On This Day in 632 – Yazdegerd III ascends the throne as king (shah) of the Persian Empire. He becomes the last ruler of the Sasanian dynasty (modern Iran).

History Delivered

OnThisDay is a simple API that can be used to fetch historical events into JSON format. While it's not hard to find a similar API, most of them require registration or just plain suck. Our service makes development quick and to the point.

No API Key Required

The OTD-API can be used free of charge but you may not use this service in a manner that exceeds reasonable request volume. When no API key is provided, attribution is required and the number of requests per IP address is limited.

Check out the full documentation →

Unlimited Requests

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Events for June 16


2012 – China successfully launches its Shenzhou 9 spacecraft, carrying three astronauts, including the first female Chinese astronaut Liu Yang, to the Tiangong-1 orbital module.

1824 – A meeting at Old Slaughter's coffee house in London leads to the formation of what is now the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (RSPCA).

1903 – The Ford Motor Company is incorporated.

1940 – A Communist government is installed in Lithuania.

1760 – French and Indian War: Robert Rogers and his Rangers surprise French held Fort Sainte Thérèse on the Richelieu River near Lake Champlain. The fort is raided and burned.

1977Oracle Corporation is incorporated in Redwood Shores, California, as Software Development Laboratories (SDL), by Larry Ellison, Bob Miner and Ed Oates.

1997 – Fifty people are killed in the Daïat Labguer (M'sila) massacre in Algeria.

1911IBM founded as the Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company in Endicott, New York.

1925Artek, the most famous Young Pioneer camp of the Soviet Union, is established.

1819 – A major earthquake strikes the Kutch district of western India, killing over 1,543 people and raising a 6-metre-high (20 ft), 6-kilometre-wide (3.7 mi), ridge, extending for at least 80 kilometres (50 mi), that was known as the Allah Bund ("Dam of God").

1961 – While on tour with the Kirov Ballet in Paris, Rudolf Nureyev defects from the Soviet Union.

1904 – Irish author James Joyce begins a relationship with Nora Barnacle and subsequently uses the date to set the actions for his novel Ulysses; this date is now traditionally called "Bloomsday".

2000 – The Secretary-General of the UN reports that Israel has complied with United Nations Security Council Resolution 425, 22 years after its issuance, and completely withdrew from Lebanon. The Resolution does not encompass the Shebaa farms, which is claimed by Israel, Syria and Lebanon.

2019 – Upwards of 2,000,000 people participate in the 2019–20 Hong Kong protests, the largest in Hong Kong's history.

1922 – General election in the Irish Free State: The pro-Treaty Sinn Féin party wins a large majority.

2012 – The United States Air Force's robotic Boeing X-37B spaceplane returns to Earth after a classified 469-day orbital mission.

1958Imre Nagy, Pál Maléter and other leaders of the 1956 Hungarian Uprising are executed.

1883 – The Victoria Hall theatre panic in Sunderland, England, kills 183 children.

1746 – War of the Austrian Succession: Austria and Sardinia defeat a Franco-Spanish army at the Battle of Piacenza.

1846 – The Papal conclave of 1846 elects Pope Pius IX, beginning the longest reign in the history of the papacy.

1632 – The Plymouth Company granted a land patent to Thomas Purchase, the first settler of Pejepscot, Maine, settling at the site of Fort Andross.

1897 – A treaty annexing the Republic of Hawaii to the United States is signed; the Republic would not be dissolved until a year later.

