On This Day in History
See historical events, famous births, deaths and holidays for any date, from Wikipedia, with years ago for each.
On This Day in History tool
Example
Input: September 25, Highlights tab (Wikipedia feed fetched 2026-09-25)
Result: Highlights on September 25: 18 entries, newest first, including 1981 - Sandra Day O'Connor became the first female justice of the Supreme Court of the United States (45 yrs ago), and 1066 - Harold Godwinson defeated King Harald III of Norway at the Battle of Stamford Bridge (960 yrs ago)
Years ago are counted from the current year, 2026. The Wikipedia lists are edited over time, so the entries for a date can change.
- The tool opens on today's date. Pick another month and day to see a different date, or tap Today to go back.
- Choose a tab: Highlights, Events, Births, Deaths or Holidays. Each list loads when you open it.
- Read each entry with its year and how many years ago it was, newest first.
- Type in the filter box to find a name, word or year in a long list.
- Tap the article link to read more on Wikipedia, or copy the whole list as plain text.
Events, Births and Deaths on Any Date
On This Day shows what happened on a date in history: events, famous births, deaths and holidays, taken from Wikipedia. It opens on today's date, and you can pick any month and day. For September 25, the highlights include Sandra Day O'Connor becoming the first woman on the US Supreme Court in 1981, 45 years ago.
Five tabs split the day up. Highlights is the short list chosen for the Wikipedia main page. Events is the longer list. Births and Deaths name notable people, often a few hundred for one date. Holidays covers feast days and observances held on that date each year. Each tab loads only when you open it, which keeps the page quick on a phone.
Entries run from newest to oldest, with the year and how many years ago that was. Years before the common era show as BC, such as 44 BC, the year Julius Caesar was killed. There is no year zero, so the count skips it. Tap the link under an entry to read the full article. The filter box finds a word or a year in a long list, and the copy button gives you the list as plain text.
The lists come from the Wikipedia On this day feed, run by the Wikimedia Foundation. Your browser sends it only the month and day. Wikipedia editors write the text, and it is shared under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license. The lists change as editors update them, and they are far from complete. To find the weekday of any date, use the Day of the Week Calculator. To measure the time since an event, try the Date Difference Calculator.
Sources
Frequently Asked Questions
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