On This Day
App · Misc References · 7 actions
Look up what happened on any day of the year with On This Day, the free keyless API behind byabbe.se. Get the events, births and deaths Wikipedia records for a date, today's unless you name another, narrowed by keyword or by century, pick one at random for a fact-of-the-day post, or find what turns fifty or a hundred today. Every year comes back as a number rather than the string the service sends, BC years included, and a date with an empty section is an empty answer rather than a failed step. The data is harvested from Wikipedia and shares its CC BY-SA 3.0 licence. No account and no API key: connecting takes one click.
Actions
| Action | What it does |
|---|---|
| Check service status | Check whether On This Day is answering, and how quickly. |
| Get a random historical fact | Pick one entry at random from a date, for a fact-of-the-day post. |
| Get births on a date | Get who was born on a day of the year, with the year and the Wikipedia article for each. |
| Get deaths on a date | Get who died on a day of the year, with the year and the Wikipedia article for each. |
| Get events on a date | Get what happened on a day of the year, as Wikipedia records it: the year, what happened, and the articles it links to. |
| Get round-number anniversaries | Find what turns fifty, a hundred or two hundred today: the entries on a date whose age this year divides exactly by the interval you set. |
| Get this day in history | Get the events, the births and the deaths of one date in a single step, with the full count of each. |
Check service status
Check whether On This Day is answering, and how quickly. This is the one action that reports a problem as a value instead of failing the step, so a workflow can decide what to do about it. Being asked to slow down is reported separately from being down. No API key required.
Inputs
None.
Outputs
messagetext- What happened, in a sentence.
onlinetrue/false- Whether the service answered with usable day-of-the-year data.
rate_limitedtrue/false- Whether it asked this workspace to slow down.
reachabletrue/false- Whether it answered at all. A service that is reachable but not online is refusing or misreporting rather than down.
response_time_msnumber- How long the answer took, in milliseconds.
status_codenumber- The HTTP status it answered with, or empty when it could not be reached.
Example output
{
"message": "On This Day is up and serving Wikipedia's day-of-the-year data.",
"online": true,
"rate_limited": false,
"reachable": true,
"response_time_ms": 128.4,
"status_code": 200
}Get a random historical fact
Pick one entry at random from a date, for a fact-of-the-day post. Choose which section to draw from, and narrow it by keyword or year first. A date with nothing to draw from comes back with 'found' false rather than failing the step. No API key required.
Inputs
- Date
datetext - The day of the year to look up, as a date: 2026-02-02, 2/2 or February 2 all work. Any year in it is ignored, because the service is keyed on a month and a day: asking about 2026-02-02 returns everything that ever happened on a 2 February. Leave empty to use today, or to use the month and day fields below.
- Month
monthnumber - The month to look up, 1 to 12. Give a day as well, or leave both empty for today. Ignored when a date is given above.From 1 to 12.
- Day
daynumber - The day of the month to look up. 29 February is served like any other date, since the service is keyed on a month and a day with no year. Give a month as well, or leave both empty for today.From 1 to 31.
- UTC offset for 'today'
utc_offsetnumber - Hours from UTC to decide which day 'today' is, such as -8 for California or 5.5 for India. Only used when no date is given. A workflow posting at 9am in Auckland reads yesterday's page without it.From -12.0 to 14.0. Default:
0. - Draw from
categorytext - Which section to pick from. 'Anything' draws from all three, which costs three requests instead of one.One of:
events,births,deaths,any(Anything). Default:events. - Keyword
keywordtext - Only return entries mentioning this text. The linked article titles are searched as well as the sentence, which is where the names usually are. Matching ignores capitalisation.
- From year
from_yearnumber - Only return entries from this year onwards. Use a negative number for a year BC, so -509 means 509 BC. Entries whose year could not be read are left out once a range is given.
- To year
to_yearnumber - Only return entries up to and including this year.
