Histolines was started in 2013. By a group of datascientists who are also history enthusiasts. We wanted to apply current datascience techniques to a history database only to realize there is not well constructed database of history. So, we decided to build one.
Histolines is a frontend to our data collection effort. This page allows many users to add events, quotes, image links to our database. The page also allows us to examine, edit, update, and refine each post.
In addition to manual posts our team collects and builds historical datasets to add to our database. We have built dozens of web crawlers, NLP interpreters to datafy all the information about history that is dispersed all over the internet.
Idea
Histolines is a platform to compile all of the historical events in one database with an account of time and place. As it matures it will have an infinitely detailed record of history that will be easy to navigate and analyze. This platform only intakes the basic information of who, what, where, when and with whom. This prevents the usual interpretation and bias inherent in other historical sources. Histolines allows anyone to add to our knowledge of history, yet it has build in mechanisms to justify the claim and to filter out fallacious remarks and events of little importance.
Histolines allows you to navigate through time to look at all the known events in any stretch of time. It allows you to look at all the life events of a particular character and collection of characters that overlap in time. With time we want to develop the capability of looking into events of a particular region. (It can be a country, continent or a town). Whether to check the legitimacy or to find out more about what happened one can explore the event more fully by hitting the detail tab, to read the references or comments or to check which grander historical periods this event belongs to. As histolines growth, we can develop timed maps to display the movement of characters throughout time. Histolines democratizes writing, access, and interpretation of history.
Instpiration
Sometime in March of 2013, a friend of mine sent me a link what would Facebook look like if it existed during World War II, and reading it has set in motion all sorts of events that have led to the creation of histolines.com. The first thought that flashed across my brain was that it would be amazing to create something similar for the Roman Empire, in particular about the turbulent time of Julius Caesar, Mark Anthony, Cleopatra and people they have interacted with. But almost as soon I realized that drawing it as an image would be almost pointless since first every moment in history would need a timeline like this and second I could never capture the full complexity of those people and I would need to perpetually edit it and append it. Thus a fairly obvious solution was to build a platform that would allow people to build such timelines. After quite some time and hours of trying to figure out how it would look and work and learning how to build websites I have set of to build histolines, but it is all thanks to a Facebook message in which my friend shared this link with me.Histolines has a large collection of birthdays and death dates, list of most major world leaders throughout time, most of US presidents, Supreme Court justices, Senators and Representatives time in office (we are currently working on other countries like Canada and Brittan), most of the movies released in the US, most of the Music Albums released throughout time, most of Oscars nominations and winners, most of Roman Consuls and various other detail that cannot be grouped into a category but should be discovered on your own. We are working on digging for a lot more information, such as Olympic history, other sports results, and trades, list of other countries politicians, patent history and whatever kind of data we can get our hands on.
Please email us with suggestions of datasets or datasets themselves that we can incorporate into Histolines. But most of the information in the world especially from the past has not been collected into neat tables. That’s why Histolines is so important, as it is the only place for people to compile events of the people who lived in the past into one data-driven knowledge base, so that people can use data analytics techniques to better understand our past, and for the average Joe to be able to access his own history.