Is there a way to find out what was happening on a certain day in history, particularly during World War II?

In January, we answered a patron’s question about how to find an obituary that was published years ago, and that information is available on our library blog and is useful in knowing where to look for old local newspapers.

To see what was going on in any given year, we have Timetables of History by Bernard Grun, Chronology of World History by H.E.L. Mellersh, and Chronicle of the World by Jerome Burne and Derrik Mercer. These books are set up like timelines, documenting the important events that happened every year.

History, HistoryNet (publisher of several magazines including Military History), and the New York Times all have a “This Day in History” feature on their websites. The New York Times even includes a picture of the front page of the paper from a particularly significant date.

For World War II-specific information, World War II Database and HistoryOfWar.org both have timelines of the war that go day-by-day. We also have VFW’s Pictorial History of the Second World War, which is a chronological collection of captioned photographs.

For further research, the Newton Falls Public Library has an extensive collection of World War II nonfiction, including The Second World War by Antony Beevor, Eyewitness to World War II by Neil Kagan and Stephen G. Hyslop, and The War: An Intimate History 1941-1945 by Geoffrey G. Ward and Ken Burns.