What Happened on This Day… – Fun with onthisday.com!

Calendar

Hello again readers! It’s me again (did you expect anyone else?), and do I have something to share with you. Did you ever wonder what happened on a random day in history? Or what happened today, 30 years ago? Well, whether you wondered or not, that’s the topic of today’s post!

Recently, while looking for new article material, I fell in a rabbit hole (of course) and ended up on a site called onthisday.com. I don’t know. It’s how the Internet works.

The cool thing about this website is that it let’s you see what happened on ANY day of human history.

Hmm… maybe not every day. But pretty much all we know. It has nothing to do with internet marketing or business, but then again, it’s good to be a little off-topic sometimes. It’s what categories are for.

I also used takemeback.to, another ‘calendar’ site. Each site has information the other doeRandom Date Generator

sn’t, but onthisday.com has a cooler name, so it made the title.

I used a random date generator to, well, generate some dates. Yes, such a thing exists. And yes, I totally just found that out. Let’s take a look!

Thursday, September 25, 1930


What happened on this day

Ah, the Thirties. 1930, specifically. The first year of the Great Depression. But just because the economy was down, doesn’t mean the world was inactive!

We can see that this day occurred during Herbert Hoover’s presidency. Did you know he never held any previous office-elected position before winning the election? Embrace this useless fact, for history may repeat itself this year, coincidentally with another Republican.

What happened on this day

Look at all these events! Granted, we’re looking at quantity over quality here. Do I really have any interest in the Austrian government? Or the manager of the Cubs? Rogers Hornsby.jpg

Well, actually, Rogers Hornsby is a noteworthy baseball player. His batting average is the second best of all time (.358), second only to Ty Cobb (.367). And like Cobb, Hornsby was an aggressive and confrontational person. He even said that he didn’t think his teammates liked him at all, which wasn’t really a stretch. He became the manager of the Cubs on this day. That’s all for now. This paragraph is too long.

Now there’s a good birthday list! You can see Shel Silverstein was born today (as long as we’re in this subsection, we’re in 1930). You’ve read one of his books for sure. Well, at least one: “The Giving Tree.”

The Giving Tree is one of my favorite books. It’s about a boy growing up, while being friends with a tree. The tree gives him everything she has, leaving her with nothing. It’s really sad. Everyone has an interpretation of it. I recommend a read. It also has a terrifying picture of the author on the back.

 Sunday, June 21, 2009


2009

2009 is still fresh for me, probably since it’s only been 7 years.  We know what it was like. The midst of the Great Recession (hmm…).

I’d go into length about the economy of the world in this year, but I’m not really an economist. I also just don’t care.

What I do care about was that this year was the pop culture aspect, which is where most (not including affiliate marketing and business of course) of my interests lie.

I’m talking about the sixth Harry Potter movie, Up, the debut of Parks and Recreation, New Super Mario Br-

Oh yeah, this is about June 21.

2009 Facts

All this stuff happened on one day. That’s something to think about. On any given day, world-changing events are happening. Or just plain interesting stuff.

Danish Realm
You can see who accounts for the land in this family. This is all that’s left of the Danish Empire, which wasn’t that big in the first place.

Like the Maya discovery. Who would have known that the manioc plant was a staple food of that civilization? More importantly, who would really care abo- whoops, I mean, who wouldn’t care?

I actually learned a lot just from this list. I had no idea Greenland was part of the Danish Realm, or even that the Danish Realm was a thing. Greenland’s self-rule took effect on this day. They made Greenlandic their official language too.

The more I look at it, most events are political. I hate political topics. They’re so opinionated I wouldn’t touch them with a 10 foot Power Pole.

You’ll notice this is a Wikipedia list. I found out the Wiki does it better. Maybe I should have changed the title… nah.

Wednesday, June 19, 1996


1996

This wasn’t a random date, this is my birth…date! It’s my birthday! And I don’t mean like June 19. I mean the specific June 19, 1996. Because so many people consider only their date as a sign that their birthday is special. You gotta look at the actual day!

It seems I got worked up over nothing. That’s how you can tell we’re on the Internet.

Anyway, the events of this day make my ego proud. It was the day Boris Yeltsin won the second ever Russian presidential election. That’s would be a totally useless fact for me, had it occurred any other day. It’s the spirit of personal bias.

I love Disney, and on this day, The Hunchback of Notre Dame had its premiere. If you haven’t watched it before, I highly recommend you do. It’s pretty dark for a Disney movie, touching on damnation, lust, and other mature themes.

Sadly for my vanity, those are really the only 2 noteworthy events I could find for this day.

It doesn’t really count, but Independence Day, a crazy successful movie, and one of my favorites, was released a few days after, with Dolly the cloned sheep being born two weeks later.

I’d also say Bill Clinton was President. That doesn’t really matter at all, but his wife is *kinda* important nowadays, so it’s worth a mention.

Sunday, April 11, 1954


This looks like an ordinary day, and it is. It’s so ordinary that it’s been called the most boring day in history. William Tunstall-Pedoe, a search engine scientist, scanned every date from the beginning of the 1900s and found that April 11, 1954 had the least amount of noteworthy events.

Basically, Belgium had a general election, and a Turkish academic, Abduallah Atalar, was born. That’s it. Nothing especially major happened.

