Official archives, institutional datasets, and same-origin Atom feeds
Historical Sources and Feeds
A curated directory of official archives, institutional datasets, public APIs, bulk downloads, and source-update feeds for researching events in historical context.
Publication information
First-party historical feeds
Subscribe without sending reading activity to an external provider
Same-origin Atom feeds generated from the reviewed public World Events index. They contain historical or current-observation labels and never include fictional scenarios.
World Events master Atom feed
The master feed contains the 224 public historical and current-observation records. The separately labeled fictional scenarios are never syndicated as events.
Open the master Atom feedExternal-link boundary
A research link is not a verification result
A link identifies a research starting point, not proof that the source contains a record for every event or that every record is complete, current, unbiased, or independently verified by 2IA.
All external links are visitor-initiated, use no-referrer navigation, and are never embedded, prefetched, scraped, or called by the public page.
No source in this catalog is automatically ingested. API keys, app names, rate limits, licenses, caching restrictions, and terms must be rechecked before any future connector is enabled.
7 reviewed external sources
Diplomatic, intelligence, and archival records
Official documents, declassified material, diplomatic records, and archival catalogues.
United Nations Digital Library
United Nations Dag Hammarskjöld Library
UN documents, resolutions, voting records, speeches, maps, publications, and selected datasets across the organization's history.
- Search
- Record exports
- Datasets
- Research use
- Useful for checking resolution text, vote records, official statements, meeting records, and document symbols.
- Access boundary
- Record-level rights and download conditions vary. Dataset records may carry separate attribution or use terms.
- Review state
- Public landing page and collections reviewed on 2026-07-24.
Foreign Relations of the United States
U.S. Department of State, Office of the Historian
Published documentary record of major U.S. foreign-policy decisions and significant diplomatic activity.
- Browse
- Full-text search
- Ebooks
- Research use
- Useful for historical diplomatic context, decision records, and document-level chronology.
- Access boundary
- Publication schedules and declassification limits mean the series is not a complete contemporaneous event feed.
- Review state
- Official collection and series description reviewed on 2026-07-24.
NATO Archives Online
North Atlantic Treaty Organization
Publicly disclosed NATO committee, council, military, staff, and publication records.
- Browse
- Advanced search
- Digital objects
- Research use
- Useful for alliance policy, committee records, strategic concepts, and institutional history.
- Access boundary
- Publicly disclosed records may be used for research with appropriate NATO credit; disclosure coverage is selective.
- Review state
- Official archive and FAQ reviewed on 2026-07-24.
U.S. National Archives Catalog
U.S. National Archives and Records Administration
Archival descriptions, authority records, digitized objects, extracted text, and public contributions for U.S. federal records.
- Search
- Catalog API
- Bulk export
- Research use
- Useful for locating record groups, digitized files, finding aids, photographs, and agency-created archival material.
- Access boundary
- The Catalog API requires a key, has rate limits and attribution requirements, and its current terms say API-returned content should not be cached or stored.
- Review state
- Official developer and API terms pages reviewed on 2026-07-24.
Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers
Library of Congress and National Endowment for the Humanities
Millions of digitized U.S. newspaper pages published through 1963, plus title metadata and research guides.
- Search
- loc.gov API
- Datasets
- RSS updates
- Research use
- Useful for contemporaneous reporting, public framing, local detail, and tracing how narratives changed.
- Access boundary
- Beginning in 2025, programmatic access moved to the loc.gov API. Historical newspapers reflect the language and perspectives of their time.
- Review state
- Official collection, API, and research-guide pages reviewed on 2026-07-24.
CIA FOIA Electronic Reading Room
Central Intelligence Agency
Declassified and released CIA records across historical topics and document collections.
- Search
- Collections
- Document downloads
- Research use
- Useful for declassified agency records, historical assessments, memoranda, and collection-level research.
- Access boundary
- Release selection, redaction, metadata quality, and OCR completeness vary by record.
- Review state
- Official reading-room and site-policy pages reviewed on 2026-07-24.
Discovery, The National Archives
The National Archives, United Kingdom
Descriptions of records held by The National Archives and thousands of other archives and institutions.
- Search
- Browse
- Discovery API
- Research use
- Useful for British government, military, diplomatic, intelligence, colonial, and institutional record discovery.
- Access boundary
- The public catalogue is open. API access and current terms should be confirmed with The National Archives before automation.
- Review state
- Official catalogue, API catalogue, and terms pages reviewed on 2026-07-24.
3 reviewed external sources
Conflict, humanitarian, and event datasets
Structured records for organized violence, humanitarian crises, and media-derived event research.
Uppsala Conflict Data Program
Uppsala University
Structured datasets on organized violence, conflict actors, events, and fatalities, with codebooks and version histories.
- Dataset downloads
- API
- Charts and maps
- Research use
- Useful for conflict definitions, event comparison, actor coding, and checking whether a claim fits the dataset's threshold rules.
- Access boundary
- Current downloadable datasets are described as free under CC BY 4.0 with citation requirements; coverage varies by dataset.
- Review state
- Official download center reviewed on 2026-07-24.
GDELT Project
GDELT Project
Large-scale event and knowledge-graph records derived from global news sources, with downloadable data and analysis tools.
- Bulk downloads
- Analysis tools
- BigQuery
- Research use
- Useful for identifying media attention patterns, candidate events, cross-border reporting, and questions for deeper source verification.
- Access boundary
- Coded news events are not equivalent to verified ground truth; duplication, source bias, translation, and coverage changes require review.
- Review state
- Official project landing page reviewed on 2026-07-24.
