World History Day Date in the current year: June 24, 2024

In the broad sense of the word, the term “history” comprises past events. In the narrow sense of the term, it is a scientific and academic discipline that studies and documents these events. Historians study the past using various historical sources (written documents, artifacts, oral accounts, etc,), use narratives to discover, collect, organize, describe, question, and analyze information about past events, and investigate the significance of different causes and effects.

One of the first historians in the Western tradition was Herodotus, a Greek scholar who is widely regarded as the “Father of History”. The first writer to perform a systematic study of past events, Herodotus wrote a detailed account of the Greco-Persian Wars titled The Histories (also known as The History). Of course, chronicles and historical records had existed before Herodotus, but he is credited with establishing the genre and study of history in the Western world.

Of course, other regions had their own prominent historians who contributed to the development of the historical science. For example, the most influential historiographer in ancient China was Sima Qian, a court historian of the early Han dynasty best known for his monumental work Records of the Grand Historian that covers 2,500 years of Chinese history.

Since history is a very broad discipline, it can be divided into multiple subdisciplines depending on the time period (ancient history, medieval history, early modern history, etc.), geographical location (history of continents, regions, countries, and cities), or area of study (political history, military history, religious history, environmental history, social history, cultural history, diplomatic history, economic history, etc.).

The celebration of World History Day was first proposed by Shahee Khan, the president of the NGO ITS 6TH WOW that works with the World Tourism Organization (UNWTO) to promote eco-tourism. Her proposal was supported by Secretary General of the UNWTO Zurab Pololikashvili, who launched the World History Day Formation Campaign in 2022. The main goal of the observance is to re-record the history of the world and preserve it for the next generations using all available media.

World History Day is observed on June 24 because it is the date of the earliest recorded event, at least according to some scholars. We’re talking about Mursili’s eclipse, a solar eclipse mentioned in a text dating to the reign of the Hittite king Mursili II. The text states that the eclipse took place in the tenth year of the king’s reign; most historians agree that it occurred over northern Anatolia on June 24, 1312 BC.

Every year, a new theme is chosen for World History Day. For example, the theme of World History Day 2023 was Cinematic Historians and History Preservation, and the motto was “Re-record history cinematically”. The celebration that year focused on the role of modern visual formats in the preservation of history.