Let's Talk About Making The "On This Day in History" Section Work for You
Your feedback matters: make this the most valuable newsletter in your inbox
Hello beautiful readers of ProfessorTom’s On This Day in History!
I wanted to take a few moments and explain how I’ve tried to do things around here so you can see how the sausage is made and give feedback on the final product so I can serve you even better.
I want to talk about the formatting and ordering of posts. Then I want to talk about mission.
Genesis of an Idea
I like History with a capital H as a subject. I also like trivia. And, on occasion, I’ve liked writing online.
In order to write online on a more consistent basis, I came up with the idea of a daily newsletter where I would share events that occurred on that day in history. I know this isn’t a new concept–after all I knew there were desk calendars and even books that had done this before me.
Because I don’t know as much about History as I would like, I bought some of these calendars and books that had daily listings so I could use them as a jumping off point.
That was at the end of 2023.
At the beginning of 2024, I tried to make a go of this newsletter. Unfortunately, I didn’t start on January 1 and when I did start, it only lasted two weeks.
Why?
Well, if you really want to know, I’ll need feedback asking for the story. If five or more of you respond to this email stating you want to hear the story, I will share it. Suffice it to say that I wasn’t in a great place in my life at the beginning of 2024 and there were some people who came in and out of my life.
What’s different this year?
Good question.
The main difference is that I am really and truly alone now at the beginning of 2025. Being this alone means that I have the time for the newsletter, but like at the beginning of 2024, I don’t have the capital to sustain long-tail growth.
For now, I’m taking things one day at a time.
Formatting and Ordering of Posts (2025)
Desk Calendars and Their Order
This year, as you’ve seen from the four newsletters that have already went out, I’ve bought new calendars. One of the calendars so far has been unnamed; that’s the 365 Days of History: Facts They Didn't Teach You In School!
I ordered the History Channel calendars from Amazon, but I picked up this calendar from Staples.
While I didn’t intend for it to always be the “feature”, that’s how it’s worked out for the first four days of this year and, I suspect, it will continue to do so for the foreseeable future.
We then have the This Day in Science calendar, followed by the History Channel’s This Day in Military History and This Day in History calendars. Those should be self explanatory.
What I Try To Do With Each of the Calendars
I try to find links outside of Wikipedia to cover the events mentioned in the desk calendars so that we don’t become over-reliant on Wikipedia.
Encyclopedia Britannica
Next comes Encyclopedia Britannica.
I wanted to include Encyclopedia Britannica because it is a freely-available resource and so there would be an alternative to Wikipedia. I think both have a Left bias.
Britannica has a higher level of scholarship.However, it is slower to react to current events because fewer people can contribute because of the scholarship requirements.
Britannica’s format/features have given me a format: they have a highlighted event for the day, a small list of other notable events for the day and then a list of births and deaths on that day, ergo, those four sections.
However, i discovered this year that their homepage features something different than their featured article for their equivalent of This Day in History. I also have a sneaking suspicion that they don’t update their homepage over the weekend; my basis for this is that Regeneration was the featured item on Friday, January 3rd, yesterday on January 4th and is still featured today on January 5th.
Wikipedia
It wouldn’t be practical to ignore Wikipedia despite its many flaws.
Wikipedia has a small section of events for the day in history, but there is also an entry for every day on the calendar where events are listed as well. Those pages appear to be “manually” curated–that is to say there is a history for each page (here’s today’s). I put “manually” in quotes because I suspect there is likely some automation involved, but I don’t know how much and I think the process requires human intervention more often than not.
The Book Of This Day In History
I can’t remember how I came across this book. Maybe it was recommended on a blog; maybe I saw a copy in Barnes & Noble. It’s possible it was in a search result on Amazon or was recommended to me by Amazon when I bought the desk calendars in 2023 in preparation for 2024.
EDIT: Upon reflection, I think I was searching for trivia because back in 2023, I was running a weekly trivia in a work chat on Fridays.
I do know there is a series of these books and remember reading a review where the reviewer said she had bought a few of these books and her husband said there was a lot of redundancy between them. I suppose when you have the same author or team, that’s bound to happen.
Either way, because I haven’t yet exploited this book, I’m using it for this year. If I’m still writing this newsletter next yrear, I suspect I won’t repeat the information from the book and will either back-link to post from 2025 or otherwise not include the book in 2026.
Limited Repetition and Commentary Throughout
In addition to finding other sources besides Wikipedia for non-Wikipedia sections, I try to provide some commentary.
Why?
Because I think that, while there is value in having a curated list of events thas has happened on a given day in history, It also helps to have some context or to expand on the source material when possible.
You saw this yesterday, for example, when I tried a literary joke in the Encyclopedia Britannica section and then again when discussing Topsy from the The Book of This Day in History section.
I provide the commentary for additional context and to show which topics I’m knowledgeable about or have an opinion on the given event/topic.
In addition to providing commentary where I can and where i think appropriate, I also try to not repeat an event in multiple sections.
Your time is valuable, you want me to curate the list for you.
I assume you’re here because you like History or trivia. To that end, I will only repeat a topic in a section further down the page if and only if I want to highlight additional information that the source further down is providing.
As an example, I won’t repeat something in Encyclopedia Britannica that was in one of the desk calendars unless I think Britannica has something worthwhile to say that isn’t included in the desk calendar. Ditto Wikipedia and The Book of This Day in History.
Formatting
I’m still playing with formatting. I suspect this will evolve over time.
As per yesterday, if I’m sharing from the desk calendar verbatim, that will be in a block quote. My commentary will be formatted as regular text. If I have an event from a desk calendar that I have rewritten/summarized myself, that will be in regular text.
