About Timeliner

Timeliner shows whose lives overlapped in history. It covers 492 people, from ancient rulers to living artists, and every year in which they lived.

Where the dates come from

Birth and death years come from Wikidata, the structured database behind Wikipedia. Each person page links to that person's Wikidata item and Wikipedia article in its list of sources.

When Wikidata gives the exact day in the Gregorian calendar, pages give the exact birthday and the exact age. When only the year is known, pages say "about" before an age. Years before the Common Era are marked BCE.

How the fun facts are checked

The site has 2931 researched fun facts. Each one cites a Wikipedia article. Each fact also stores the sentence from that article that supports it.

• A script downloads the article and confirms that the supporting sentence appears in it word for word. A fact that fails this check does not go on the site.
• A second, independent review then compares the wording of each fact with its supporting sentence.
• Each fact on a page has a numbered link to its source, so you can read the original.

Portraits

Portraits come from Wikimedia Commons. The image credits page names the author, license and original file of each one. The share image of each person combines that portrait with text and keeps the portrait's author and license.

Corrections

If you find an error, please tell Dan Schnau, who runs the site. Wikipedia and Wikidata also change, so the site's data is refreshed from them from time to time.

Who made it

Dan Schnau and Schnau Software made Timeliner with the help of Claude, an AI model by Anthropic. Text from Wikipedia is used under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license.