September 6

September 6 is the 250th day of the year, and the American record for it runs from 1781 to 1946 — a span of 165 years. The entry that anchors it: American Civil War, 1861.

The revolutionary generation left its own mark on the date. In 1781, American Revolutionary War — General Benedict Arnold led British forces to victory at the Battle of Groton Heights.

The antebellum decades brought the date closer to the country’s central argument. In 1861, American Civil War — forces under Union General Ulysses S. Grant bloodlessly capture Paducah, Kentucky, giving the Union control of the Tennessee River's mouth. Two years on, in 1863, American Civil War — Confederate forces evacuate Battery Wagner and Morris Island in South Carolina. The same year, General John S. Marmaduke fatally wounded his Confederate Army colleague Lucius M. Walker in a formal duel in Arkansas.

Reconstruction and the years that followed added their own entries. In 1870, Louisa Ann Swain of Laramie, Wyoming becomes the first woman in the United States to cast a vote legally after 1807.

The early twentieth century brought industry, air travel and war to the date. In 1901, U.S. president William McKinley was fatally shot by anarchist Leon Czolgosz at the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, New York, and died eight days later. Then, in 1916, the first self-service grocery store, Piggly Wiggly, was founded in Memphis, Tennessee, U.S.

After 1945 the date reflects a country operating at global scale. In 1946, United States Secretary of State James F. Byrnes announces that the U.S. will follow a policy of economic reconstruction in postwar Germany.

The date is also a birthday. Among the Americans born on September 6: Henry Muhlenberg (1711), German-American pastor and missionary; Frances Wright (1795), Scottish-American author and activist; Catharine Beecher (1800), American educator and activist; William Rosecrans (1819), American general, politician, and diplomat, United States Ambassador to Mexico; and Samuel Arnold (1838), American conspirator.

September 6 is also a date of endings. Among the Americans who died on it: Pierre Adolphe Rost (1868), American lawyer, judge, and politician; William Libbey (1927), American target shooter and geographer; James Cannon Jr. (1944), American Bishop of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South; and John S. McCain Sr. (1945), American admiral.

The record for September 6 runs 165 years deep across 8 entries. Read in sequence, the date stops being a coincidence and starts being a through-line.