For Encyclopedia Britannica and Wikipedia, the assumption should be that the text is copied directly from those sites respectively, especially if it is a single sentence or paragraph containing links.
Multiple paragraphs not quoted should be assumed to be my commentary even if they contain links. Of course, human error is always possible.
If I’m quoting the The Book of This Day in History, that will also be in block quotes as per yesterday.
Other Sections of this Substack
Right now, there are only two publicly facing “Sections” of this Substack: On This Day In History and Encyclopædia Reading.
For those who don’t know, Sections of a Substack are like sections in a printed news paper: they are a way of grouping content. While I’m sure there are more creative uses of Sections on Substack than my current usage, the idea here is simple: for the “price” of one Substack subscription, you get two newsletters.
That’s great value for your money!
If, for some reason, you only want to receive the On This Day in History posts or just the Encyclopædia Reading posts, Substack allows you to control which sections you are subscribed to; by default you are subscribed to all Section of my newsletter.
Currently, there are two hidden sections of the newsletter: School and Better Every Day.
School
This section was going to be used for posts about what I was learning in my History classes in college. (I have twice tried to work on a second undergraduate degree, but both times I was unable to make it through the semester. Perhaps the third time will be the charm and perhaps that will happen in Fall of ‘25; only time will tell.)
There is only one post in this section; it was a cross-posted from my Medium. Until I return to school, this section will remain defunct.
Better Every Day
Before I hit upon the idea of writing a daily On This Day in History newsletter, I was looking for other material I could use to help me have topics so I didn’t face writer’s block. During that search, I came across a card “game” called Better Than Yesterday.
To my mind, these cards were like the daily devotional cards that sit in a plastic loaf of bread that have Scriptures written on them, supporting the notion that Bible verses are our Daily Bread. So I figured “what the hell” and bought the cards intending to write another daily blog and was cross-posting that from Medium.
While there was response to this content, I didn’t gel with many of the ideas on the cards. Thus, I burned out quickly and stoped writing that Section.
Because I pivoted this Substack to History and Trivia, if I ever go back to writing based on that product it will either stay on my Better Every Day Medium Publication or else become its own Substack1.
Encyclopædia Reading
I’ll refer you to the initial post in the series for more details. But to quickly recap, the idea is to read the entire 2020 World Book Encyclopedia set since it is the only Encyclopedia set that is still regularly being printed. (Encyclopedia Britannica stopped printing in 2010.)
I just haven’t had enough stability in my life recently to make this work. But with your help, I can.
Main, Unnamed or “Professor Tom’s History and Trivium” Section
If I chose not to put a piece in a particular Section, it will go into the default, unnamed Section which everyone who is subscribed to this Substack will receive.
Goals Of This Substack
I have a few goals for this Substack:
Not break the chain of publishing a new edition every day with history from that date in previous years.
Write essays or series based on history I discover during this process. I think I will call them special reports.
Eventually, with more time, research and resources, introduce new Sections for pre American Revolutionary history, Revolutionary History/Founding of the Country, 1800’s History (with a possible pulling out of the American Civil War) and 1900’s. As I envision it, these would each be sections of the current newsletter, but they could be their own newsletters as I expect they would be long running series. If you feel strongly about it one way or the other, please respond to this email or leave a comment.
Audio Version?
I was considering doing an audio-only podcast version of the On This Day in History section of this Substack starting at the first of the year in addition to the written newsletter.
Alas, that was too much of a commitment given present resources and energy levels. As it stands, just getting the newsletter out on a daily basis is chore enough.
If I were to produce an audio-only podcast version, I would have to find a way for that to provide (additional?) value to you. At the very least, I wouldn’t want to just read what’s in the newsletter; I would want it to have more conversational tone.
Publication Time (of Day)
Perhaps one way to do this is to have the audio ready in the morning and publish the text in the evening.
Right now, my own, low standard is to not break the chain of publication. That means getting the newsletter out on a daily basis. However, I do want to get more consistent with publishing time.
The reason the first four editions of the newsletter have been released later in the day has to do with the fact that I took a gig work shift a couple of weeks ago and it has effectively jet=lagged me, e.g. my circadian rhythm has been thrown off badly because I slept in the night I got off that shift at 2 am, to say nothing of the drive home or the wind down time.
Watching my stats, however, it does appear this newsletter is still getting its emails opened. Granted, we’re talking about four days during an end-of year/first-of-year holiday, so the real test will be open rates next week (staring tomorrow, Monday).
I live in the Central Timezone of the United States. That means if I publish late in the day, most of the globe is on the other side of the dateline. Ergo, On This Day in History won’t be timely for European or Asian readers.
However, if most of you are my fellow countrymen and prefer to skim or read this newsletter after dinner or before bed, then perhaps I’ve already found the ideal publishing time of day. Or maybe you’re in Europe or Asia and prefer reading today’s history tomorrow.
Please either reply to this email with your thoughts or let me know in the comments.
If I had the audio version available in the morning–early enough for, say, most of American’s commute–then perhaps I could become your ride/drive in routine.
If there were an audio version of this Section of the newsletter, what time of day would you want to listen?
Final Call
Finally, as we head into the first full week of the new year, do you have any feedback or recommendations for ProfessorTom’s On This Day in History?
For what it’s worth, a single author can have multiple Substack newsletters each of which have their own subscription fees. This is as opposed to having two different Substack accounts which I also have and set up that way to separate political and critical commentary from something, if not more academic, at least more professional.
Having said that, I can always launch Better Every Day to be a standalone publication in future should I decide to go down that path. If I were a betting man, I wouldn’t bet on that…not unless someone wants to make a significant donation to encourage such a publication.