Some dates produce men and moments that do not make sense until later. January 17 has a particular talent for this — for the warning given too soon to be heard, for the survival that arrives at too high a cost, for the birth of a mind that its own era could not fully contain. On January 17, 1706, Benjamin Franklin was born in Boston, the fifteenth of seventeen children of a candle and soap maker.

History does not usually return to the same address. It prefers to move on, to rearrange the furniture in a new room, to pretend it is doing something for the first time. But occasionally a date refuses to let it do that. June 28 is one of those dates — a calendar address that history has knocked on three times, each time with a different face and the same obscure necessity.

There are days that do not begin wars. They announce them — standing at the edge of what has already been set in motion, making official what everyone has already understood. September 3 has had that function more than once: the date that formalizes an ending, ratifies a beginning, or simply states aloud what the situation already was. On September 3, 1783, American and British representatives signed the Treaty of Paris, ending the Revolutionary War.