Use the data

Every day of Theodore Roosevelt's life is available as open JSON: where he was, who he was with, what he did, the letters he wrote, and his own words from his diary. Build a timeline, a map, a classroom exercise or a daily post. No key, no sign-up.

Widgets

New: Today in TR's life, a rotating banner, card, wall or inline block for trlibrary.com pages, built like the visitor-quotes widget.

Add one script tag to any page, then drop in a widget. Widgets pick up the page's fonts through the --dbd-display, --dbd-serif and --dbd-sans CSS variables, and accept theme="dark" and cta="off".

<script src="https://daybyday.labs.trlibrary.com/widgets/daybyday.js" defer></script>

<trpl-on-this-day count="3"></trpl-on-this-day>
<trpl-where-was-tr></trpl-where-was-tr>
<trpl-day date="1884-06-25"></trpl-day>

The map, embedded

<iframe src="https://daybyday.labs.trlibrary.com/map.html?embed=1&date=1884-06-25"
        width="100%" height="640" style="border:0" title="Where Theodore Roosevelt was"></iframe>

JSON API

Base URL: https://daybyday.labs.trlibrary.com/api/v1/. Every endpoint is a static file, cached at the edge and open to cross-site requests.

Endpoint	Returns
index.json	Dataset metadata, counts and the endpoint list
days/{YYYY-MM-DD}.json	One day: headline, summary, events, people, places, letters, TR quotes, tags, life periods, TRA page citations
on-this-day/{MM-DD}.json	That calendar date in every year of his life, most significant first
months/{YYYY-MM}.json	Compact records for a month
years/{YYYY}.json	Compact records for a year
people/index.json	Everyone in the record, with group, description and day counts
people/{id}.json	One person, every day they appear, frequent companions and places
places/index.json	Every place, with coordinates and days present
places/{id}.json	One place and every day he was there
stays.json	Runs of consecutive days in one place, for maps and journeys
periods.json	Life stages, offices, journeys and campaigns, with dates
tags/index.json, tags/{tag}.json	Topic tags and the dates carrying each
highlights.json	The days rated major or history-making
grid.json, search.json	Compact per-day rows for visualizations and client-side search

fetch("https://daybyday.labs.trlibrary.com/api/v1/on-this-day/10-27.json")
  .then(r => r.json())
  .then(d => console.log(d.days[0].headline));

Downloads

days.csv, one row per day, for spreadsheets
days.jsonl, the full dataset, one JSON day per line
people.json, places.json, periods.json
events.jsonl, letters.jsonl, quotes.jsonl

How it was made

The facts come from the Theodore Roosevelt Association's Chronological Record, a day-by-day calendar of Roosevelt's life compiled by Robert J. Moore Jr. in 1985 and held in the Theodore Roosevelt Collection at Harvard. Every day cites its pages in that record. The Library wrote each headline, summary and event description in its own words; the record's text is not reproduced.

Where he was comes from the record's place-names index, refined by the places named in each day. Days with no entry carry forward his last known location and are marked that way. Coordinates come from GeoNames and OpenStreetMap.

Roosevelt's own words (tr_quotes) are given as transcribed in the record and marked "verified": false. Check them against the original letter, diary or speech before quoting them in print.

Credit

Data: CC BY 4.0, Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library. Please credit “Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library, Day by Day” with a link to this site. Code: MIT. Geodata © OpenStreetMap contributors (ODbL) and GeoNames (CC BY 4.0).