On This Day in 192 – Dong Zhuo is assassinated by his adopted son Lü Bu.

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.

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Events for May 22


1455 – Start of the Wars of the Roses: At the First Battle of St Albans, Richard, Duke of York, defeats and captures King Henry VI of England.

2017 – Twenty-two people are killed at an Ariana Grande concert in the 2017 Manchester Arena bombing.

1957 – South Africa's government approves of racial separation in universities.

1840 – The penal transportation of British convicts to the New South Wales colony is abolished.

1826HMS Beagle departs on its first voyage.

2010Air India Express Flight 812, a Boeing 737 crashes over a cliff upon landing at Mangalore, India, killing 158 of 166 people on board, becoming the deadliest crash involving a Boeing 737 until the crash of Lion Air Flight 610.

1915Lassen Peak erupts with a powerful force, the only volcano besides Mount St. Helens to erupt in the contiguous U.S. during the 20th century.

192Dong Zhuo is assassinated by his adopted son Lü Bu.

1863American Civil War: Union forces begin the Siege of Port Hudson which lasts 48 days, the longest siege in U.S. military history.

1816 – A mob in Littleport, Cambridgeshire, England, riots over high unemployment and rising grain costs, and the riots spread to Ely the next day.

1962Continental Airlines Flight 11 crashes in Unionville, Missouri after bombs explode on board, killing 45.

1939World War II: Germany and Italy sign the Pact of Steel.

1762 – Trevi Fountain is officially completed and inaugurated in Rome.

2015 – The Republic of Ireland becomes the first nation in the world to utilise a public referendum to legalise gay marriage.

2012 – SpaceX COTS Demo Flight 2 launches a Dragon capsule on a Falcon 9 rocket in the first commercial flight to the International Space Station.

1990North and South Yemen are unified to create the Republic of Yemen.

2000 – In Sri Lanka, over 150 Tamil rebels are killed over two days of fighting for control in Jaffna.

1943Joseph Stalin disbands the Comintern.

2014 – General Prayut Chan-o-cha becomes interim leader of Thailand in a military coup d'état, following six months of political turmoil.

1915 – Three trains collide in the Quintinshill rail disaster near Gretna Green, Scotland, killing 227 people and injuring 246.

Notable Births & Deaths for May 22

  1986Julian Edelman, American football player
  1992Anna Baryshnikov, American actress
  1994Florian Luger, Austrian male model
  1994 – Athena Manoukian, Greek-Armenian singer and songwriter
  2011Joseph Brooks, American director, producer, screenwriter, and composer (b. 1938)
  2004Peyton Elizabeth Lee, American actress
  1987Novak Djokovic, Serbian tennis player
  2005Charilaos Florakis, Greek politician (b. 1914)
  2015 – Vladimir Katriuk, Ukrainian-Canadian SS officer (b. 1921)
  1998John Derek, American actor, director, and photographer (b. 1926)
  1998 – José Enrique Moyal, Israeli physicist and engineer (b. 1910)
  1999Femke Huijzer, Dutch model
  2019Judith Kerr, German-born British writer and illustrator (b. 1923)
  1998Samile Bermannelli, Brazilian fashion model
  2010Martin Gardner, American mathematician, cryptographer, and author (b. 1914)
  2016Velimir "Bata" Živojinović, Serbian actor and politician (b. 1933)
  1986 – Matt Jarvis, English footballer
  1985 – Tao Okamoto, Japanese model and actress
  1988Heida Reed, Icelandic-British actress
  1997Lauri Markkanen, Finnish basketball player
  1984 – Didier Ya Konan, Ivorian footballer
  2006Lee Jong-wook, South Korean physician and diplomat (b. 1945)
  2017Nicky Hayden, American motorcycle racer (b. 1981)
  2012 – Wesley A. Brown, American lieutenant and engineer (b. 1927)
  2001Emma Chamberlain, American internet personality
  2004Richard Biggs, American actor (b. 1960)
  2022Dervla Murphy, Irish touring cyclist and author (b. 1931)
  1986 – Tatiana Volosozhar, Russian figure skater
  2000Davie Fulton, Canadian lawyer, judge, and politician (b. 1916)
  2015Marques Haynes, American basketball player and coach (b. 1926)
  1985Tranquillo Barnetta, Swiss footballer
  1984 – Dustin Moskovitz, American entrepreneur, co-founder of Facebook
  1997 – Alfred Hershey, American biochemist and geneticist, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1908)
  2007Pemba Doma Sherpa, Nepalese mountaineer (b. 1970)
  2002Anthony Richardson, American football player
  1990Wyatt Roy, Australian politician
  2012Muzafar Bhutto, Pakistani politician (b. 1970)
  1989Corey Dickerson, American baseball player
  1991 – Suho, South Korean singer and actor
  2004 – Mikhail Voronin, Russian gymnast (b. 1945)
  2013Sigurd Ottovich Schmidt, Russian historian and ethnographer (b. 1922)
  1987 – Arturo Vidal, Chilean footballer
  1999 – Hōshōryū Tomokatsu, Mongolian sumo wrestler
  2005 – Thurl Ravenscroft, American voice actor and singer (b. 1914)
  2008Robert Asprin, American soldier and author (b. 1946)
  1991Joel Obi, Nigerian footballer
  2024David Wilkie, Scottish swimmer (b. 1954)
  2020Denise Cronenberg, Canadian costume designer (b. 1938)

 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 ..//
    }
  ]
} }

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