On This Day in History

Insert Wikipedia’s “On this day” for today directly into your current Obsidian note — cleanly formatted as Markdown.

The plugin fetches the current day’s Wikipedia page (e.g. January 3), extracts the Events, Births, and Deaths sections, and inserts them at your cursor position.

Features

• Fetches Wikipedia "On this day" content for today or any specific date
• Inserts directly into the active note
• Automatically filters out page noise
• Converts relative Wikipedia links to full URLs
• Customizable link display (inline, grouped, or none)
• Clean, readable Markdown output
• Works via command palette or ribbon icon

Usage

Insert Today's Events

Via Command Palette:

1. Open a Markdown note
2. Open the Command Palette (⌘P / Ctrl+P)
3. Run "Insert today's events from history."

Via Ribbon Icon: Click the calendar-clock icon in the left sidebar to insert today's entry into the active note.

Insert Events from a Specific Date

1. Open a Markdown note
2. Open the Command Palette (⌘P / Ctrl+P)
3. Run "Insert historical events from a specific date."
4. Select the month and day in the date picker dialog

Settings

Timezone

By default, the plugin uses your system timezone (Auto) to determine what “today” means.

If you travel, or if you for any other reason want more control, you can switch to Manual timezone mode:

• Auto (default)
  Uses your system’s current timezone.

• Manual Lets you choose a specific timezone. When switching to Manual, the system-detected timezone is preselected for convenience.

Link Display

Control how Wikipedia links appear in the inserted content:

• Inline (default) Links appear naturally within the text, preserving the original Wikipedia formatting.

• Grouped Link text appears in the content without hyperlinks, and all links are collected under a "Links" section at the end of each subsection (Events, Births, Deaths).

• None All links are removed, leaving only plain text.

You can find these settings under:

Settings → On This Day in History

Output Examples

Inline (default)

## January 3

## Events
- [1521](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1521) – [Martin Luther](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Luther) is excommunicated from the [Catholic Church](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catholic_Church).

## Births
- [1892](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1892) – [J. R. R. Tolkien](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._R._R._Tolkien), English author (d. 1973)

Grouped

## January 3

## Events
- 1521 – Martin Luther is excommunicated from the Catholic Church.

**Links**

- [1521](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1521)
- [Martin Luther](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Luther)
- [Catholic Church](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catholic_Church)

## Births
- 1892 – J. R. R. Tolkien, English author (d. 1973)

**Links**

- [1892](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1892)
- [J. R. R. Tolkien](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._R._R._Tolkien)

None

## January 3

## Events
- 1521 – Martin Luther is excommunicated from the Catholic Church.

## Births
- 1892 – J. R. R. Tolkien, English author (d. 1973)

Installation

From Community Plugins

1. Open Settings → Community Plugins
2. Disable Safe Mode
3. Search for Wiki On This Day
4. Install & enable

Manual Installation

1. Download the latest release
2. Copy the plugin folder into your vault’s .obsidian/plugins/ directory
3. Enable the plugin in Obsidian settings

Privacy

This plugin:

• Does not collect or store user data
• Makes requests only to en.wikipedia.org
• Performs all processing locally in Obsidian

Development

Built using:

• Obsidian Plugin API
• MediaWiki Action API
• Turndown (HTML → Markdown)

PRs and suggestions are welcome.

License

MIT License

Copyright © 2026 Michael Edlund