Outputs
categorytext- Which section it was drawn from.
choicesnumber- How many entries it picked from, after the filters.
datetext- The day of the year asked about, as the service names it.
daynumber- The day asked about.
descriptiontext- The picked entry's text on its own, so a message template reads 'description' rather than 'fact.description'.
factobject- The entry that was picked, empty when there was nothing to pick.
foundtrue/false- Whether there was anything to pick from. False means the date and filters matched nothing, which is an answer rather than a failure.
monthnumber- The month asked about, 1 to 12.
wikipediatext- The Wikipedia article for that day of the year.
yearnumber- The picked entry's year, on its own.
Example output
{
"category": "events",
"choices": 123,
"date": "February 2",
"day": 2,
"description": "Mexican\u2013American War: The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo is signed, ending the war and ceding California, Nevada, Utah and parts of four other modern-day U.S. states to the United States.",
"fact": {
"category": "event",
"description": "Mexican\u2013American War: The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo is signed, ending the war and ceding California, Nevada, Utah and parts of four other modern-day U.S. states to the United States.",
"links": [
{
"title": "Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo",
"url": "https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo"
}
],
"wikipedia_url": "https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo",
"year": 1848,
"year_text": "1848",
"years_ago": 178
},
"found": true,
"month": 2,
"wikipedia": "https://wikipedia.org/wiki/February_2",
"year": 1848
}Get births on a date
Get who was born on a day of the year, with the year and the Wikipedia article for each. Leave the date empty for today. Narrow it to a century with a year range, or to a field with a keyword, which searches the linked article titles as well as the sentence. No API key required.
Inputs
- Date
datetext - The day of the year to look up, as a date: 2026-02-02, 2/2 or February 2 all work. Any year in it is ignored, because the service is keyed on a month and a day: asking about 2026-02-02 returns everything that ever happened on a 2 February. Leave empty to use today, or to use the month and day fields below.
- Month
monthnumber - The month to look up, 1 to 12. Give a day as well, or leave both empty for today. Ignored when a date is given above.From 1 to 12.
- Day
daynumber - The day of the month to look up. 29 February is served like any other date, since the service is keyed on a month and a day with no year. Give a month as well, or leave both empty for today.From 1 to 31.
- UTC offset for 'today'
utc_offsetnumber - Hours from UTC to decide which day 'today' is, such as -8 for California or 5.5 for India. Only used when no date is given. A workflow posting at 9am in Auckland reads yesterday's page without it.From -12.0 to 14.0. Default:
0. - Keyword
keywordtext - Only return entries mentioning this text. The linked article titles are searched as well as the sentence, which is where the names usually are. Matching ignores capitalisation.
- From year
from_yearnumber - Only return entries from this year onwards. Use a negative number for a year BC, so -509 means 509 BC. Entries whose year could not be read are left out once a range is given.
- To year
to_yearnumber - Only return entries up to and including this year.
- Order
ordertext - Which end of history to start at. Oldest first matches the order the service publishes; newest first puts this century at the top, which is usually what a digest wants.One of:
oldest_first(Oldest first),newest_first(Newest first). Default:oldest_first. - Maximum entries
limitnumber - How many births to return at most. Leave empty for every one of them; a busy date publishes over a hundred.From 1 to 500.
Outputs
categorytext- Which section this is: always 'births'.
countnumber- How many entries are in the returned list.
datetext- The day of the year asked about, as the service names it, e.g. 'February 2'.
daynumber- The day asked about.
descriptionslist- Just the text of each birth, ready to put in a message.
entrieslist- The births, oldest first unless reordered.
monthnumber- The month asked about, 1 to 12.
totalnumber- How many births the service publishes for that date altogether, before any filter or limit. Zero is a real answer: some dates have no entries in a section at all.
wikipediatext- The Wikipedia article for that day of the year, which is where these entries were harvested from.