Notable Births & Deaths for June 16

  1995 – Joseph Schooling, Singaporean swimmer
  1995Euan Aitken, Australian rugby league player
  2013 – Ottmar Walter, German footballer (born 1924)
  2010 – Maureen Forrester, Canadian singer and academic (born 1930)
  2003Anna Cathcart, Canadian actress
  1995 – Akira Ioane, New Zealand rugby Union player
  2011Östen Mäkitalo, Swedish engineer and academic (born 1938)
  1992Maik Brückner, German politician
  2015Charles Correa, Indian architect and urban planner (born 1930)
  2002Sam Walker, English-Australian rugby league player
  2013 – Hans Hass, Austrian biologist and diver (born 1919)
  1999 – Snail Mail, American singer-songwriter
  2012 – Sławomir Petelicki, Polish general (born 1946)
  2008Mario Rigoni Stern, Italian soldier and author (born 1921)
  1992 – Vladimir Morozov, Russian swimmer
  1998Karman Thandi, Indian tennis player
  1988 – Jermaine Gresham, American football player
  2010 – Ronald Neame, English director, producer, cinematographer, and screenwriter (born 1911)
  1994 – Rezar, Albanian wrestler
  1994Grete-Lilijane Küppas, Estonian footballer
  1991Joe McElderry, English singer-songwriter
  1991 – Siya Kolisi, South African rugby player
  1995 – Ki Hui-hyeon, South Korean singer-songwriter and actress
  2013 – Norman Ian MacKenzie, English journalist and author (born 1921)
  1993Park Bo-gum, South Korean actor
  1993 – Gnash, American singer, songwriter, rapper, DJ and record producer
  2012Nils Karlsson, Swedish skier (born 1917)
  2012 – Susan Tyrrell, American actress (born 1945)
  2024 – Barbara Gladstone, American art dealer and film producer (born 1934)
  1990John Newman, English musician, singer, songwriter and record producer
  2015 – Jean Vautrin, French director, screenwriter, and critic (born 1933)
  2016Jo Cox, English political activist and MP (born 1974)
  2017Helmut Kohl, German politician, Chancellor of Germany (born 1930)
  1999Justin Jefferson, American football player
  2023Gino Mäder, Swiss cyclist (born 1997)
  2013Sam Farber, American businessman, co-founded OXO (born 1924)
  1988Keshia Chanté, Canadian singer
  2000Bianca Andreescu, Canadian tennis player
  2014 – Cándido Muatetema Rivas (born 1960), Equatoguinean politician and diplomat, Prime Minister of Equatorial Guinea
  2024Ludwig Adamovich Jr., Austrian constitutional scholar (born 1932)
  1989Odion Ighalo, Nigerian footballer
  2013 – Khondakar Ashraf Hossain, Bangladesh poet and academic (born 1950)
  2014Tony Gwynn, American baseball player and coach (born 1960)
  1991 – Matt Moylan, Australian rugby league player
  1999 – Ibrahima Koné, Malian footballer
  2012 – Jorge Lankenau, Mexican banker and businessman (born 1944)
  2010Marc Bazin, Haitian lawyer and politician, 49th President of Haiti (born 1932)
  2020Eduardo Cojuangco Jr., Filipino businessman and politician (born 1935)

 Quick Start

Our API is incredibly easy to use, check out the code samples below to get started:

Read the full documentation →

Fetch Historical Events

All you need to do is send a request to https://today.zenquotes.io/api/[month]/[day]/[key] in order to generate a JSON array of historical events, including notable births and deaths. API data pulled from WikiPedia.

*[key] not required but recommended.


Sample Requests

https://today.zenquotes.io/api - Generate notable events, births, and deaths for current server time (UTC).

https://today.zenquotes.io/api/1/1 - Generate notable events, births, and deaths for January 1.

https://today.zenquotes.io/api/5/5 - Generate notable events, births, and deaths for May 5.

https://today.zenquotes.io/api/12/25 - Generate notable events, births, and deaths for December 25.


Response

The result data is formatted as a JSON array, grouped by event type.


{ "info":"OnThisDay API", "date":"April_20", "updated":"1615972324",
"data":{
  "Events":[ 
    { 
      "text":"1303 – The Sapienza University of Rome is instituted by a bull of Pope Boniface VIII.[1]", 
      "html":"<a href=\"https://wikipedia.org/wiki/1303\" title=\"1303\">1303</a> &#8211; The <a href=\"https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Sapienza_University_of_Rome\" title=\"Sapienza University of Rome\">Sapienza University of Rome</a> is instituted by a <a href=\"https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Papal_bull\" title=\"Papal bull\">bull</a> of <a href=\"https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Pope_Boniface_VIII\" title=\"Pope Boniface VIII\">Pope Boniface VIII</a>." 
    },
    //.. MORE DATA ..//
  ],
  "Births":[ 
    { 
      "text":"1494 &#8211; Johannes Agricola, German theologian and reformer (d. 1566)&#91;8&#93;", 
      "html":"<a href=\"https://wikipedia.org/wiki/1494\" title=\"1494\">1494</a> &#8211; <a href=\"https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Johannes_Agricola\" title=\"Johannes Agricola\">Johannes Agricola</a>, German theologian and reformer (d. 1566)" 
    },
    //.. MORE DATA ..//
  ],
  "Deaths":[ 
    { 
      "text":"689 &#8211; Cædwalla, king of Wessex (b. 659)&#91;21&#93;", 
      "html":"<a href=\"https://wikipedia.org/wiki/689\" title=\"689\">689</a> &#8211; <a href=\"https://wikipedia.org/wiki/C%C3%A6dwalla_of_Wessex\" title=\"Cædwalla of Wessex\">Cædwalla</a>, king of <a href=\"https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Wessex\" title=\"Wessex\">Wessex</a> (b. 659)" },
      //.. MORE DATA ..//
    }
  ]
} }

 Usage Limits and Attribution

Requests are restricted to 5 per 30 second period, an API key or registered IP is required for unlimited access and to enable Access-Control-Allow-Origin headers. We require that you show attribution with a link back to https://today.zenquotes.io/ when using the free version of this API. Contact support@zenquotes.io to chat with our friendly dev team and get registered.

Historical event data provided by <a href="https://today.zenquotes.io/" target="_blank">ZenQuotes.io</a>
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