September 4

September 4 is the 248th day of the year, and the American record for it runs from 1813 to 1995 — a span of 182 years. The entry that anchors it: American Civil War Maryland Campaign, 1862.

By the middle of the nineteenth century the date carries heavier freight. In 1813, Future U.S. president Andrew Jackson is shot in a tavern brawl with future U.S. Senator Thomas Hart Benton and others. Then, in 1862, American Civil War Maryland Campaign — General Robert E. Lee takes the Army of Northern Virginia, and the war, into the North.

In the postwar nineteenth century the date tracks a nation rebuilding. In 1886, after more than 25 years of fighting against the United States Army and the armed forces of Mexico, Geronimo of the Chiricahua Apache surrendered at Skeleton Canyon in Arizona.

In the first half of the twentieth century the date turns technological. In 1941, World War II — a German submarine makes the first attack of the war against a United States warship, the USS Greer.

The postwar entries show a nation both expanding and contesting itself. In 1951, the first live transcontinental television broadcast takes place in San Francisco, United States, from the Japanese Peace Treaty Conference. Four years on, in 1955, a white U.S. soldier raped and murdered a five-year-old local girl in Kadena, Okinawa. Then, in 1967, Vietnam War — operation Swift begins when U.S. Marines engage the North Vietnamese in battle in the Que Son Valley.

Closer to the present, the date is still accumulating. In 1995, three African-American U.S. sea servicemen stationed at Camp Hansen in Okinawa raped a 12-year-old local girl, after kidnapping, beating, and torturing her.

The date is also a birthday. Among the Americans born on September 4: Stephen Whitney (1776), American businessman; Daniel Burnham (1846), American architect, designed the World's Columbian Exposition; Lewis Howard Latimer (1848), American inventor; Jennie Lee (1848), American actress; and Max Delbrück (1906), German-American biophysicist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate.

September 4 is also a date of endings. Among the Americans who died on it: Richard Somers (1804), American lieutenant; John Hunt Morgan (1864), American general; Clyde Fitch (1909), American playwright and songwriter; and Howdy Wilcox (1923), American racing driver.

September 4 carries 8 entries spread across 182 years. None of the people in them knew they were sharing a date; that is a pattern only visible looking back.