Example output
{
"category": "births",
"count": 2,
"date": "February 2",
"day": 2,
"descriptions": [
"Piero di Cosimo, Italian painter (d. 1522)",
"James Joyce, Irish novelist and poet (d. 1941)"
],
"entries": [
{
"category": "birth",
"description": "Piero di Cosimo, Italian painter (d. 1522)",
"links": [
{
"title": "Piero di Cosimo",
"url": "https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Piero di Cosimo"
}
],
"wikipedia_url": "https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Piero di Cosimo",
"year": 1462,
"year_text": "1462",
"years_ago": 564
},
{
"category": "birth",
"description": "James Joyce, Irish novelist and poet (d. 1941)",
"links": [
{
"title": "James Joyce",
"url": "https://wikipedia.org/wiki/James Joyce"
}
],
"wikipedia_url": "https://wikipedia.org/wiki/James Joyce",
"year": 1882,
"year_text": "1882",
"years_ago": 144
}
],
"month": 2,
"total": 97,
"wikipedia": "https://wikipedia.org/wiki/February_2"
}Get deaths on a date
Get who died on a day of the year, with the year and the Wikipedia article for each. Leave the date empty for today. A date whose section Wikipedia has not filled in comes back empty rather than failing the step: 2 February publishes no deaths at all. No API key required.
Inputs
- Date
datetext - The day of the year to look up, as a date: 2026-02-02, 2/2 or February 2 all work. Any year in it is ignored, because the service is keyed on a month and a day: asking about 2026-02-02 returns everything that ever happened on a 2 February. Leave empty to use today, or to use the month and day fields below.
- Month
monthnumber - The month to look up, 1 to 12. Give a day as well, or leave both empty for today. Ignored when a date is given above.From 1 to 12.
- Day
daynumber - The day of the month to look up. 29 February is served like any other date, since the service is keyed on a month and a day with no year. Give a month as well, or leave both empty for today.From 1 to 31.
- UTC offset for 'today'
utc_offsetnumber - Hours from UTC to decide which day 'today' is, such as -8 for California or 5.5 for India. Only used when no date is given. A workflow posting at 9am in Auckland reads yesterday's page without it.From -12.0 to 14.0. Default:
0. - Keyword
keywordtext - Only return entries mentioning this text. The linked article titles are searched as well as the sentence, which is where the names usually are. Matching ignores capitalisation.
- From year
from_yearnumber - Only return entries from this year onwards. Use a negative number for a year BC, so -509 means 509 BC. Entries whose year could not be read are left out once a range is given.
- To year
to_yearnumber - Only return entries up to and including this year.
- Order
ordertext - Which end of history to start at. Oldest first matches the order the service publishes; newest first puts this century at the top, which is usually what a digest wants.One of:
oldest_first(Oldest first),newest_first(Newest first). Default:oldest_first. - Maximum entries
limitnumber - How many deaths to return at most. Leave empty for every one of them; a busy date publishes over a hundred.From 1 to 500.
Outputs
categorytext- Which section this is: always 'deaths'.
countnumber- How many entries are in the returned list.
datetext- The day of the year asked about, as the service names it, e.g. 'February 2'.
daynumber- The day asked about.
descriptionslist- Just the text of each death, ready to put in a message.
entrieslist- The deaths, oldest first unless reordered.
monthnumber- The month asked about, 1 to 12.
totalnumber- How many deaths the service publishes for that date altogether, before any filter or limit. Zero is a real answer: some dates have no entries in a section at all.
wikipediatext- The Wikipedia article for that day of the year, which is where these entries were harvested from.
Example output
{
"category": "deaths",
"count": 1,
"date": "February 2",
"day": 2,
"descriptions": [
"Liu Chengyou, Emperor Yin of the Later Han"
],
"entries": [
{
"category": "death",
"description": "Liu Chengyou, Emperor Yin of the Later Han",
"links": [
{
"title": "Liu Chengyou",
"url": "https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Liu Chengyou"
}
],
"wikipedia_url": "https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Liu Chengyou",
"year": 951,
"year_text": "951",
"years_ago": 1075
}
],
"month": 2,
"total": 1,
"wikipedia": "https://wikipedia.org/wiki/February_2"
}Get events on a date
Get what happened on a day of the year, as Wikipedia records it: the year, what happened, and the articles it links to. Leave the date empty for today. Narrow it with a keyword or a year range, and every year comes back as a number rather than the string the service sends. No API key required.