ReliefWeb
United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs
Humanitarian reports, disaster records, countries, and source metadata curated from institutional publishers.
- Search
- Disaster pages
- API
- Research use
- Useful for humanitarian situation reports, disaster chronology, response organizations, and source discovery.
- Access boundary
- The current API requires an appname, and since November 2025 the appname must be pre-approved. API terms must be checked before use.
- Review state
- Official API documentation reviewed on 2026-07-24.
4 reviewed external sources
Law, regulation, and public governance
Legislation, regulations, official publications, votes, and government-document history.
Federal Register and FederalRegister.gov API
Office of the Federal Register and U.S. Government Publishing Office
Rules, proposed rules, notices, executive orders, and presidential documents with historical search and structured access.
- Search
- Public inspection
- JSON API
- Research use
- Useful for tracing when agencies proposed, adopted, amended, delayed, or withdrew public rules and notices.
- Access boundary
- The public API does not require an API key. The Federal Register's official legal edition remains the controlling publication for legal conclusions.
- Review state
- Official developer documentation reviewed on 2026-07-24.
GovInfo
U.S. Government Publishing Office
Authenticated and official publications from all three branches, including laws, bills, regulations, court opinions, budgets, and the Congressional Record.
- Search
- Bulk data
- Sitemaps
- API
- Research use
- Useful for official text, package history, related documents, and authenticated government publications.
- Access boundary
- The API requires an api.data.gov key. Public sitemaps and bulk data provide alternatives for some collections.
- Review state
- Official API and sitemap pages reviewed on 2026-07-24.
Congress.gov
Library of Congress
Bills, laws, amendments, summaries, committees, members, nominations, treaties, and Congressional Record data, with varying historical coverage.
- Search
- Browse
- API
- Research use
- Useful for legislative chronology, bill actions, enacted law, committee history, and official text versions.
- Access boundary
- The API requires an api.data.gov key. Coverage and full-text availability differ by collection and Congress.
- Review state
- Official API and coverage pages reviewed on 2026-07-24.
legislation.gov.uk
The National Archives, United Kingdom
United Kingdom primary and secondary legislation, revised text, metadata, and historical versions where available.
- Search
- Browse
- XML/RDF/HTML API
- Research use
- Useful for checking statutory text, amendments, commencement, and point-in-time legal history.
- Access boundary
- Coverage, revision status, and point-in-time availability vary by legislation type and date.
- Review state
- Official dataset and developer-information pages reviewed on 2026-07-24.
4 reviewed external sources
Natural hazards and public health
Earthquakes, severe weather, natural-event metadata, and official outbreak reporting.
USGS Earthquake Catalog (ComCat)
U.S. Geological Survey
Earthquake source parameters and related products from contributing seismic networks, including historic catalog search.
- Search
- FDSN web service
- GeoJSON/CSV/XML
- Research use
- Useful for event time, magnitude, location, contributing network, and associated seismic products.
- Access boundary
- Historical regional catalogs are not uniformly complete; magnitude thresholds and availability vary by time and network.
- Review state
- Official catalog and API documentation reviewed on 2026-07-24.
NOAA Storm Events Database
NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information
U.S. storms and significant weather events beginning in 1950, with event-type coverage changing over time and publication lag.
- Search
- Bulk CSV
- Storm Data publications
- Research use
- Useful for severe-weather chronology, narratives, injuries, fatalities, and damage fields within the stated collection limits.
- Access boundary
- The database is updated after reporting and quality-control delays; early decades contain fewer event types than later periods.
- Review state
- Official database, detail, and bulk-download pages reviewed on 2026-07-24.
NASA Earth Observatory Natural Event Tracker
NASA Earth Science Data and Information System
Continuously updated, curated natural-event metadata linked to imagery and supporting sources.
- Browse
- Open API
- GeoJSON
- Research use
- Useful for locating natural-event records, categories, geometry, dates, and related imagery sources.
- Access boundary
- EONET is a curated event reference, not an exhaustive historical disaster register or a legal casualty record.
- Review state
- Official EONET landing page reviewed on 2026-07-24.
WHO Disease Outbreak News
World Health Organization
WHO reports on selected acute public-health events and outbreaks, with event-specific updates and risk assessments.
- Search
- Browse
- Subscriptions
- Research use
- Useful for official situation dates, declared outbreaks, public-health response, and WHO risk framing.
- Access boundary
- Disease Outbreak News is selective and can change as surveillance, laboratory confirmation, and national reporting evolve.
- Review state
- Official outbreak-news and situation-report pages reviewed on 2026-07-24.
1 reviewed external sources
Long-run statistical context
Historical time series that help test claims about population, development, economic change, and institutional conditions.
World Bank Indicators API
World Bank
Nearly 16,000 time-series indicators across development, population, health, education, finance, debt, poverty, and related domains; many series extend more than 50 years.
- Open Data
- Indicators API
- Downloads
- Research use
- Useful for testing long-run contextual claims and separating event narratives from measurable trend data.
- Access boundary
- Indicator definitions, revisions, country coverage, methodology, and missing observations vary by series. API access does not require a key.
- Review state
- Official Indicators API documentation reviewed on 2026-07-24.
Verification workflow
Use an archive to test a claim, not to decorate it
- Write the exact claim, date range, actors, location, and legal or institutional status being tested.
- Select the source whose mandate and coverage match that proposition.
- Open the underlying record, not only a search result, headline, or dataset summary.
- Record provenance, publication or release date, version, redactions, scope, and what the source cannot establish.
- Seek an independent source chain before increasing confidence or assigning responsibility, intent, reach, or effect.