"This day in history", and you have to find the place

A usual "this day in history" page is a list of facts. HistoPin keeps the date hook and asks you to locate each event. You get five things that happened on today's date. The write-up tells you what took place and withholds the site. A world map sits there for the pin.

How a round works

The clue names the event and the date. The place is missing because that is the thing you are trying to get right. You read it, think through what you know, and drop a pin. Afterwards the map marks the real location and the gap between that mark and yours.

A daily is five of those rounds. Some people finish in a few minutes. Others linger on a clue they half-remember.

How scoring works

Distance sets the base. Points fall away on a curve, so a thoughtful pin a few hundred kilometres out still returns a score. A miss in the same region is not treated like a tap on the wrong continent.

Extra points sit on top of that base.

Speed can add up to 300. The bonus only applies when the pin was already close, so a fast random tap does not earn it.

Precision pays 500 if you land within 25 km of the true spot.

Country pays 300 if the pin sits inside the event's modern-day country, even when the kilometre figure looks average.

Streak grows if you string together solid rounds. Holding a decent line across all five is worth more than one lucky hit surrounded by four weak ones.

Two players can miss by a similar distance and still post different totals, because speed, country, precision and streak move independently of raw kilometres. That difference is why a shared daily score is worth reading.

Everyone gets the same five

The set is seeded from the calendar date. Open the puzzle on a given day and you see the same five events as everyone else on that date. A leaderboard only works under that rule. A screenshot of a result only means something if the other person faced the same clues.

Events that share today's month and day go in first. If the date is short of five, the remaining slots come from the rest of that month, then from the wider pool. The daily is always complete. A light proximity check stops two rounds in the same set from landing on one city.

Where the events come from

The pool has 3,000 events. Each one was written by hand as a location riddle. The clues were not scraped out of a structured database. They were not produced by a model either. That writing is slow, and it is the part of the build we refuse to rush.

Coordinates sit at city or battlefield level. A strong guess is near the site itself.

The events run through eight categories: Politics, Culture, Battles, Exploration, Disasters, Sports, Science and Inventions. The clues are written rather than photographic, which is why ancient and medieval events sit in the pool alongside later ones.

Frequently asked

Do I need an account?

No. The daily plays without one. An account only carries streak and leaderboard place if you move between devices.

When does the puzzle change?

At midnight on your local date. "Today in history" follows the calendar where you are.

Can I play on a phone?

Yes. It runs in a browser. If you want an icon on the home screen, it can install as a progressive web app. There is no store download.