Worldwide daily newspapers have been published since July 1, 1650, so we probably know something about every day since then. Wiki’s entry for 1650 shows a birth on June 25th, and deaths on June 26th, 28th, and 30th. So I suppose Jun 29, 1650 is one candidate.
Unlikely though. The oldest continuous temperature record began in 1659, a little later. English parish records start in 1538 and they probably cover some event (birth, death, marriage, baptism, burial) for every day since. Maybe. I’m not sure how to handle holidays: are those an event? The first weekly newspaper was published in 1605, so that could fold in a number of dates.
Ok, what about the most recent month? Wiki has something occurring every month in 1491, but there’s no mention of events (including births and deaths) in July 1444. I haven’t narrowed it down further.
What’s the most recent year where nothing happened that we know of? Wiki has a page for 700 BCE and every year since but not 701 BCE. So that settles that. Asked and answered.
Yes, the above is shot full of holes. Commentary and better ideas welcome.
June 1650 was a tumultuous time in British history - the British Civil Wars and the related campaigns in Scotland and Ireland were going on, and England had been declared a republican Commonwealth just a year before. I’d doubt if there is no record anywhere on the British Isles of anything noteworthy happening on any particular day during this period.
It’s an interesting question, but I don’t think it can be answered. Even if you find a date (or week or month or year) with no information about it online today, there may still be records of it somewhere in some dusty archive.
Don’t you remember? That was the day Alice Bacon, Viscountess of St Albans, died. The day before that, of course, Tokugawa Mitsutomo became daimyō of Owari Domain. The day before that, Luis Enríquez de Guzmán, 9th Count of Alba de Liste and the incoming Viceroy of New Spain, famously arrived in Chapultepec. The day before that was a day that will live in infamy, because Hedwig of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel, princess of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel, died. The day before that, Joseph Sherman was born in Massachusetts Bay Colony, a joyous event no one could possibly forget.
As for holidays, I’d say that anything that is 100% predictable doesn’t count as newsworthy or notable, despite the modern news industry’s insistence on extensively covering anniversaries.
If you search Google for “July * 1444” site:.wikipedia.org it returns many events, including the signing of a treaty by Sultan Murad II of the Ottoman Empire by which he agreed to abdicate.
701 BC - Wikipedia They seem to have a page for every year back to 756 BC, and before that they go by decade.
If they are, then that pushes it way back, since every day of the year is the feast day of about a half-dozen different saints. OK, go back far enough and you start pre-dating some of those saints, but I don’t imagine it took the early Church very long to get at least one for each day.
The tricky part is going to be strictly local records of things like weddings, funerals, and baptisms. A lot of those have been destroyed in fires and the like, of course, and those don’t count because they’re not known any more, but a lot have also been just plain lost, as in they might be found again. Some might even be records kept by an individual family.
This is a bit like the “interesting number paradox” in mathematics: The most recent day on which nothing noteworthy happened is, by virtue of this fact, noteworthy.
I’m having trouble with the point at which ‘nothing’ is distinguished from ‘something’.
Samuel Pepys’s diary starts in 1660, only a hair’s breadth later than your 29 June 1650 suggestion. It gives a probably fairly good insight into how daily life is filled with mundanity and also intersections of events of global magnitude, and you might not necessarily know which is which. Most Wikipedia events are only noteworthy in reflection of hindsight, but then Pepys also experienced the Great Fire of London, an event where everything happened all at once.
Is the day someone told cranky Great War veteran A. Hitler ‘You suck, your pictures suck’ a nothing day or a day that set the wheels in motion for WW2?*
[*yes, I know its slightly more complicated but just recently re-watched the very good movie ‘Max’ about this so causality is top of mind].
There is no interesting number paradox. That such a concept exists shows only that mathematicians don’t have similar facility with words. Sorry, a pet peeve.
The discussion in this thread is also showing a heavy bias for English-language or western sources. Chinese history is known to have been minutely detailed back through the dynasties. I don’t have a clue whether individual days are recorded but I’m shot through with western bias myself.
Seems like you have to define a location and a threshold of “materiality” before you can answer that question.
Like for example I went on a vacation road trip through the South recently, and there was stuff on the Huntsville, AL news about stuff going on in Arab (pronounced “Ay-rab” ) with the opening of a new health clinic or something.
That kind of thing wouldn’t even come close to registering on the Dallas news- there are enough other things perpetually going on that they would never need to resort to reporting on the opening of a health clinic in Nevada or Ennis.
The U.S. purchased Alaska on March 30, 1867 and took possession on October 18. I’m lost about the significance of October 6. No matter whose calendar was in use in Alaska on that and the next ten days, Russia’s or America’s, those days certainly existed. No country did the changeover from Julian in 1867.
Daily date candidates are probably before September 1538, when English parish records were first kept. But see below.
Perhaps it can be estimated.
Good point. Using the bisect method, in February 1409, Louis I, Duke of Orléans was assassinated. Nothing valid turns up for “January * 1279” site:.wikipedia.org. Wiki’s page for 1344 lists nothing for November, but google search shows that Everhard II of Limburg Hohenlimburg died on November 11, 1344. Wiki’s page for 1312 shows something happening every month. The page for 1296 shows nothing for January or September: googling produces a false lead for Isabella of France aka “The She-Wolf of France”. So January 1296 is a candidate. Let’s work forward then. The entry for 1304 shows something happening every month. Going backwards, the 1300 entry shows something happending for every month, unsurprisingly. Now test 1298. Nothing for October or November. Googling, Mechthild of Hackeborn died on November 19, 1298. She was a Saxon Christian saint, Benedictine nun, and singer. On October 10, 1298, the 9th child of John of Ibelin (noted jurist and author) married her 2nd husband. As for 1297, the yearly page lists something for every month.
So nothing happened in January 1296 that we know of, using this test.
Agreed. I interpret the OP as a question about what we know, or rather the density of information about different eras. It’s also a parlor game.
There are various tests, but I regard any trivial thing known about a particular day as an event. So a true test would involve diary entries. I would guess this would push the monthly date (Jan 1296, with the above methodology) into ancient times. Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius kept something like a diary called Meditations, but I don’t know how much daily data it has and this wasn’t common practice.
The 750s BCE entry contains nothing about 751. They have a page on 751 BCE though: the first pyramids built by the Nubians in El-Kurru were constructed in that year. They back that up with a reference which I haven’t looked into. The 760s entry mentions nothing about 766 BCE. So that’s one candidate.
The lack of references to China in this exercise suggests a deficiency in knowledge among English speaking Wikipedia editors (among others).
Alaska changed from Julian calendar (as part of Russia) to Gregorian calendar (as part of the USA) in 1867. Hence there was no date called October 7th, 1867, in Alaska.
) with the opening of a new health clinic or something.