a span of 152 years. The entry that anchors it: American Civil War, 1862.

Through the nineteenth century the date gathered the tensions that would define the era. In 1862, American Civil War — the Confederate invasion of Kentucky is halted at the Battle of Perryville.

In the decades after the Civil War, the date marked a country remaking itself. In 1871, Slash-and-burn land management, months of drought, and the passage of a strong cold front cause the Peshtigo Fire, the Great Chicago Fire and the Great Michigan Fires to break out.

As the country moved into the modern age, the date accumulated new kinds of firsts. In 1932, the Indian Air Force was founded as an auxiliary air force of the British Royal Air Force.

In the postwar decades the date belonged to a nation of enormous reach and unfinished arguments. In 1956, the New York Yankees's Don Larsen pitches the only perfect game in a World Series. Then, in 1969, Demonstrations organized by the Weather Underground known as the Days of Rage began in Chicago, aimed at ending U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War. Five years on, in 1974, Franklin National Bank collapses due to fraud and mismanagement; at the time it is the largest bank failure in the history of the United States.

In living memory, the date has kept adding to the record. In 2001, U.S. president George W. Bush announces the establishment of the Office of Homeland Security. Then, in 2014, Thomas Eric Duncan, the first person in the United States to be diagnosed with Ebola, dies.

The date is also a birthday. Among the Americans born on October 8: John Ruggles (1789), American lawyer and politician; John Henninger Reagan (1818), American judge and politician, 3rd Confederate States Secretary of the Treasury; Walter Kittredge (1834), American violinist and composer; Edythe Chapman (1863), American actress; and Mary Engle Pennington (1872), American bacteriological chemist and refrigeration engineer.

October 8 is also a date of endings. Among the Americans who died on it: John Hancock (1793), American merchant and politician, 1st Governor of Massachusetts; Franklin Pierce (1869), American general, lawyer, and politician, 14th President of the United States; Austin F. Pike (1886), American lawyer and politician; and Larry Semon (1928), American actor, director, producer, and screenwriter.

Read end to end, October 8 is less a list than a cross-section: 8 entries that happen to share a square on the calendar, separated by as much as 152 years. The coincidence is arbitrary; the accumulation is not.