Everyone remembers where they were when the web went mainstream. But for every moment that made the history books, there are dozens of equally pivotal days buried in server logs and forgotten press releases. Take August 6, 1991. Tim Berners-Lee posted the first public description of the World Wide Web to a Usenet newsgroup. No fanfare. No ticker tape. Just a politely worded message to a community of nerds. Most people scrolled past it.

If you had to crown a single calendar date as the most historically loaded — the one that appears most often in the “on this day” lists, the one with the most wars started, treaties signed, revolutions launched, and famous people born — what would it be? Historians and data nerds have tried to answer this. The results are illuminating, if inconclusive. July 14th is a strong contender. Bastille Day, obviously — the symbolic start of the French Revolution in 1789.

April 15, 1865. Abraham Lincoln dies from an assassin’s bullet in Washington D.C. The nation goes into mourning. A presidency, a war, an era — all ending in a boarding house bedroom before breakfast. April 15, 1912. The RMS Titanic slips beneath the North Atlantic, taking 1,500 people with her. The unsinkable ship, sunk. The century’s confidence in technology, punctured. Same date. Forty-seven years apart. Both events redefine what Americans — and the world — believe is possible.