The Times On This Day: Facts and Trivia for Every Day of the Year - Edited by James Owen - ★★★.½

EDITOR: James Owen

GENRE: Trivia

PUBLICATION DATE: January 26, 2027

RATING: 3.5 stars.

In a Nutshell: A book that does exactly what is promised by the title and the cover.

The book begins with an interesting introductory note, highlighting the significance of history but not as taught in textbooks. Keeping this intent in mind, the content of the book serves as an insight into some known and not-so-known historical occurrences, providing an impetus to begin googling more about the included trivia.

As declared on the cover, the book contains “facts and trivia for every day of the year”. Organised in chronological order of dates and secondary-sorted by years, each date entry contains between 4-10 facts/trivia about key events that took place on that date in various years. These could be something straightforward such as births, deaths, ascensions, wars, and natural disasters, or something more unusual or revolutionary such as gamechanger poll results, noteworthy thefts, first-ever inventions or accidents, and so on. The trivia come from varied subject areas, going much beyond history to include music, politics, business, economics, sports, space tech, religion, archaeology, and a lot more. A good number of the entries are UK-centric, with the USA and Europe also getting substantial coverage, but the book does try to go beyond the Global North.

The entries are mostly quite interesting, as long as we either understand the reference or are ready to Google more details about it. Many of the people referred to in the compilation were unknown to me, but the book sometimes gives a brief bio next to their names. Some entries felt too minor to be included as key events. For instance, did it really need to include every single marriage of Henry VIII?

In a few cases, the entries could have offered a bit more pertinent info. For instance, the entry for 2nd April 1819 – “In Venice, Lord Byron met 19-year-old Countess Teresa Guiccioli, who would become his last love.” – immediately leads to the query about how old Byron was then and what was the significance of “last love”. Similarly, the entry for 10th May 1857 – “The Indian Mutiny began.” – is so vague. The 1857 rebellion was a key event in Indo-British history and the reason for the mutiny could at least have been specified. Or consider the entry for 1st November 1993 – “The Maastricht Treaty came into effect.” Where, why, between whom? Google exists, but certain basic details can certainly be furnished in a single sentence.

The page layout is quite straightforward. We have the date at the top, and underneath, we have the individual entries led by the year in which each took place. Except for a page border for the first of every month, the layout is quite plain. I wish there had been some illustrations; even simple B&W line sketches would have added some visual appeal. The front and back covers contain illustrations, and the significance of each of these is clarified in the backmatter after the 366 date-wise entries.

Obviously, the book is not to be read at a go. You can just flip over to some random date, or look for the significant dates in your life such as birthdates and anniversaries and see what key events you share the glory with, or you could check out the events of the current date perhaps beginning on New Year’s day and treating the book like a trivia calendar. It could also be a great gift option, especially for trivia fans. Note that it won't be an appealing gift for younger children as they won't be able to relate to a majority of the events.

Recommended to trivia fans and readers interested in a taking a different look at world history.

My thanks to Collins Reference and Times Books for providing the DRC of “The Times On This Day” via NetGalley. This review is voluntary and contains my honest opinion about the book.