Inputs
- Date
datetext - The day of the year to look up, as a date: 2026-02-02, 2/2 or February 2 all work. Any year in it is ignored, because the service is keyed on a month and a day: asking about 2026-02-02 returns everything that ever happened on a 2 February. Leave empty to use today, or to use the month and day fields below.
- Month
monthnumber - The month to look up, 1 to 12. Give a day as well, or leave both empty for today. Ignored when a date is given above.From 1 to 12.
- Day
daynumber - The day of the month to look up. 29 February is served like any other date, since the service is keyed on a month and a day with no year. Give a month as well, or leave both empty for today.From 1 to 31.
- UTC offset for 'today'
utc_offsetnumber - Hours from UTC to decide which day 'today' is, such as -8 for California or 5.5 for India. Only used when no date is given. A workflow posting at 9am in Auckland reads yesterday's page without it.From -12.0 to 14.0. Default:
0. - Keyword
keywordtext - Only return entries mentioning this text. The linked article titles are searched as well as the sentence, which is where the names usually are. Matching ignores capitalisation.
- From year
from_yearnumber - Only return entries from this year onwards. Use a negative number for a year BC, so -509 means 509 BC. Entries whose year could not be read are left out once a range is given.
- To year
to_yearnumber - Only return entries up to and including this year.
- Order
ordertext - Which end of history to start at. Oldest first matches the order the service publishes; newest first puts this century at the top, which is usually what a digest wants.One of:
oldest_first(Oldest first),newest_first(Newest first). Default:oldest_first. - Maximum entries
limitnumber - How many events to return at most. Leave empty for every one of them; a busy date publishes over a hundred.From 1 to 500.
Outputs
categorytext- Which section this is: always 'events'.
countnumber- How many entries are in the returned list.
datetext- The day of the year asked about, as the service names it, e.g. 'February 2'.
daynumber- The day asked about.
descriptionslist- Just the text of each event, ready to put in a message.
entrieslist- The events, oldest first unless reordered.
monthnumber- The month asked about, 1 to 12.
totalnumber- How many events the service publishes for that date altogether, before any filter or limit. Zero is a real answer: some dates have no entries in a section at all.
wikipediatext- The Wikipedia article for that day of the year, which is where these entries were harvested from.
Example output
{
"category": "events",
"count": 3,
"date": "February 2",
"day": 2,
"descriptions": [
"In the Battle of the Zab, the Abbasid rebels defeat the Umayyad Caliphate, leading to overthrow of the dynasty.",
"Mexican\u2013American War: The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo is signed, ending the war and ceding California, Nevada, Utah and parts of four other modern-day U.S. states to the United States.",
"The Groundhog Day gale strikes the north-eastern United States and southern Ontario."
],
"entries": [
{
"category": "event",
"description": "In the Battle of the Zab, the Abbasid rebels defeat the Umayyad Caliphate, leading to overthrow of the dynasty.",
"links": [
{
"title": "Battle of the Zab",
"url": "https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle of the Zab"
}
],
"wikipedia_url": "https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle of the Zab",
"year": 750,
"year_text": "750",
"years_ago": 1276
},
{
"category": "event",
"description": "Mexican\u2013American War: The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo is signed, ending the war and ceding California, Nevada, Utah and parts of four other modern-day U.S. states to the United States.",
"links": [
{
"title": "Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo",
"url": "https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo"
}
],
"wikipedia_url": "https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo",
"year": 1848,
"year_text": "1848",
"years_ago": 178
},
{
"category": "event",
"description": "The Groundhog Day gale strikes the north-eastern United States and southern Ontario.",
"links": [
{
"title": "Groundhog Day gale of 1976",
"url": "https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Groundhog Day gale of 1976"
}
],
"wikipedia_url": "https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Groundhog Day gale of 1976",
"year": 1976,
"year_text": "1976",
"years_ago": 50
}
],
"month": 2,
"total": 123,
"wikipedia": "https://wikipedia.org/wiki/February_2"
}Get round-number anniversaries
Find what turns fifty, a hundred or two hundred today: the entries on a date whose age this year divides exactly by the interval you set. The service publishes a year and never a distance from one, so this is arithmetic it cannot do. Biggest anniversary first. No API key required.
