This is the week of the 49th Democratic National Convention, the latest in a quadrennial series that goes back in an unbroken chain to 1832. It’s the oldest political party in the world. Its first presidential nominee, Andrew Jackson, was born in 1767, near the border of North Carolina and South Carolina, which were both then British colonies. Its latest presidential nominee, Kamala Harris, was born 197 years later in California, which was not part of the Union for the first five Democratic conventions. 

This year’s convention is the eleventh to be held in Chicago, which was just an outpost called Fort Dearborn when the first convention met 192 years ago. Chicago has been the site now of 12 Democratic conventions, some of them memorable, including the 1940 and 1944 conventions that nominated Franklin Roosevelt for his third and fourth terms, an event not to be repeated since the passage of the 22nd Amendment limiting presidents to two.