September 29

September 29 is the 273rd day of the year, and the American record for it runs from 1760 to 2008 — a span of 248 years. The entry that anchors it: The Williamsburg Bray School, 1760.

Before there was a United States, the date already carried weight in the colonies. In 1760, the Williamsburg Bray School, the oldest-surviving school building in the U.S. dedicated to educating Black children, opened at Benjamin Franklin's suggestion.

In the founding decades, the date sat close to the business of building a republic. In 1789, the United States Department of War first establishes a regular army with a strength of several hundred men.

Through the nineteenth century the date gathered the tensions that would define the era. In 1864, the Battle of Chaffin's Farm is fought in the American Civil War.

As the country moved into the modern age, the date accumulated new kinds of firsts. In 1907, the cornerstone is laid at the Cathedral Church of Saint Peter and Saint Paul (better known as Washington National Cathedral) in Washington, D.C.

In the postwar decades the date belonged to a nation of enormous reach and unfinished arguments. In 1988, NASA launches STS-26, the first Space Shuttle mission since the Challenger disaster.

In living memory, the date has kept adding to the record. In 1990, construction of the Cathedral Church of Saint Peter and Saint Paul (better known as Washington National Cathedral) is completed in Washington, D.C. Then, in 2005, John Roberts became the 17th Chief Justice of the United States; he would be the first Chief Justice to serve for twenty years since Melville Fuller in 1908. Three years on, in 2008, the stock market crashes with the Dow Jones dropping a then record 778 points after the United States House of Representatives vote on the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act fails during the beginning stages of the Great Recession.

The date is also a birthday. Among the Americans born on September 29: Henry Bennett (1808), American lawyer and politician; Luther D. Bradley (1853), American cartoonist; Ludwig von Mises (1881), Austrian-American economist, sociologist, and philosopher; Clarence Ashley (1895), American singer, guitarist, and banjo player; and Joseph Banks Rhine (1895), American botanist and parapsychologist.

September 29 is also a date of endings. Among the Americans who died on it: Michael Hillegas (1804), American politician, 1st Treasurer of the United States; William "Bull" Nelson (1862), American general; Sterling Price (1867), American major general and politician; and Thomas F. Bayard (1898), American lawyer, politician and diplomat.

Taken together, the 8 entries on September 29 span 248 years of American life. A date is an arbitrary container, but what fills it is not arbitrary at all.