Improve your speech with facts about famous people, historical events, products

The History Today file is a fact-filled treasure chest of interesting items that can be most useful in fashioning:

• A historical "peg" for your speech or article.
• An interesting "did you know that today is" comment.
• A useful "peg" to introduce a speaker.
• Tying the birthday of someone famous to the occasion or to someone you are introducing.

Bringing to your screen the events and birthdays of a specific day is the first, and very important, way you can make use of History Today. However, you can also use the file as a mini-encyclopedia to look up interesting facts about an amazing variety of subjects.

For example, say you would like to know when and where the famous "frisbee" was invented. Just enter "frisbee" in the query box on the History Today page, and click the "Event" checkbox.

Or, let's say you would like to verify some dates about the Louisiana Purchase. Just type in "Louisiana Purchase" and very soon on your screen will be all the entries in the History Today file on that important historical event.

Another interesting use of the History Today file is to compile a series of important events that occurred in a given year — say 1924. To do this, enter 1924 in the "Year" field on the History Today page, and a list of evens occurring in that year will appear on your screen.

Although Napoleon said history "is the version of past events that people have decided to agree on," we have made every attempt to make our History Today as accurate as possible. We have also tried to give enough detail in each item so that you have something to work with.

Enjoy!