Inputs
- Date
datetext - The day of the year to look up, as a date: 2026-02-02, 2/2 or February 2 all work. Any year in it is ignored, because the service is keyed on a month and a day: asking about 2026-02-02 returns everything that ever happened on a 2 February. Leave empty to use today, or to use the month and day fields below.
- Month
monthnumber - The month to look up, 1 to 12. Give a day as well, or leave both empty for today. Ignored when a date is given above.From 1 to 12.
- Day
daynumber - The day of the month to look up. 29 February is served like any other date, since the service is keyed on a month and a day with no year. Give a month as well, or leave both empty for today.From 1 to 31.
- UTC offset for 'today'
utc_offsetnumber - Hours from UTC to decide which day 'today' is, such as -8 for California or 5.5 for India. Only used when no date is given. A workflow posting at 9am in Auckland reads yesterday's page without it.From -12.0 to 14.0. Default:
0. - Anniversary interval (years)
intervalnumber - The round number to look for. The default of 25 catches the quarter, half and full centuries as well as itself; 100 catches only centenaries.From 1 to 1000. Default:
25. - Sections to search
categorieslist - Which sections to look in. Each one costs a request, so narrowing to events alone is three times cheaper than the default of all three.One or more of:
events,births,deaths. - Keyword
keywordtext - Only return entries mentioning this text. The linked article titles are searched as well as the sentence, which is where the names usually are. Matching ignores capitalisation.
- Maximum entries
limitnumber - How many anniversaries to return at most, biggest first. Leave empty for all of them.From 1 to 500.
Outputs
anniversarieslist- The entries falling on a round anniversary, biggest first. Each carries the section it came from in 'category'.
categorieslist- Which sections were searched.
countnumber- How many anniversaries were found.
datetext- The day of the year asked about, as the service names it.
daynumber- The day asked about.
descriptionslist- Just the text of each, ready to put in a message.
intervalnumber- The interval that was looked for.
monthnumber- The month asked about, 1 to 12.
reference_yearnumber- The year the anniversaries were counted to, which is the current year at the UTC offset given.
searchednumber- How many entries were read to find them, across every section searched.
wikipediatext- The Wikipedia article for that day of the year.
Example output
{
"anniversaries": [
{
"category": "event",
"description": "The Groundhog Day gale strikes the north-eastern United States and southern Ontario.",
"links": [
{
"title": "Groundhog Day gale of 1976",
"url": "https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Groundhog Day gale of 1976"
}
],
"wikipedia_url": "https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Groundhog Day gale of 1976",
"year": 1976,
"year_text": "1976",
"years_ago": 50
}
],
"categories": [
"events",
"births",
"deaths"
],
"count": 1,
"date": "February 2",
"day": 2,
"descriptions": [
"The Groundhog Day gale strikes the north-eastern United States and southern Ontario."
],
"interval": 25,
"month": 2,
"reference_year": 2026,
"searched": 220,
"wikipedia": "https://wikipedia.org/wiki/February_2"
}Get this day in history
Get the events, the births and the deaths of one date in a single step, with the full count of each. Built for a daily post or digest: three separate steps would each need the same date, and a workflow running across midnight would give two of them one day and the third another. No API key required.
