fbpx
Features

Get historic breaking news in a modern form with History Buddy [Bot of the Week]

Contextualizing history can be difficult. You may know that an event happened on a certain date, but often that fact tends to feel abstract — disconnected from the future and your surroundings.

History Buddy does a good job of offering that context by sending you conversational messages about important things that happened that day in history. For instance, on April 26th, History Buddy messaged me “Yikes! Something just went down in Chernobyl.” I was then able to ask questions through prompts about what had happened.

“A power increase in reactor No. 4 has caused core explosions and open air fires. The nuclear cloud might spread as far as Scandinavia,” the bot informed me, followed by quizzing me with: “What year is it now again?”

Each day, the bot sends one historical tidbit. The subjects range from the riots in LA following the acquittal of police officers involved in the beating of Rodney King to the naming of the dwarf planet Pluto.

Most of the time, those facts are accompanied by pictures, links to read more on the subject and small quiz questions — perfect for the amateur history buff or anyone who’d like to learn about and feel closer to humanity’s past.

To get started with History Buddy, say hello on Facebook Messenger.

Related Articles

Comments