The page always turns over to the current day and date to give you a peek into what happened today in the past. There’s usually a lead story with multimedia frills. On the left column, the site captures the other significant events of this day in history categorized under different headings. You can also jump back and forth into time using the calendar.

BBC generally has an eye on world events. So, it can dip into its huge archive of news nuggets and pick up the ones that were momentous on this very day in the past. It’s About page says that On This Day is a showcase of some of the most significant as well as some of the quirkier stories broadcast by BBC News since 1950. It also covers the years of the Second World War (1939-45). The interesting part is the “In Context”� side note which basically shows the effects and what happened next due to the event. You can search by date, by year, by theme, and by witness accounts.

New York Times has a cool educational resource called The Learning Network which is a blog. It’s currently in the midst of a change, but you can still dive into the news items from the past. The design of the The Learning Network is student friendly with months and dates clearly linked to past archival content. Every major event across the centuries is lined up for your study. You can also check out birthdays and obituaries.

You can expect the largest library in the world to keep abreast of all that has happened in the past. The Library of Congress doesn’t disappoint with its History Archive and the 365 pages in the Today in History Archive. The only limiting factor is that it is limited to American history. You can carry out a full text search of the archive, jump to certain date, or just go from month to month. 

You can search Wikipedia by date and of all the resources, Wikipedia probably gives you pay dirt as its linked pages are treasure trove of historical information. On the landing page itself, you can spy the On this day…feature. Clicking on the date takes you into the wiki page for the day and this becomes a portal for further exploration. You can also catch up with what happened in recent years. The calendar is also a handy jumping off point to other days.