Social Fetch
Start for freeStart free
Wikipedia hub

Wikipedia On This Day API

Anniversaries, births, deaths, events and holidays for a month and day.

GET /v1/wikipedia/on-this-day

1 credit Failed requests are free

Try in playgroundFull API docs

About this endpoint

GET /v1/wikipedia/on-this-day?month=11&day=2&lang=en returns the entries for that day. type chooses what to return: selected, births, deaths, events, holidays or all (the default). Each requested part lands in its own array, so data.selected, data.births, data.deaths, data.events and data.holidays are filled only when asked for. Each type can be several MB, and all returns every type at once, so ask for one type when you only need one list.

Each entry has text, year and pages. text is the event, birth, death, holiday or news line, year is the year when the entry has one, and pages holds page summaries with titles, descriptions and extracts for the linked articles.

month is 1 to 12 and day is 1 to 31, checked against the month. Most editions do not serve the on-this-day feed: an edition without it is not_found, while a supported edition with no entries for the day is found with empty: true. The response echoes month, day and type.

Wikipedia On This Day API FAQ

How do I get only births or deaths?

Set type=births or type=deaths. That fills the matching array and leaves the other arrays null. type=all fills every array the edition has for the day. An edition without the feed is not_found for every type.

Does the day have to exist in the month?

Yes. month is 1 to 12 and day is 1 to 31, and the pair is validated, so month=2 and day=30 is a 400. February 29 is accepted because it exists in a leap year.

What is in pages?

pages holds the linked articles as page summaries, with title, description, extract and URLs. Use the page route when you need the full record for one of them.

How many credits does on-this-day cost?

Pricing is documented on the operation in the API registry (shown on this page). Confirm on every response with meta.creditsCharged: that field is the billing source of truth.

Other Wikipedia endpoints