Inputs
- Date
datetext - The day of the year to look up, as a date: 2026-02-02, 2/2 or February 2 all work. Any year in it is ignored, because the service is keyed on a month and a day: asking about 2026-02-02 returns everything that ever happened on a 2 February. Leave empty to use today, or to use the month and day fields below.
- Month
monthnumber - The month to look up, 1 to 12. Give a day as well, or leave both empty for today. Ignored when a date is given above.From 1 to 12.
- Day
daynumber - The day of the month to look up. 29 February is served like any other date, since the service is keyed on a month and a day with no year. Give a month as well, or leave both empty for today.From 1 to 31.
- UTC offset for 'today'
utc_offsetnumber - Hours from UTC to decide which day 'today' is, such as -8 for California or 5.5 for India. Only used when no date is given. A workflow posting at 9am in Auckland reads yesterday's page without it.From -12.0 to 14.0. Default:
0. - Order
ordertext - Which end of history to start at. Oldest first matches the order the service publishes; newest first puts this century at the top, which is usually what a digest wants.One of:
oldest_first(Oldest first),newest_first(Newest first). Default:oldest_first. - Maximum entries
limitnumber - How many entries to return from each of the three sections. Leave empty for 10, which is digest-sized; the counts always describe the whole day.From 1 to 500.
Outputs
birth_countnumber- How many births it has altogether.
birthslist- Who was born, up to the limit asked for.
datetext- The day of the year asked about, as the service names it, e.g. 'February 2'.
daynumber- The day asked about.
death_countnumber- How many deaths it has altogether. Zero is a real answer for some dates.
deathslist- Who died, up to the limit asked for.
event_countnumber- How many events the date has altogether, before the limit.
eventslist- What happened, up to the limit asked for.
monthnumber- The month asked about, 1 to 12.
total_countnumber- All three counts added together.
wikipediatext- The Wikipedia article for that day of the year.
Example output
{
"birth_count": 97,
"births": [
{
"category": "birth",
"description": "Piero di Cosimo, Italian painter (d. 1522)",
"links": [
{
"title": "Piero di Cosimo",
"url": "https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Piero di Cosimo"
}
],
"wikipedia_url": "https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Piero di Cosimo",
"year": 1462,
"year_text": "1462",
"years_ago": 564
},
{
"category": "birth",
"description": "James Joyce, Irish novelist and poet (d. 1941)",
"links": [
{
"title": "James Joyce",
"url": "https://wikipedia.org/wiki/James Joyce"
}
],
"wikipedia_url": "https://wikipedia.org/wiki/James Joyce",
"year": 1882,
"year_text": "1882",
"years_ago": 144
}
],
"date": "February 2",
"day": 2,
"death_count": 0,
"deaths": [],
"event_count": 123,
"events": [
{
"category": "event",
"description": "In the Battle of the Zab, the Abbasid rebels defeat the Umayyad Caliphate, leading to overthrow of the dynasty.",
"links": [
{
"title": "Battle of the Zab",
"url": "https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle of the Zab"
}
],
"wikipedia_url": "https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle of the Zab",
"year": 750,
"year_text": "750",
"years_ago": 1276
},
{
"category": "event",
"description": "Mexican\u2013American War: The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo is signed, ending the war and ceding California, Nevada, Utah and parts of four other modern-day U.S. states to the United States.",
"links": [
{
"title": "Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo",
"url": "https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo"
}
],
"wikipedia_url": "https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo",
"year": 1848,
"year_text": "1848",
"years_ago": 178
},
{
"category": "event",
"description": "The Groundhog Day gale strikes the north-eastern United States and southern Ontario.",
"links": [
{
"title": "Groundhog Day gale of 1976",
"url": "https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Groundhog Day gale of 1976"
}
],
"wikipedia_url": "https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Groundhog Day gale of 1976",
"year": 1976,
"year_text": "1976",
"years_ago": 50
}
],
"month": 2,
"total_count": 220,
"wikipedia": "https://wikipedia.org/wiki/February_2"
}