If you think about it, the fact that April 11, 1954 is known as the most boring day kinda negates its status of being the most boring day. It’s a known day. So it can’t be the most forgotten day. But then what is the most boring day? Do ‘most boring days’ stop being boring when they’re spotlighted? My head hurts.

The End


After posts like these, I’m grateful for my ‘blog’ category. They have to go somewhere, after all. I like to think of these as character developing posts, which do exactly what their description implies.

I hope you learned something new from my experience with onthisday.com. Or takemeback.to, which is where most of the information came from. Or Wikipedia. The important thing is you learned something.

Do you have a date you ever wondered about? It’s your birthday, isn’t it? Try it (or a randomly generated date) out on the websites above and leave a comment with your findings!

Your homie in history,

-Makki
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20 thoughts on “What Happened on This Day… – Fun with onthisday.com!

  1. Well this is the first time I’ve come across a post like this. Good for you for being so original. I’m going to check out the site to see what happened on my birthday. I think this would be a good idea for school age (middle or Highschool) to use in their brainstorming for essay topics.

    1. I don’t like to stay in rut, so trying new ideas is important! Now that I think about it, this really would have been a good idea for school assignments. I hated writing assignments, but I’d have liked this idea. Thanks for your insight Melissa!

  2. Nice one. I have to use that random date generator.

    It was a fun read to know all the history of a certain date. It is a humbling experience. You learn a lot from history. Like people said, history tends to repeat itself.

    1. Nicely said Arief. You never know how much actually happened till you take a look. Just from looking at these few dates, I saw that many things are happening again in recent years. Pretty fascinating, if you ask me. Hope you enjoy that date generator!

  3. This is awesome. I always like reading what has happened on a certain date. When I was younger I wondered if there was any day in history where absoultey nothing happened! There probably isn’t a day where everything was ‘normal’ but I would like to know which day it is, if it even exists. Now, I of course have to go search up my birthday…hope something interesting happend that day!

    1. Hey there Summerly! Glad you enjoyed it! I also used to wonder about that too. There has to be one day in history that could be erased without any consequences. There probably isn’t thanks to the butterfly effect, though. Thanks for your comment. I hope your birthday turns out more eventful than mine!

      1. I ended up checking my birthday, and no, no it wasn’t any more eventful than yours, depressing really, I was hoping for something awesome! 🙂

  4. This is pretty cool stuff Makki! Does it cost anything to get access to this sort of thing?

    Also I gotta say, you’re writing is absolutely phenomenal my friend! You put ideas together very eloquently and you get your point across in a manner that many should be jealous of. Did you get that way just by practicing? Furthermore, do you know of any online tools that help writers improve their writing over time?

    1. Nice to see you again Ryan! These are all free for sure. I wouldn’t have clowned around with them if they weren’t. onthisday.com is only good for its name. takemeback.to is much more comprehensive. And Wikipedia is Wikipedia. They’re all free, so I can’t complain.

      Thanks a million for that heavy praise! I don’t like to brag, but my writing is good. I got to this level by watching lots of TV and movies (helps with tone), reading lots of books (when I was younger, don’t read much now), and of course, practicing. I don’t really use tools to improve. I think all I need to get better is more training. I would recommend writing everyday. If you have website, this is easy to do. It gives you feedback. Along with reading some good books, I’d recommend shows like The Office. Hope this helps Ryan!

  5. Wow what an interesting site. I wonder how long it took them to get all of that data… This is another site where you can waste time on:

    http://pointlesssuperpowers.com/

    Its just like it looks like – A site about pointless super powers. A lot of them are really funny actually. One of the top ones is “The power to waste time on this website” haha.

    1. Since the ultimate source is Wikipedia, I imagine they did some techy stuff to move the events from one site to another. Thanks for that cool website! Actually, I don’t know whether to thank or shun you. It’s quite the addicting place. I’m gonna be sure to stay away. I’ve already went through the first dozen pages. Lots of laughs, which is just how I like it! Thanks (no thanks?) for your suggestion Matt!

  6. This remind me on the television programs when I was around 10 years old. Back then we have a program called “A day in history” where they run something similar like this on television. I’m not a real fan of history myself partly because I’m bad with remembering dates. But perhaps I should start to take interest.

    1. It’s not really the most exciting thing. I lost interest after finishing the post. Unless you have a specific date in mind, it’s kinda too much information. I guess a TV show would present it better. Thanks for commenting Kenny!

  7. I love this stuff, anything history and you’ve got me. The internet is great, isn’t it? With all this information at our finger tips…I had a look ‘takemeback.to’ really cool website. I like how you can also check out the newspapers on a certain date…very useful for genealogy….Thanks!

    1. The newspaper function is pretty interesting, but it’s something I wouldn’t get overly excited about personally. But I can see how useful it would be for genealogical purposes, or general research. Thanks for sharing Cambell!

  8. Hi Makki, this was fun to read and you gave me a good chuckle or two. 😉 I am definitely going to go on those websites now to look up my birthday! I never did have any inclination or interest in doing this until reading your post! 😉 LOL! I did pleasantly learn a lot too from reading your post. Thanks for taking me on the ride with you, it was very enjoyable! 😀

    1. Very happy to see you liked the post so much Ali! I hope you have fun on those sites. They’re really novel, but get boring real quick, so make the most of them.Thanks for sharing!

  9. This post is awesome. I’m seriously cracking up about that boring day in history. Poor Belgium, no one cares about their general election! Some really interesting stuff here. Thanks for a great post!

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